Light From Uncommon Stars

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.

This book is a combination of a serious coming-of-age / YA novel about a transgender teen girl escaping an abusive family, a star trek parody, and a comedic judeo-christian-urban fantasy along the lines of Good Omens.

The coming-of-age parts are quite touching, although the protagonist is meant to be so extraordinarily talented, it requires a fair amount of disbelief to be suspended.

The soft-sci-fi aspects are amusing, with echos of Hitchhiker's guide to the galaxy, and some attempt at something more serious (the "Endplague") which didn't quite engage me.

The silly-Hell plot points work better with the YA part of the book than the scifi. The climactic battle between the forces of Hell and the Good Aliens is a bit perfunctory.

I didn't find this addressed issues on the same scale that the Becky Chambers books it is often compared with, although it dives into more depth on the specific trials of transgender teens. I guess it feels a bit more like a diary and less like extrapolation.

EDIT: I forgot to mention the Asian-American-Experience aspect of the book, which is interesting, although mainly manifests through loving discussion of food. I would not know how people feel about being referred to as "Asian" in the USA, but it seems to be an identity claimed by people in the book. It is interesting that the love interest of the Asian-American violin teacher is a space alien, but a space alien who looks Vietnamese (yes, the boat-people metaphor is a bit obvious).