Welcome “back”?
Yes - to fully enjoy BANNER OF THE STARS, you need to read the three-volume CREST OF THE STARS first. (It’s out in print omnibus form!) It explains the ins and outs of the fictional future author MORIOKA Hiroyuki has crafted, as well as our protagonists’ backgrounds and shared bond. More to the point, it’s a great story, and worth your time.
For those of you who have read CREST, but would like a refresher:
Whenever a vocab word of the Abh language “Baronh” appears, it will be in italics (with the English meaning in parentheses). Whenever that particular word appears again past the first time in the original text, it will be replaced with its English-meaning counterpart in bold (but won’t be bolded if the word didn’t have the Baronh for it next to it in the original text). This is to make sure the book is accessible without losing some of that lovely “conlang” (constructed language) flavor! That being said, if a Baronh word has already been introduced in the English version of CREST, it won’t be reintroduced in BANNER. This translation assumes you have read CREST.
Baronh words are spelled weirdly. The character whose English-language spelling is “Lafier” is spelled Lamhirh in Baronh (“mh” makes an “f” sound, and the “rh” is actually a rolling “r”). Ghintec, meanwhile, is pronounced “Jint” (as the “c” and “ec” at the ends of many nouns are silent). This translation will largely be making use of accessibility spellings for character names. Having to constantly remind oneself “Lamhirh” is pronounced LAFEERR would probably prove a tad immersion-breaking for some readers.
Banner of the Stars is ongoing as of the time of this writing (its sixth volume having been released in 2018), and according to MORIOKA, CREST was something of an introductory primer to this, the “story proper.” For the most part, each volume of BANNER is its own episode, a snapshot in the lives of our protagonists at a certain point in the grueling decades of galactic warfare. As such, please know that unlike the individual volumes of CREST, Volumes I-III of BANNER are self-contained stories in addition to being a part of an overarching saga. Pick up and read this omnibus at your leisure!
We join our protagonists three years after the main events of CREST, in the year 955 I.H. (Imperial History)...