walker reviewed Light From Uncommon Stars by Ryka Aoki
Light From Uncommon Stars
5 stars
Enthralling
hardcover, 368 pages
Published Sept. 27, 2021 by Tor Books.
Good Omens meets The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet in this defiantly joyful adventure set in California's San Gabriel Valley, with cursed violins, Faustian bargains, and queer alien courtship over fresh-made donuts.
Shizuka Satomi made a deal with the devil: to escape damnation, she must entice seven other violin prodigies to trade their souls for success. She has already delivered six.
When Katrina Nguyen, a young transgender runaway, catches Shizuka's ear with her wild talent, Shizuka can almost feel the curse lifting. She's found her final candidate.
But in a donut shop off a bustling highway in the San Gabriel Valley, Shizuka meets Lan Tran, retired starship captain, interstellar refugee, and mother of four. Shizuka doesn't have time for crushes or coffee dates, what with her very soul on the line, but Lan's kind smile and eyes like stars might just redefine a soul's worth. And maybe something …
Good Omens meets The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet in this defiantly joyful adventure set in California's San Gabriel Valley, with cursed violins, Faustian bargains, and queer alien courtship over fresh-made donuts.
Shizuka Satomi made a deal with the devil: to escape damnation, she must entice seven other violin prodigies to trade their souls for success. She has already delivered six.
When Katrina Nguyen, a young transgender runaway, catches Shizuka's ear with her wild talent, Shizuka can almost feel the curse lifting. She's found her final candidate.
But in a donut shop off a bustling highway in the San Gabriel Valley, Shizuka meets Lan Tran, retired starship captain, interstellar refugee, and mother of four. Shizuka doesn't have time for crushes or coffee dates, what with her very soul on the line, but Lan's kind smile and eyes like stars might just redefine a soul's worth. And maybe something as small as a warm donut is powerful enough to break a curse as vast as the California coastline.
As the lives of these three women become entangled by chance and fate, a story of magic, identity, curses, and hope begins, and a family worth crossing the universe for is found.
Enthralling
Finished this book in about a week. I've heard of Ryka Aoki before but I did not know she was trans, so I was even more hyped to read this book and learn more about her. The writing level is appropriate for something oriented at the YA audience, especially with how it drops pop culture references (lmao Lindsey Stirling, Sword Art Online, and totally-not-undertale) and reaches to the occult and sci-fi. It was easy to breeze through.
I enjoyed the world building and character building a lot for those at the center of the stage, the food is given a lot of care 🤤, it really took the story forward from the start. You start to get draw into the cadence of their life. While the ending felt like what I thought was sufficient for a YA novel, I was disappointed how some characters really did not get their justice/recognition. …
Finished this book in about a week. I've heard of Ryka Aoki before but I did not know she was trans, so I was even more hyped to read this book and learn more about her. The writing level is appropriate for something oriented at the YA audience, especially with how it drops pop culture references (lmao Lindsey Stirling, Sword Art Online, and totally-not-undertale) and reaches to the occult and sci-fi. It was easy to breeze through.
I enjoyed the world building and character building a lot for those at the center of the stage, the food is given a lot of care 🤤, it really took the story forward from the start. You start to get draw into the cadence of their life. While the ending felt like what I thought was sufficient for a YA novel, I was disappointed how some characters really did not get their justice/recognition. There are times that this book feels like a typical YA novel and I wish it said more, but there are other times I remember how important it is that it's doing exactly what it's doing (I say as a queer trans Asian person myself). Just... maybe for someone younger than me (in my 20s)?
As others mentioned, this book could use some content warnings on the traumatic experiences that the main character especially experiences. I also noticed that aspects about inter-Asian discourse aren't really touched on: there's a celebration of primarily East and Southeast Asian cultures, not really a mention of many other cultures like South Asian or issues of colorism.
Very enjoyable read. I admit I wasn’t as invested in the Starrgate side of the story as I was Shizuka and Katrina’s arc, but it all came together nicely in the end.
Content warning Very poor ending; selling souls to hell does pay!
I accept that I'm probably not the target audience for this, but here we go... I so wanted to like this as I've seen lots of good reviews and the book does have lots of good aspects: it's nice to see Asian-American communities described so ...lovingly, the food and violin bits are well done, one of the protagonists is a trans woman. But... it's not well written (too many POV changes, too much telling and not enough showing), Bad Things Are Done directly or indirectly by main characters without accountability, characters lack agency and do things because of the authors being able to make them do things as opposed to them being sufficiently well-developed so that you think they're making their own decisions (e.g when Astrid catches Katrina at a webcam). The sciency bits are complete gibberish. The two plot strands come together very clumsily at the end (really would have benefited from omitting the intergalactic donut salespeople (and another thing, if sales are dipping, why not replicate ...money instead of donuts?) and concentrating on the violin/souls aspect). It's also heinously missold as "Good Omens meets The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet". It's neither and is a long way from either. I think we can all agree that misgendering is pretty shit, but it doesn't need to be a capital offence; a bit of wish fulfilment perhaps? The quote in the title is said by a character to Katrina but applies to Shizuka, who really is quite a problematic character. And the book lacks empathy for others; there's Katrina, Shizuka, the Trans (get it? the TRANS!) and a few others, but many other people in the book don't rise above NPC level and can be treated accordingly. I feel my blood pressure rising, so I'll stop, but before I do, maybe the book needs content warnings for sexual assault, transphobia, racism and homophobia among others.
Faustian bargains, aliens, the love of music, and the journey of a transgender woman. It all fits together pretty well. I understand the comparisons to Becky Chambers, in that a chosen family supports one another.
The premise of this book is so wacky - abused runaway trans girl violinist + deal-with-demons famous violin teacher + refugees from an intersteller war running a donut shop - that I feel like it shouldn't have worked, but somehow it did. This is a heartwarming tale of a young violinist blossoming in a supportive environment, and a selfish teacher coming to care about her student instead of using them for her own ends, and a strange family coming to understand itself a little better, all with some help from their friends.
I blitzed through this book and loved it.
Not sure what I think. Did I enjoy it? Sorta. I did finish it, so that's something.
Not a spoiler per se, but the end lacked oomph. It builds and builds and builds then petered out into "everything was fine."
Going into my short list of all time favorite books.
There are some really beautiful aspects of this book, but there's just far too much going on in this story for my taste. This felt like at least 2 different novels that were mashed into one, and perhaps that's part of what the author was going for. The plot might suggest that something which seems a bit off and out of place is exactly what the author is trying to create, but even in the midst of knowing that the ending was still a weird combo of beauty and also head scratching. Good read, would recommend for someone to take on a vacation but definitely set your expectations.
This sci-fi/fantasy/LGBTQ story fell short of its promise of a Good Omens-esque “defiantly joyful adventure,” but it’s not without merit. Read my review here.
#LightFromUncommonStars #NetGalley #MacmillanAudio #TorBooks