In Review: Antares - Episode 3

Brazilian artist and writer Leo (Luiz Eduardo de Oliveira) continues his Worlds of Aldebaran saga with Antares Episode 3, the (presumably) middle part of the third series of his incredibly alien tales of 22nd century interplanetary settlers and the beasts and plants they find on the worlds that they settle.

While the main expedition to Antares 5 sets up a base camp, a second shuttle has crashed. The rescue party finds the survivors but loses its aircraft in the process and so the few survivors of both craft are now attempting to return to the base camp location - a journey of many months that they are ill prepared for.

Kim Keller, her daughter Lynn, lover Mark Sorenson, and friend Mai Lan, are all part of this disparate group of survivors who have little food or room in the tracked truck that must be their home. As they skirt the huge forests of the continent that they are trapped on, they must try to avoid the more dangerous of the alien beasts they encounter.

Antares is the third in Leo's Worlds Of Aldebaran sagas, the previous two of which, Aldebaran and Betelgeuse, were serialised over five French albums each. Antares is currently up to Episode 4 in French (due to be published in English in August 2013) and so I would assume that this story will also be five albums long making this the middle point of the story.

Episode 3 is very much a character piece in which we discover more about the group of survivors as they struggle to cope with the planet, the beasts that inhabit it, and the rest of their group as the vehicle slowly makes it way back to a base camp that isn't that keen on finding them. As ever Leo's imagination for alien flora and fauna is the highlight of each individual book and, despite being the 13th album of this overall series, this book is no exception with trees bearing transparent eggs and fast moving crustaceans that appear from nowhere.

I enjoyed this one, as I have enjoyed all Leo's previous books, but I'm also very aware that his sagas are often more than the sum of their parts. Individual books in the series can seem flat as apparently unrelated sequences build toward the bigger story and it can often be the fifth and final book in which everything falls into place and earlier encounters make sense.

With Antares each book to date has ended on a puzzling cliffhanger, none of which have so far been explained, and Antares - Episode 3 is no different. It makes for a somewhat frustrating read when you know that the next book is not yet available however, once they are all available, I suspect that the same plot device will make them just as addictive, and as demanding of all being read in one sitting, as the two previous sets in the saga.

There are more details of Antares (and Aldebaran and Betelgeuse) on the Cinebook website.

Antares - Episode 4 is due to be published in August 2013.

The downthetubes review of Antares - Episode 1 is here and Episode 2 here.

There are more details of all Leo's books on The Worlds Of Aldebaran website (in French).

In Review: Antares - Episode 2

Brazilian artist and writer Leo (Luiz Eduardo de Oliveira) continues his Worlds of Aldebaran saga with Antares Episode 2, the second part of the third series of his incredibly alien tales of 22nd century interplanetary settlers and the beasts and plants they find on the worlds that they settle.

Having survived her experiences on Aldebaran 4 and Betelgeuse 6, Kim Keller is more than experienced enough to be the obvious candidate to help the team that is being sent to Antares, but with her young and not entirely human daughter to protect, Kim has to be effectively blackmailed into the job. On the colony ship with her daughter Lynn and friends Mark Sorenson and Mai Lan, Kim soon discovers that many of the colonists are from a religious sect with some uncomfortable beliefs as she has a run in with both them and the ship's Subcommander.

However the difficulties on the ship fade into the background when they arrive at Antares and, during the disembarkation, one of the shuttles develops a fault and crashes in a forest far from the designated landing site. Kim and a small team mount a rescue whilst, back at the main landing site, all is not as safe as it might seem.

Leo never gives his main characters an easy time of it on his alien worlds and Antares is proving to be no different. The previous two series, on Aldebaran and Betelgeuse, gave them military dictatorships to deal with in addition to the difficulties posed by the planets, and the first section of this book gives the impression that this time the problem will be religious fanaticism.

However once on the planet other problems soon pile one on top of the other as the arguments between the humans are overtaken by the need to rescue the people from the crashed shuttle while the planet throws up all manner of weird and wonderful plants and creatures. Indeed what to the characters is one very minor incident on the very last page of the book shows the reader something totally unlike anything seen in the preceding eleven books and gives the impression that the story has so far barely scraped the surface of what is living on this planet.




Leo's artistic imagination for alien flora and fauna is always a highlight of the Worlds Of Aldebaran books and Antares is no different with a mixture of flying, amphibious, carnivorous and just plain odd looking beasts that stalk, observe, frighten and attack the colonists once on the planet. While his designs for the future technology can feel somewhat basic, his alien beasts always make up for it.

Antares - Episode 2 builds on the background of the initial episode as well as reintroducing the sort of story that made both the Aldebaran and Betelgeuse series so intriguing and riveting to read and so, while Episode 2 cannot be read as a standalone book, it suggests that this Antares sequence of books will join its predecessors as being an impressive series.

There are more details of Antares (and Aldebaran and Betelgeuse) on the Cinebook website.

The downthetubes review of Antares - Episode 1 is here.

There are more details of all Leo's books on The Worlds Of Aldebaran website (in French).

 

In Review: Antares - Episode 1

After the five albums of the Aldebaran sequence followed by the five albums of the Betelgeuse sequence, the science fiction tales of the Worlds Of Aldebaran, written and illustrated by Leo (Luiz Eduardo de Oliveira), continue with the first episode of the third sequence, Antares.

Leo paints a picture of Earth in 2196 not that far removed from ours but where atmospheric pollution requires gasmasks for walking outside, there have been religious wars and the great apes are all but extinct. Against this background Kim Keller has become a reluctant celebrity after saving the Betelgeuse expedition, however her friends Alexa and Mark have been imprisoned for stealing the spaceship that they took to Betelgeuse to rescue her. To free them Kim agrees to be part of a reconnaissance team to the planet Antares for Forward Enterprises, the corporation who have been financing the potential colonisation of Antares, and who can have Alexa and Mark freed to help her.

During the health check for the job, Kim is told that she is pregnant and, realising to her horror who the father is, she returns to Betelgeuse to give birth. Released from imprisonment, Alexa and Mark go to Betelgeuse to find Kim to convince her to begin the Antares expedition, unaware of the strange disappearances have been happening on the new planet.

The highlight of all these books is Leo's art which here is as impressive as ever with yet another batch of very alien creatures for the potential colonists to deal with while his image sequences of the mysterious disappearances that occur on Antares are shockingly beautiful. The cover, with its semi-transparent floating worm creature, sets the scene beautifully and yet it is Kim's pregnancy and, later in the book, her child that are the focus of Episode 1. Leo throws both his characters and the readers a most unexpected curve ball as we are introduced to Kim's daughter Lynn for the first time.

Individually Leo's Aldebaran sagas can be slow with apparently irrelevant passages, but they build into something that is greater than the sum of their parts as he weaves a tale of truly alien worlds and the flora and fauna that inhabit them. Indeed Kim, as the main character in the books, has not even begun her space voyage to the planet Antares let alone stepped onto the planet by the end of this book. That said I would expect this sequence to run to the usual five albums and the fourth Antares book, unsurprisingly entitled Episode 4, has just been released in France.

Antares Episode 1 lives up to the promise of its World of Aldebaran predecessors with the fascinatingly alien fauna and a long form plot that demands you buy the rest of the series.

• There are more details of Antares (and Aldebaran and Betelgeuse) on the Cinebook website. Antares Episode 2 is due to be released in May 2012.

• There are more details of all Leo's books on The Worlds Of Aldebaran website (in French).

• The downthetubes review of Aldebaran is here and the review of Betelgeuse is here.