The City of Shifting Waters (Valerian & Laureline)

As the uncredited source material for Star Wars, this graphic novel series deserves to be read by high science fiction fans everywhere. The characters and plot are surprisingly deep, with dimensional time travel, political economic evolution, and futuristic technology usually found in the company of Clarke and Asimov.If you wonder ever wondered how something as brilliant as the Star Wars trilogy lead to Jar Jar Binks, I submit it is easily explained by Lucas attempting to invent characters from his own imagination instead of cribbing from a better source.

The Kindle edition of this struggles a bit.It is possible to zoom in on the page, but the whole comicbook format isn't well supported, at least for legacy comics.It leaves the reader with having to scroll around the zoomed page to follow the frames in the correct order.I'm not sure there IS a solution short of possibly having a setting to rotate the image 90 degrees (which would allow for SOME zoom and then scrolling only along one axis to read it).The story itself is a well-rendered translation of the original French that I bought to remind myself that the movie really does blow goats as badly as I thought it did. The original Valerian was a mouth-breathing muscle-head, not a genius wimp. Not sure why the change for the film was necessary as the comic in its original form sold quite well and would play into the current "all men are garbage" mindset.

Like many European kids I grew up with French and Belgian cartoons and adventures or boneheaded but loveable Valerian and his fiery and smart partner Laureline were always my favorite. Even i never managed to find all translated versions i still loved to watch wonderfully detailed but same time sketchy images by Jean-Claude Mézières which built totally new space empires in my imagination and continued to feed love of fantasy and sci-fi throughout years.As a story The City of Shifting Waters is still quite plain and does not include so much wildly imaginative ideas as later stories - it is however a good beginning even though it would be nice to get also Bad Dreams translated/published again to understand how Laureline appeared to the story first time. In these first stories Laureline is still not very visible character, which also partially makes stories less interesting but I am happy to see this fantastic series published again and I hope wider English-speaking audiences could also discover its' magic.

Well I got this for free on kindle. I probably would give a slightly lower rating if I had had to pay for it. The art was excellent, the story less so (it seemed more like an excuse for the the art, rather than an actually interesting story. Normally I would have read it a second time but the Kindle interface for the book was kind of glitchy and hard to use. It kept jumping to wrong box and I hard to put out some effort to get to where I needed to be.

I decided to get the first Valerian book, because the trailer for the movie came out yesterday and I was intrigued. It was entertaining and it's a great example of classic crazy science fiction. However, there is little in the way of character development and the novel as a whole is unexpectedly short.This was more of a single issue of a comic book than an actual full graphic novel and I hope that the movie focuses more on telling us about the two main characters. I am still going to get the next book though, because I was entertained and the possibilities for stories in this world are unlimited. All in all, I definitely recommend The City of Shifting Waters if you're a fan of science fiction and you have an hour to kill.

Seeing that the movie, "Valarian and the Planet of a Thousand Worlds," is coming out at the end of July, I thought I would check out this Series. Even though this story came out in 1976, it was well paced and kept up my interest. It gives me a good incentive to check the rest of the Five Volume Series. I highly recommend this story.

This kindlebook of Valerian & Laureline-Volume 1-The City of Shifting Waters by Jean Claude Mezieres and Pierre Christin is completely different from the film Valerian & The City of A Thousand Planets which my husband treated me to and I enjoyed watching. One positive; this kindlebook is currently free and there is at least some semblance of a plot involving them going on a mission to New York. The comic pictures and the color scheme go good together for the story development.

Such a great read. Why wasn't this one the movie? Everyone should take the moment to read through this as it isn't hard but gives you the laughs you are looking for.Perfect for sci-fi fans who enjoyed the movie but we're confused or those who just want a fun story to follow and make you laugh.

Gift for husband, he loved it! Book was in perfect condition!

Erst spät habe ich zu "Valerian" gefunden und frage mich, wie ich so lange ohne habe leben können ;-). Mir gefallen die Zeichnungen und die Story sehr gut - spannend, utopisch und nicht zu übertrieben. Habe mir bereits weitere Bände gekauft.

An enjoyable re-read in the translation and e-book adaptation by Cinebook. Very clean work making it easy to enjoy the panels on the Kindle Android App I loaded the comic on.

I bought this kindle edition on a whim as it was free. Never heard of this author or series before.Very pleasantly surprised. Loved the storyline. Good graphics. Good script.Will be reading the rest, but in paper format. I find reading comics on a screen too eye straining.Recommended

El paquete perfecto, el libro excelente, nuevo, sin ningún problema. Incluso venía con unos cupones de descuento. Lo único que tardó demasiado (casi un mes) en llegar a mi país (Chile), así que no podré ni usar los cupones de descuento, que están próximos a vencer.