The Katurran Odyssey
A very beautiful, underrated, and highly recommended illustrated novel by Terryl Whitlatch, who is best known as one of the key concept artists who worked on Star Wars. She designed many of the incidental characters. The book may be her way of saying, "No, I Did Not Make That Up" by depicting the very real creatures who inspired her.
The story is set in a world populated entirely by Intellectual Animals. Katook is a young Ring-Tailed Lemur who ventures to a forbidden area of his once-idyllic island home that is now in the grip of a famine. Learning a dark and terrible secret, and forever singled out by the deity of his people, he is banished by the tribal elders and ventures across the sea in search of other lemurs. Instead, he finds a wide variety of monkey tribes, each with differing opinions of Katook's destiny. He finds fierce, frightening creatures. And he finds Quigga, a conceited Quagga who gradually accepts the little primate first as a traveling companion and finally as an equal. Katook eventually receives a message from his god, returns to save his tribe, and good times are had by all.
The artwork in the novel is unbelievable. The story... is a perfect storm of Hero's Journey Tropes and Animal Tropes. It's still cool to look at.
Tropes used include:
- Bamboo Technology - Mostly. There's a bit of Schizo-Tech too in the form of a projector that is a fairly important plot point and in offhand mentions of metalwork and such.
- Carnivore Confusion - And talk about confusing...
- Deliberate Values Dissonance - Katook meets five other tribes of monkeys, each with their own philosophy and ways of life. Considering that lemurs are just about the only primates that could be considered pacifists, much culture-clashing ensues.
- Distracted By the Shiny - I mean, damn those illustrations are amazing...
- Doing In the Wizard - Actually forms part of the denoument.
- Everything's Better with Monkeys - Writ large.
- Furry Confusion - Od Ashud actually has this as a cultural trait. If you are any species other than a Golden Monkey, you're treated as a pet. Or worse.
- George Lucas
- Giant Flyer - Of the few birds who ascend beyond the ranks of background characters, most are fierce flying predators.
- Horse of a Different Color - Quigga, being an extinct species of zebra, plays this trope straight in the most literal manner. Also there are antelopes, mastodons, glyptodonts, ad infinitum.
- Loads and Loads of Characters
- Misplaced Wildlife - There are animals from every continent and geological era mixing it up in the world of Katurrah... which is fictional, so this is actually justified.
- Most Writers Are Human - Or, rather, Most Writers Are Primates.
- Shown Their Work - Aside from the legendary army of fantastic monsters, there is only one fictional animal in the whole of the book. You'll just have to take her word for it.
- Small Name, Big Ego - Quigga is not only quite vain, but fancies himself an exemplary scout despite having no sense of direction.
- Spirit World
- Uh-Oh Eyes - The book subverts the Eyes of Gold variety, as gold is a perfectly normal eye color for lemurs. It's Katook's blue eyes that make him a freak.
- You Can't Go Home Again
- Walking the Earth
- Where It All Began
- The World Tree