Light From Uncommon Stars

by Ryka Aoki

hardcover, 368 pages

Published Sept. 27, 2021 by Tor Books.

ISBN:: 978-1-250-78906-8

(4 reviews)

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 …

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.

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.

2 editions

ekes reviewed Light From Uncommon Stars by Ryka Aoki

Wonderful

5 stars

A book driven by its characters. I think it would be hard not to empathise with Katrina. The momentum keeps going and you want it to keep going for the characters. Leap of faith in the storyline, no problem, I want this to happen for them.

Written with the narrators view it was able to weave the stories of several people together, but with a strong emphasis on a couple of characters. The narration was also used to skip some of the exacting detail about Katrina's early life while explaining it. For sure a content warning for some of that though.

David Hughes reviewed Light From Uncommon Stars by Ryka Aoki

"You’re a selfish little thing, aren’t you?”

3 stars

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.

Heather reviewed Light From Uncommon Stars by Ryka Aoki

Review of 'Light From Uncommon Stars' on 'Goodreads'

No rating

Every review of this book I've seen starts out by saying that the reader isn't sure how to describe it. I'm going to have to echo that sentiment. Just know that it is amazing and you should go read it even if you have no idea what it is about.There are two main parts of the story with a minor subplot.

Part 1:

A violinist has made a pact with a demon. To get out of it she needs to deliver the souls of seven exceptional violinists to him over the course of 49 years. She has delivered six souls. Her time is almost up. She meets a runaway transgender girl who plays beautifully. She is completely self-taught with terrible technique but she is amazing. The teacher takes her in to groom her to be the seventh soul.

Part 2:

A family of aliens has landed on Earth. They bought …

Part 2:

A family of aliens has landed on Earth. They bought a donut shop that has a large fiberglass donut outside because they want to use the donut as a space gate. Running the donut shop is their cover. This book will make you want to try their donuts.

Subplot:

A woman from a family of violin restorers is trying to keep her family's store alive.

So how does that all come together? That's the beauty of the story. I'm not going to say too much because watching it all come together is part of the fun.

There is a lot of tough subjects here especially surrounding Katrina, the young violinist. She has been abused by her family and has had to leave her house because she is trans. She supports herself with sex work. She is verbally, physically, and sexually abused by clients and strangers. She experiences a lot of transphobia online and in the music community. Some of it is instigated by the demon just to cause her pain.

She's delightful though. She knows who she is and what she wants to accomplish. She is caring in spite of the world not always caring about her.

This book is about the importance of family, music, and food to heal your soul. You will learn a lot about why violins are special. There are lyrical descriptions of lots of food - not just donuts. Family takes center stage - whether they are healthy or abusive, strong or weak, biological or found.

I'd recommend this book to everyone.
This review was originally posted on Based On A True Story

Ell

rated it

Sept. 20, 2022

Lists

Get a copy

www.litalist.com (Hardback)
Purchasable