Finder: Third World

The newest volume of McNeil’s elaborate SF/mythology saga—and the first of the series printed in full color—features the titular finder Jaeger Ayers, whose keen sense of direction makes him a natural in his newest short-lived occupation as a courier. Jaeger specializes in delivering unusually mysterious and arcane packages and people, as well as dreams and ideas. McNeil’s solid mix of mythology, cyberpunk, and incisive personality gives her worldbuilding an edge: Jaeger’s journey becomes an exploratory travelogue. The short, anecdotal stories that begin the volume gradually blend into a longer narrative that explores Jaeger’s past, forming a hallucinatory fable about his ritual role as a Sin-Eater for his aboriginal native people. McNeil’s naturalistic dialogue and her lithe, expressively drawn characters highlight her impressive art chops, and the short tales have a kinetic immediacy, while the longer ones have a slow, dreamlike pace. Brilliant coloring by Jenn Manley Lee and Bill Mudron renders the black-and-white world of previous volumes into vibrant neighborhoods and vistas alternately energetic, moody, psychedelic, and unearthly. (Sept.)