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2 - Baron Febdash Territory (Rumuskol Febdash)
Faced with imminent attack, the Gosroth's captain orders Lafiel to use a patrol ship to carry a warning to the nearest Abh base, taking Jinto with her. Lafiel's initially not keen, but eventually backs down and carries out her orders. The shuttlecraft she has to use has limited range, though, so they're forced to stop en route in the territory of Baron Febdash, another Abh noble - but along with having some strange ideas about how his human vassals should be treated, Febdash seems determined to prevent Lafiel & Jinto from continuing on their mission...

3 - Pride of the Abh (Pal Repenew)
Jinto is essentially imprisioned along with Baron Febdash's father, while Lafiel tries to find a way to retrieve Jinto and escape from the Baron's clutches. Making use of her position, Lafiel persuades a number of the Baron's vassals to help her. Escaping from the station is easy enough, but the Baron's the tenacious type & pursues Lafiel in his own ship, forcing her to engage him in combat...

4 - Planet Clasbul (Nahenu Clasbul)
Lafiel and Jinto arrive at Clasbul's base, but they're too late to make much difference - an attack by the United Mankind is imminent, and the base has too few ships to be able to defend itself. Without enough fuel to carry on to another base, Lafiel is forced to ditch the shuttle on the planet itself. Once on the surface, some role reversal takes place - with Lafiel never having been on a planetary surface before & Jinto being a born-and-bred Lander, suddenly he's the one with the knowledge to keep them alive while the local United Mankind forces search for them. Meanwhile, the Abh Empress formally declares war on the nations of the Nova Sicilly Treaty, including the United Mankind, as a result of the Gosroth's destruction...

5 - Collaboration Request (Ladofos Loft)
The local Clasbul police have received a 'request' to work with the United Mankind peace force to track down the crewmembers of an Abh shuttle that ditched on the planet (that's Lafield & Jinto) - Lieutenant Kyte has been assigned to work with the local inspector, Entruya. Entruya has to bow to the inevitable, but fully believes that Kyte is living in his own little dreamworld, far removed from reality. Meanwhile, Lafiel and Jinto have a run-in with a local rebel grouping, who have a proposal for them: they'll shield them from the United Mankind forces, if Lafiel will play along with their scheme to obtain an Imperial spaceship...

6 - Battleground at Sufugnof Gate (Laishakal Wek Sodal Sufugnof)
Admiral Trife of the Abh Fleet decides on a 'plan' to retake the Sufugnof gate, and with it planet Clasbul. His orders to the attack fleets under his command are refreshingly simple - 'Kill them' - and so the Abh counter-attack begins in earnest. Down on the surface, meanwhile, Kyte is closing in on Lafiel and Jinto - with their safehouse uncovered, they're forced into underground tunnels, with the United Mankind in pursuit...

7 - Trouble Soaring Through Heaven (Lobyuash Sesula)
Lafiel & Jinto are finally captured by their pursuers - just as Abh forces arrive in orbit above the planet. With a little help from the rebel group they met earlier, they're able to escape from their captors, and the rebels have a plan to get them into orbit - but not in the most comfortable style. Traditional burial on Clasbul involves being shot into space in a coffin rocket - and Lafiel & Jinto will need to travel in one if they're to reach the safety of the Abh ships...

The Seikai Trilogy manga are adaptations of the Crest / Banner of the Stars anime series, which in turn are adaptations of the original books by Kiroyuki Morioka, with this first volume telling the same story told in Crest of the Stars - so if you've seen the anime you'll know what to expect. The artwork here is more in line with the anime character designs than the artwork used to illustrate the books, but it's clean & appealing. The tone of the presentation feels like it has been pitched to a younger audience than the anime, though - there's more humour here, along with a higher level of general fanservice, and with lots of little SD moments that illustrate events in a lighter style.

One of the strong points of the Crest / Banner series is the amount of work put in by Morioka-san in creating a believable world around his stories - this includes the creation of the Abh language, which is extensively used in all versions of the story, including this one. There are some problems with the way Abh is used here, though, depending on how you look at it, so at the risk of stepping on a few fans' toes:

Use of Abh works well in the anime, where subtitles are used, and in the original Japanese versions of the books. Where kanji are used in Japanese, smaller kana characters are often written above the more obscure kanji to give a simpler representation of the word (you'll probably have seen examples of this in anime series where karaoke lyrics are given for the OP/ED songs) - or in this case, you get the kanji characters representing what the author means, and the kana giving its pronounciation in Abh instead of Japanese. Obviously, you can't do that in English, and TOKYOPOP have opted to give the Abh words in the main text & provide a translation glossary at the back of the book. Two problems with this approach: first, you either have to flick back & forth to the glossary every few frames to check what's being said (although after a while you will start to pick up the words), or make do not really understanding a chunk of the dialog, and b) the glossary isn't complete anyway. I would have preferred a small panel at the bottom of each page to carry the translations, as this would have made it easier to follow.

After saying all that, I can't really use that as an excuse not to recommend the book. I've long been a fan of Crest / Banner, and the manga version is perhaps the most accessible (as in easy to get in to) version produced so far, making it ideal for people who haven't seen the anime to get a feel for the show. It's also an easy way for fans to get a bite-sized fix without having to dig the DVD's out again. :) As such, it comes highly recommended.