THE RISING TIDE

Sola unites the island peoples with a discovery about the Monster.

In this third series installment following The Infinite Land (2021), Alef’s coastal lands on the continent are threatened by encroaching waves. Alef has left Chief Hunder, disengaged and unsympathetic to the settlers’ fears about the danger posed by rising seas, in power. When Wick arrives with news that their friend Sola may have survived a shipwreck, Wick and Hunder must flee Alef’s furious response. Sola, now mother to a foundling (possibly the lost king of the continenters), has found refuge on a wave-washed island. Her hope, along with that of Wick, Hunder, and her friend Esha, lies with a marvelous, motley flotilla of vessels belonging to different island cultures, all with intriguingly varied rigging and hulls. Conversations—terse and telegraphic—reveal the determination of Sola and those represented in the flotilla to embrace cooperative survival. In contrast with Alef’s plan to displace the continenters with his own followers and move farther inland, Sola accepts that the sea will create separate islands. Illustrations rich with, by turns, action, silence, and backstory carry the narrative along with the spare dialogue. The cast of bipedal, binocular nonhuman people features distinctive skin colors and countenances. Dahm’s impressively compact storytelling often seems to encompass entire conversations, events, and ideas in a few frames and a few words.

Absorbing, thoughtful worldbuilding and adventure.