What fiction allows readers and writers to do with their imaginations, is both remarkable and limitless. When the world becomes too tough to deal with, the comfort of escape a good book can provide, is always redemptive. Books like The Princess Bride and The Earthsea Trilogy takes us places that resemble our world but is fantastical enough that we know it is fantasy. Comic books like DMZ and Phonogram shows us our world can be more than what it cares to reveal in all its beautiful and ugly dimensions and shapes.

Movies where imagination gets stretched in its most obtuse directions, often challenge us, and make us uncomfortable much like how the Matrix, made every thinking person question the mundane and boring. Then there is the Adjustment Bureau, where every decision, illuminates the direction one would have taken and how forces beyond your control, push your destiny. All these books and movies, leave the reader/viewer, enthralled in their spectacle, often making their audience, question, “what if?” This is the same question that Eartha, asks the reader, doing as the great KRS-One called “edutaining”.

In this story, we meet Eartha, as the summary says:

For a thousand years the unfinished dreams from the City Across the Sea came to Echo Fjord to live out their lives. Sex fantasies, murder plots, wishful thinking, and all manner of secrets once found sanctuary in Echo Fjord. Emerging from the soil, they took bodily form and wandered the land, gently guided by the fjord folk who treasured their brief and wondrous lives. But recently, city dreams have stopped coming to Echo Fjord, and without their ethereal tourists the fjord folk suddenly feel lost. Has their ancient way of life ended for good? Has something happened to the city? Are all the dreamers gone? One of Echo Fjord’s inhabitants wants answers: The story’s eponymous protagonist Eartha wants to visit the City Across the Sea, but how will she get to a place no one’s gone to for a thousand years? The city isn’t on any map, or in anyone’s memory. Without thought or hesitation she ventures into the limitless waters, hoping to find the City and solve the mystery.

She deals with a variety of characters who challenge her perception of everything that she grew up believing in Echo Fjord. By the end of her odyssey, she is a changed woman, unraveling not only the mystery of why the dreams stopped coming to Echo Fjord but also a mystery about her family.

Overall, a great book by Cathy Malkasian, which challenges perceptions and societal norms while allowing the reader to escape. The story by Malkasian, is a fun journey, where the character development jumps out at you and the maze of interloping storylines leaves the reader grasping for more. The art by Malkasian, is alluring yet unassuming. Altogether, a great book, which challenges the perception of fantasy and parody.

Story: Cathy Malkasian Art: Cathy Malkasian
Story: 10 Art: 10 Overall: 10 Recommendation: BUY