Eartha [Hardcover]

Malkasians stunninglandscapes and depictions of nature, gestural character nuance, and sophisticated storytelling are on display in her latest graphic novel. For a thousand years, the unfinished dreamssex fantasies, murder plots, wishful thinkingfrom the City Across the Sea came to Echo Fjord to find sanctuary. Emerging from the soil, they took bodily form and wandered the land, gently guided by the fjord folk. But recently they've stopped coming, and Eartha wants solve the mystery. Without thought or hesitationthe city isnt on any map, or in anyones memoryshe ventures into the limitless waters, hoping to find the City.Malkasian creates beautiful and strange pictures.Allegories are thick as fog in this gloriously imagined fantastical fable from Malkasian.What works is the world Malkasian has created here: soft, swooping vistas seen from a variety of perspectives and frames as rich as the diverse and eccentric cast of characters, and epitomising the message of the small and local and true being truly the biggest things.Watching Cathy Malkasian construct a world is a pleasant and gently surprising experience. The visual splendour and quizzical customs she dreams up to outfit the stomping grounds of Eartha, a genial giant who's embarked on a quest, share much of the verve of Pixar's weirder ideas, along with some of the darkness of Don Bluth's cartoons.In this wry graphic novel, dreams take bodily form on an island; when they stop coming, Eartha travels to the City Across the Sea, where the dreamers are from, to find out why.