The Space Between the Trees: Lost in the Forest of Time

The Space Between the Trees introduces its central mystery immediately. Gaston and Henri set out to cut a tree down in 1902 but never came back. Liam and Smith follow, looking for Gaston and Henri. They find the tree slightly cut into. Then one of them disappears mid conversation. The other follows. Despite the unexplained phenomena in it, this opening scene is strangely understated–especially considering it might be pivotal for the entire story. For the rest of the story, in every scene past and present, the scar cut into the tree in this scene is ever present. Did this one moment break time and causality in both directions?

Paradoxical causality and time loops underpin The Space Between the Trees’ story. The book takes its time getting to those ideas, though. It leans more into a general mystery of why Mark and Meera can’t get out of the forest after their car accident. This slow development works in the book’s favor. The characters come across as appropriately confused, and the reader’s curiosity grows page by page. It’s a good setup for what is usually a sci-fi story concept in what doesn’t remotely read like a sci-fi story.

This high concept is helped along by The Space Between the Trees’ very ordinary main characters. Mark and Meera aren’t trying to unravel the story’s mystery. They’re simply trying to escape it and get home. That ordinariness makes the two characters very engaging. Making The Space Between the Trees about them rather than about the mystery itself sustains the book in a way that the mystery on its might not. A character focus pushes The Space Between the Trees toward psychological thriller territory, and it’s a welcome story direction. It works especially well with the forest setting that can’t be escaped.

Those thriller qualities are helped along by the book’s art and colors. The forest is ever-present, not just interactive with Mark and Meera but in the fore and background. Konyu leans heavily on coloring to create the setting. Rather than draw trees in detail, Konyyu uses straight lines in different green hues and of varying thickness to create a thick forest around Mark and Meera.

This use of color is chiefly how Konyu establishes depth. He doesn’t rely on shading and shadow relative to implied light sources. Instead it is largely a basic use of different shades of colors with brighter shades often in the foreground and darker shades in the background.

Konyu gets a lot out of a little in the artwork throughout the book. Detail is limited, especially Meera and Mark’s features. The characters’ eyebrows and mouths are the only features that change from panel to panel in order to convey emotion. The minimalism is surprisingly effective, and it’s easy to connect with Mark and Meera as the story goes on. 

A key lettering choice plays well into The Space Between the Trees’ overall soft visuals. Konyu doesn’t outline dialogue bubbles which leaves them as merely oval fields of white against Konyu’s coloring. The lack of an outline cuts down on contrast, and the dialogue bubbles feel more like an outgrowth of the art.