Sometimes you run into books that are really difficult to pitch. Light From Uncommon Stars sounds like a comedy book. Aliens running a donut shop certainly doesn’t sound like a book that takes itself particularly seriously. But this story made me cry, made me furious, and made me feel more deeply than I expected when opening the cover. This book is an emotional roller coaster, and a journey that isn’t happy, but is filling.
Read If Looking For: character-led stories, phenomenal music recommendations, genre bending novels, romance subplots
Avoid if Looking For: stories avoiding queer trauma, classic fantasy or science fiction plot beats
Elevator Pitch:
A young trans girl flees and abusive family with her violin. The ‘Queen of Hell’ seeks to find a seventh student and convince them to sell their soul to a demon for musical immortality. An alien on the run from the End Plague runs a donut shop. Their stories – and others – connect and intertwine in a tale of what it means to be human (or alien) and what it means to live a life worth living.
What Worked for Me
At the core of this novel’s success are a cast of well realized characters. They avoid being stereotypes while acknowledging when they fit into well worn tropes. Their growth isn’t forced; it feels like a natural progression of the story. Their decisions (even when irrational) make sense and feel grounded in who this character is. You see them grapple with very real issues that, even when presented through the lens of an alien’s cultural views, feel tangible to the life we live today. You’re going to see each of these characters go through some tough spots, but Katrina (the runaway) has a particularly difficult few sections to read. Aoki doesn’t shy away from the brutal realities of living while trans, and there were many times when I had to put the book down and walk away to collect myself.
Layered over it all this was a prose style that was unlike anything I quite have read. It’s simple language, shifting between wry humor and blunt depictions of trauma; melancholy snippets of introspection together with poetic descriptions of music. It’s very effective at capturing the moments these characters move through, present enough that you notice the writing without it ever getting in the way.
What Didn’t Work for Me
I do think that the alien storyline felt a little bit underdeveloped compared with the other two. There’s some thematic work focusing on the lives of immigrants and what it means to be a parent, but I don’t think it came together quite as well as the other two storylines. It helped that the teacher/student relationship forced the other two together much earlier, and much more closely from the start. I wish it had either been given more focal time, or perhaps cut from the book entirely, even if that meant changing some plot and character beats.
In Conclusion: an emotional story about finding yourself in tough situations. Raw and vividly realized, expect to feel a lot of things.
- Characters – 5
- Worldbuilding – 4
- Craft – 5
- Themes – 4
- Enjoyment – 5
Marked for Plot 