Across a Field of Starlight is a young adult sci fi graphic romance novel. The cast of characters including the two main characters, Fassen and Lu, are gender nonconforming, trans, or racially diverse. The writing is well done and the art is impeccable. The story itself of the two getting to know one another while fighting their own battles was well paced.

We are taken across multiple realms, see violence, growing attraction and sociopolitical, capitalistic, and war discourse that flow naturally within the elements of the story. Because of how larger than life the art is, sometimes it can be hard to keep track of some of the storyline and plot points. However, this is not necessarily a bad thing and may warrant a read through again for the thorough person who likes to unfold the story as you go.

I liked the ending and felt it all came together smoothly, I am not sure if this is a standalone but would love to read more from this universe and cast of characters.

I read this book as part of the blog tour hosted by TBR & Beyond Tours. Special thanks to Random House Graphic for providing an ARC via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. 3.5 stars rounded up!

There's a surprising amount to unpack in this graphic novel that I didn't expect when I first picked it up. I was anticipating a bit more of a romance (across space and time etc.) and while there is a romance it's very slight. This is a story about the impact of a decades-long war on individuals and societies, it's about appropriation and colonisation, freedom of choice to be who you are, and it's about how small people and small decisions can create a big impact in the long term. As it is, I'm still trying to sort through my jumble of thoughts about this but it's a story that I think you can take something new from with each re-read!

The artwork was so visually appealing and really brings this story to life! I especially loved the contrast in colour palettes between the planets Lu and Fassen were from, which only served to further emphasise the stark differences of their lives. The planet that the resistance has taken over is highlighted by bright oranges, reds, and yellows, while Lu's home planet is highlighted by calmer tones of blues, purples and greens. Delliquanti's art also does a fantastic job of capturing the spectrum of emotions that the characters experience through their facial expressions and body language!

This is the most diverse graphic novel that I've had the pleasure to read and while it was great to see the wide range of representation—from non-binary, trans, and plus-sized characters in the story, I loved that it wasn't a story about their gender identity. I found Lu and Fassen to be interesting and complex characters and I enjoyed learning about both of them as they learn more about themselves and each other. Though I was much more invested in Fassen's arc because it was more dynamic as they experience more growth throughout the story. Delliquanti really captured the emotional and mental upheaval Fassen experiences having come from a planet that's caught in an endless war cycle with the Empire.

That being said, there were times that I struggled to follow what exactly was going on in certain panels, especially those involving the more technical "sciencey" discussions. While I wouldn't say this is 'high sci-fi', as someone who doesn't read much SF, it took longer for me to understand what they were talking about (and involved a good few back-and-forths between panels to process)! I can definitely see how those who don't read much of this genre could be put off by or get confused enough to be bogged down by the story. However, it was well worth pushing on and figuring out (for me) because this was an intriguing and complex story that has many more layers to it than meets the eye! If you're looking for a fast-paced, adventure-filled and wonderfully diverse sci-fi graphic novel to read, I would most definitely encourage you to give this a try.

This graphic novel was incredibly interesting and beautiful. For starters I loved the art in this graphic novel. It was colourful and bright and really beautiful. I loved how the characters were drawn, how the worlds and space were depicted. I loved that all the characters felt like individuals in character design. They all looked different and had uniqueness to them. The worlds all looked really different and unique, along with the vehicles and space ships.

I thought the premise of this story was really exciting and interesting. I loved learning about the different groups, who they were fighting for or against, the different types of lifestyles people had, as well as the AI and technology that was used. It was really interesting to have the two different point of views in very different situations. Fassen being part of a military like group fighting against a greater enemy and Lu being part of a neutral party who wants to stay out of the war. I think having the friendship between the two of them develop across the galaxy was lovely to see. I liked seeing where their interests overlapped and where they were different, as well as how they cared for each other.

I would have really liked to see more in this world. Whether the story be longer or part of a series, I would have loved to learn more about the history of the world and how everything works together. Even without that history or more in-depth explanation of the different groups of people I think the story was really fun and engaging. It definitely kept me reading to the end.

Disclaimer: I received this e-arc from the publisher for the purposes of a book tour. Thanks! All opinions are my own.

Book: Across a Field of Starlight

Author: Blue Delliquanti

Book Series: Standalone

Rating: 5/5

Diversity: Black Plus Size non-binary MC, POC Non-Binary MC, POC characters, non-binary character, non-binary romance

Recommended For...: young adult readers, sci-fi, graphic novel, epic sci-fi, 2SLGBT+, romance

Publication Date: February 8, 2022

Genre: YA Sci-Fi Graphic Novel

Age Relevance: 13+ (violence, gore, dead animals shown, terrorism, parental death, mass attempted murder, romance)

Explanation of Above: There is violence and some very slight gore in this book as the book is set during a rebellion period between two sides: an empire and a rebel army. There is also a scene of attempted mass murder shown and acts of terrorism shown. There is parental death mentioned as well and very slight romance.

Publisher: Random House Graphic

Pages: 352

Synopsis: When they were kids, Fassen's fighter spaceship crash-landed on a planet that Lu's survey force was exploring. It was a forbidden meeting between a kid from a war-focused resistance movement and a kid whose community and planet are dedicated to peace and secrecy.

Lu and Fassen are from different worlds and separate solar systems. But their friendship keeps them in each other's orbit as they grow up. They stay in contact in secret as their communities are increasingly threatened by the omnipresent, ever-expanding empire.

As the empire begins a new attack against Fassen's people--and discovers Lu's in the process--the two of them have the chance to reunite at last. They finally are able to be together...but at what cost?

This beautifully illustrated graphic novel is an epic science fiction romance between two non-binary characters as they find one another through time, distance, and war.

Review: I really loved this graphic novel! I loved the story and I really liked the Star Wars feel of the book. The book had a great story with a great pen-pal friendship turned relationship at the core of it between two non-binary characters and I loved seeing how the universe was developed and how people could live happily without constant war. I loved seeing all of the POC and/or 2SLGBT+ characters and I loved seeing the diverse bodies, including the plus size MC and female characters with body hair. The characters were well developed and the world building was amazing. The illustrations were also well done and overall the book is well plotted and storied.

The only issue I had with the book is that it presents a lot of technical terms in it and I had some issue following along, but the book did a great job to give context clues as to what was happening.

Verdict: Highly recommend! I loved it!

Thanks to TBR & Beyond Tours as well as the publisher for the eARC!
Let’s start the review like this, this isn’t a romance. I have to assume something happened in the marketing department because the graphic novel is very explicit that these two are just friends and very happy only being friends.
With that out of the way, I really liked this book! It’s a harder type of sci-fi than I’m used to in a graphoc novel format, which I appreciated! This isn’t the kind of book you can just flip though the gorgeous art work (although the art is gorgeous, don’t get me wrong). You do have to pay attention to explanations of technology in this universe to see how everything ties up together by the end, but it’s definitely worth it. It’s also easy to understand, so don’t get intimidated.
My one main criticism is it was sometimes hard to tell how much time has passed and in what context. Like, a panel would change and I wasn’t really
This graphic novel does an excellent job at easily integrating a wide variety of body types and gender expressions. Fassen and Lu are both enby but their gender presentation is very different, there are other trans and gender non-conforming characters, queer relationships, etc.
I love how you can see how the character’s upbringing affections their outlook on life. Lu and Fassen have been talking for years, but grew up in very different situations and that makes itself very clear in their words and actions.
Speaking of, I love that this graphic novel really flips the “teenager in a soldier position in the Rebellion” trope on its head. It’s such a given in YA fiction, but this graphic novel really makes you sit with it and go “wait a minute.”
I rated this graphic novel 3.75 stars! It had gorgeous art and an interesting plot line! I’d definitely pick up more from this author!

Rainbows and Sunshine
January 8, 2021

Really enjoyed this queer sci fi graphic novel focused on platonic love. The art and colouring is really beautiful. If you love space and found family, this one is for you.

Loved that it's filled with diverse characters but that is not what the entire plot is based on. The character designs are very detailed and absolutely gorgeous. Lu and Fassen have a friendship beyond words and I loved them!

The plot was a bit hard to understand but overall I really enjoyed this graphic novel.

*ARC provided by the publisher via TBR and Beyond and Netgalley in exchange for an honest and unbiased review

This graphic novel was amazing! I absolutely loved it. The art style was gorgeous and colorful. Blue was able to draw diverse, beautiful characters that showed flaws and range! You will fall in love with many of these characters and you will find your heart breaking at times.

Although this is a scifi graphic novel, I think it’s an accessible one. It isn’t high scifi, nor does it bog itself down with over-complicating the science when it does appear. This is more of a character story that happens to take place across space. There were a couple elements that they tried to explain to me, but well above my science understand I ended up taking it at face value – others may not be able to or want to do the same.

I absolutely loved the amount of Diversity in this group! And the normalization of queer relationships and characters was amazing. However, that doesn’t mean these characters, specifically Transgender characters, are without difficulties. Supplies in war-torn counties, including hormone medications, were hard to come by and only those high in military rank were able to afford them.

Blue tackles colonization and displacement well, although I have not wxperience with either personally. I was able yo understand all perspectives thanks to the diverse characters that we follow in this story. I found myself emotionally torn multiple times and you felt helpless to help through most of it. You heart just breaks for these characters and the decisions they need to make. The tech in Across a Field of Starlight was interesting and felt realistic, ad much as science fiction can at times. Nothing felt outlandish.

The strengths in this graphic novel is the art, the characters and the relationship. It all just happens to take place in space. If you are hesitant only because of the science fiction, I don’t believe you have anything to worry about. This is a gorgeous story and I highly recommend it to anyone who love queer stories (and definitely if you’re wanting to branch out into other genres)!

Thank you to Random House Graphic and NetGalley for a DARC in exchange for an honest review.

Fassen and Lu were cautious to speak to each other when they first met as kids, knowing well they were from different worlds. Fassen is from a war-focused resistance movement while Lu is from a serene community. After an act of kindness, Fassen continues to communicate with Lu in secret, growing up in separate solar systems due to an empire threatening their communities.

As the empire begins to attack Fassen's community and discovers Lu's, this gives both of them an opportunity to reunite and strengthen more than just their bond to keep their communities safe.

What I noticed right away was the art. From the layout and design of the various shapes, sizes, and full page panels, this showcases a whole spectrum of emotions from both the main and side characters and creates fast-paced movement in the space action sequences.

The choice of lighting and twilight and bright colors captures the mood and tone of the different planets, as well as the developing relationship between Fassen and Lu with effective external and internal dialogue exchanged during conflicts to add depth to their characters. Even the appreciation of murals, art, and writing processes are scattered throughout the narrative and the backgrounds, giving the reader information on both the values of Fassen and Lu's communities and what they fight for.

This is a graphic novel that can truly take a reader on an epic space adventure, exploring the themes of first love, gender identity, and social inequality. The back matter contains concept art and an author's note about the creative process and to persevere into a better world.

I loved everything about this book. From the art work to the sci-fi element. I am not a big fan of sci-fi but I think that this is a good way to get more into sci-fi if someone is looking for something before transitioning over to novels.

I have so many thoughts after finishing Across a Field of Starlight that it’s going to be difficult for me to get them all down coherently. So please pardon the mess of words that is about to follow. As an avid reader of graphic novels, I’ve come to love the special way that they can share a story. The amount of emotion and nuance that can be put into a beautifully illustrated panel is honestly still staggering to me every time I dive into one. Across a Field of Starlight uses this super power to full effect. Fassen and Lu’s story is something gorgeous, and it still hasn’t quite processed fully through my mind.

Before anything else, I want to praise how beautiful the non-binary rep is in this story. Instead of being Lu and Fassen’s whole identity, or dictating what they decide to do at all times, them being non-binary is just a single factor of who they are. These two are so perfectly faceted, which makes the fact that their life experience is so different from one another all the more fascinating. See, Lu was raised in on a commune that takes in war refugees. They research tech, and use their resources to take care of their people. Fassen’s life couldn’t be more different. On their world, war is the norm and fighting for the “cause” is the only thing that puts food on the table. If you want resources, you have to be useful. Watching these two meet, and slowly learn to understand one another, was a wonderful thing.

I could gush on and on about all the topics tackled in this book. About the appropriation of native lands to “help” them escape from the war. About the concept of AI and whether it can be used for good instead of nefarious purposes. About the the way that this story depicts how the ease in “being yourself” is highly dictated by the society that you grow up in. There are so many pieces of this story that just make you stop and think. As I said above, the illustrations are honestly just the icing on the cake of this already gorgeous story. There is so much raw emotion in every panel, and I just ate this story up. Lu and Fassen’s relationship was a breath of fresh air for me and I was so happy to have discovered it.

If you’re looking for Sci Fi graphic novel that will delight you, while simultaneously making you seriously reconsider your feelings about all sorts of topics, Across a Field of Starlight is what you’re looking for.

Thank you NetGalley and Random House Children's for the opportunity to read and review this before publishing! All thoughts and opinions are my own.

Across a Field of Starlight is a space adventure story with a heavy focus on platonic love. If you're a sci-fi or space opera fan and love found friendships/family, you will want to pick this up!

WOW! This graphic novel was such a fun read. The space exploration and adventure was engaging and so well developed. I very much enjoyed being thrown right into the story. The main characters, Lu and Fassen, were such lovable characters and their friendship felt incredibly cozy and comforting. They become friends through unlikely circumstances and remained each other's support across the universe through challenging political upheaval.
I also absolutely LOVED the representation and diversity in this story!! Characters were simply themselves without it being the entire plot point-they just existed in a really cool sci-fi world.

The space adventure/exploration/fighting was so fun to read. I loved learning about the world, technology, and social structures each of the different groups has. The technology and world can seem a little complicated if you've never read a space opera before but if you're a sci-fi lover, you will love this!

Now for the art: again, WOW. This graphic novel was beautiful and I enjoyed every minute of looking at the art. The colors were vivid and added so much depth to the story. I will 100% be recommending this to all of my friends.

3⭐️

Across a Field of Starlight is a sci-fi graphic novel about intergalactic wars and politics, but also about friendship. I loved the friendship aspect and learning more about Lu and Fassen (and Field!!), but the plot and world building felt incomplete. There is a lot going on, and I didn’t feel like I understood most of it. I also don’t really understand why it was marketed as romance, because the characters relationship felt 100% platonic.

The coolest part about this book is that the characters are so diverse, and their diversity isn’t a plot point at all!!! None of the characters face discrimination based on their size or skin color or gender identity and it was so refreshing. This is the type of action packed story so many kids could see themselves in — and that is so important in.

The first half of the book is mostly set on a ship of training soldiers, and I didn’t really care about the politics. The second half we get more character development and relationship building, which was great.

I love some aspects of sci-fi, and others I literally don’t care about at all, and this was a mix of both. AI and new technology?!! LOVE. Space wars… not so much my thing. If it’s your jam though you will love this!!

Overall, I feel like I did not understand the world. I don’t know anything about this author, but I feel like this should have been a novel, and not a graphic one. I think there could have been more plot devices and world building this way.

Across a Field of Starlight has everything you could ask for: action in space, lovable characters and an incredibly diverse cast of characters. The art is absolutely stunning, full of color and light., and the story is just as good. Its the type of book that kids will love, because of the space adventure and the diverse cast, but its also a story that adults can really dig into as well. This book talks about gender and sexuality in a way that's subtle, and real. It doesn't shy away from it, but it doesn't overtake the whole story, something I think can be so valuable in queer stories. Also of value is the anti-capitalist plotline, which was very noticeable to me, but may not be to a young reader. Either way, there's so much to learn from this, in that magical way that will work so well for kids because they won't realize they're learning until they are done. This is perfect for students because of that. I have one small issue, and that is that I didn't fully understand the world, but I don't know if that matters for young readers. They'll find themselves represented in many ways, but they'll also be taken on a journey across space. And that's why I'll be really pushing to get a copy of this for my library. Teens need books like this.

Probably something between a three and four star book but I enjoyed it so I’m rounding up. The two kids at the center of the story are both likable and the two worlds they live in are clear shown within the confines of the relatively short book. I liked the bright clearly drawn art style and found the story interesting even as an adult reader of a clearly young adult graphic novel. I also liked that the story was a stand alone. The author could easily revisit this world and the characters too if they thought of another story, More violence than sexuality. The one kid is living in a pretty grim society with a lot of scarcity. The sexuality of the characters is touched upon but not in depth. It is not the focus of the story. It’s simply a background aspect of their lives and not the center of what they are experiencing.

The visuals in this book were perfection, not only the art style and coloring but that it depicted real looking people. It is one of the only books in which there is wonderful representation all across the board but that isn’t the “point” of the book so to speak, it is just there because that’s how the world (or in this case human kind) are, diverse! Loved that so much. Now the negative seems to be not just something I picked up on as others have echoed it too. It wasn’t the easiest plot line to follow. As much as I don’t like info dumping we could have used a few more scenes in the beginning to show us the relation of the different groups and conflicts. Thank you to Netgalley and the publisher for an e-arc in exchange for an honest review.

This title started with a lot of specific information related to the science fiction element of the title. It didn't make a whole lot of sense and mostly illustrated that the characters were knowledgeable. Lu lives on a neutral commune and is very curious about life and her surroundings. She is on another planet with some other people from her commune investigating and taking samples to learn more about it. In her exploration she comes across a stranded boy about her age. She is accompanied by a floating crystal artificial intelligence who is sort of like a conscience to her. Lu decides to help the boy but keeps it secret from her commune and even goes so far as to set up a secret communication link between them. Over the next few years they use the communication link and become friends and share about themselves. The boy, Fassen, gets a job as a war medic and his community are at war against another community. His community discovers a new technology that the other side has developed and steals it and tries to use it against them. There's a lot of interesting parallels in this story about utopia/dystopia and our modern world. All the characters in this graphic novel are nontraditional in some way, there nonbinary characters, there are women with beards and there are trans people among others. I think this title would be interesting to use in a classroom due to the conversations that could come from it. The only thing I was left wondering about in the end is why the two entities were fighting.

Let me start with the positives.

This book is beautifully illustrated. The characters are diverse and all have unique appearances—I’ve read many graphic novels when you can’t tell certain characters apart. The colors are beautiful. The technology and use of AI were interesting, if a little cliche. I thought Fassan was a very interesting character. The characters are diverse just because that is who they are. There are no plot points behind it.

As for the negatives.

I feel like I did not fully understand this graphic novel. I did not really understand the setting, where either Lu or Fassen were, or where they were going. The world-building was minimum. I mentioned earlier that I liked the technology and the AI, but I did not really understand how either of these came to be. I was not very involved with the romance. Lu and Fassen seemed more like best friends than partners, to me (I’m also not sure if they’re supposed to be in a romantic relationship. There was one kiss that was unenjoyable for both of them. This could be a result of mismarketing). The ending felt abrupt, since the main villain seemed established in the end. I did not understand who Lu really was until I reread the synopsis of the book.

Overall, I feel like I did not understand the world. I don’t know anything about this author, but I feel like this should have been a novel, and not a graphic one. I think there could have been more plot devices and worldbuilding this way.

Thank you to NetGalley for an eARC in exchange for an honest review.

This is a sweet and earnest story about capitalism and new worlds worth imagining. I loved the body, gender, and ethnicity diversity in this story. I also loved that there wasn't a focus on romantic love, but instead the powerful connections you can make within friendship. This is a lovely book.

Thank you to the publisher and NetGalley for the advanced electronic copy of this book. The plot was a bit difficult to understand and to follow, but I enjoyed the diverse characters, as well as the colors and the illustrations. I felt that the illustrations really showcased the world that the characters live in.