This is a truly fantastic collection of short stories.

The stories themselves are wonderful and the art, man, just wow. The character, environment, and technology designs are spectacular, beautiful, and often very alluring in their strangeness. The creativity on display here is honestly inspiring; the book makes me want to go and create my own strange little worlds to explore.

Each story is followed by a set of pages that give you a deeper peek into the relevant lore, which was fun to read. The book itself is ended with a showcase of some of the original concept art and ideas that eventually evolved into the stories within the collection and gives a great view into the author's mind and inspirations. There's also a pin-up gallery showcasing pieces from various artists that was nice to flip through.

"The Oxpecker and the Elephant", "The Anchoress", and "Vanguard" were my favorite stories in here, but the rest were really enjoyable as well.

<b>Highly Recommend!</b>

Thank you to NetGalley and Image Comics for the review copy!

This was so fun, I had a great time reading it. I found it imaginative, and I loved the art style. It was missing that special piece to make it five stars but it was close

"A Star Called the Sun" by Simon Roy is a fantastic little collection of short stories with great illustrations. Roy includes an outstanding array of creatures that were not simply rehashes of various famous aliens from other media. He also provides incredibly "realistic" results for the humans (and other beings) reacting to their different situations/environments. Best of all, I found every short story to be of good or better quality which is highly unusual for any short story collection. I especially loved the stories told from the alien points of view rather than the human. The collection also serves as a great introduction if you are not already familiar with Roy's other works (Griz Grobus is a personal favorite).

I highly recommend the collection and thank NetGalley and Image Comics for the opportunity to read this eARC.

A collection of odds and sods set mostly in the same world as Roy's Habitat and Griz Grobus, but it's not necessary to have read those to appreciate this; it was always a setting seen in fragments and glimpses, and the pieces here aren't appreciably more incomplete taken for themselves. Vast alien ecologies unfold in a fashion that doesn't even pretend to be a story so much as an invented nature documentary on an epic scale; at the more human level, a quest for records of lost technology can bounce through the farcical tropes that have attended male visitors to nunneries for as long as there have been nunneries to joke about. One story is essentially Avatar if Avatar were exponentially quicker and remotely interesting. And more often than not, we follow little lives in the shadow of relics from a more advanced past which, along with the pantheistic attention to nature, gives a strong Miyazaki flavour to proceedings.

(Netgalley ARC)

A Star Called the Sun is a strange, stylish constellation of far-future sci-fi shorts that somehow feels both punchy and dreamy. Each tale drops you into a new corner of the Habitat/Griz Grobus universe-robotic clergy here, immortal cyborgs there, and at least one posthuman hive mind lurking where you least expect it. It’s wonderfully weird.

The art is the real show-stealer. Every page looks like someone gave a cosmic cathedral a synthwave makeover. The designs-characters, tech, even the environments-are so inventive they almost dare you to start sketching your own worlds.

The stories themselves are quick hits of odd, pulpy adventure. “The Oxpecker and the Elephant,” “The Anchoress,” and “Vanguard” stand out, but nothing here drags. Lore pages and concept art round things out, adding depth without feeling like homework.

It’s a joyful, creatively feral collection-messy in places, sure, but boldly imaginative and easy to recommend.