Review by Ian Keogh

Nine year old Kadyn was separated from his father Gil when the cargo spaceship they were on was destroyed. At the exact moment that happened, Kadyn was messing about with the stock, and connected with a mystical object that endowed him with new capabilities. In Lost in the Wild Heavens it seemed as if Gil had been killed, which wasn’t the case, and he spent most of the volume attempting to reconnect with his son. Just at the point it seemed they’d been reunited, Kadyn was snatched away again.

In order to create suspense, the ending to the previous volume was deliberately vague, but the opening chapter here clarifies what happened. In a neat twist the two companions who’d befriended Kadyn now accompany Gil, and the helmet with his father’s grumpy AI aid is now in Kadyn’s possession.

Sea of Stars is touted as an all-ages adventure, but it isn’t. While Kadyn is charming and his personality fits his age, Jason Aaron and Dennis Hallum are imaginative, but don’t tone down the aggression and horror enough to earn the all-ages ranking. The police bot infesting the helmet is a little too unpleasant, as are the situations Kadyn finds himself in, and as good as it is, Stephen Green’s art is hardly comforting either.

As in Lost in the Wild Heavens, Gil and Kadyn spend most of The People of the Broken Moon separated, but each now knows the other is alive. As presented their reunion is the most horrific chapter of Sea of Stars, very powerful considering what’s come before, but pitched several levels above all-ages. By the end Stephen Green is giving the art some Kirby-style power and mythology for what’s a really effective widescreen finale, but too much of what’s come before is by the numbers with most of the wonder front-ended in the first volume.