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adventurous
emotional
hopeful
mysterious
tense
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
I feel like this would have gone more chaotically if they'd let men into the mission??
Content Warnings
Graphic: Death, Gun violence, Grief, Murder, Pregnancy, Fire/Fire injury
Moderate: Child death, Cursing, Gore, Infertility, Miscarriage, Racism, Xenophobia, Blood, Medical content, Mass/school shootings
Minor: Ableism, Hate crime, Suicidal thoughts, Vomit, Death of parent, War
adventurous
mysterious
reflective
tense
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
Content Warnings
Graphic: Emotional abuse, Toxic relationship, Vomit
Moderate: Child death, Confinement, Death, Infertility, Violence, Blood, Medical content, Murder, Pregnancy, Injury/Injury detail
Minor: Gun violence, Miscarriage, War
adventurous
hopeful
inspiring
mysterious
tense
fast-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Plot
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
I really enjoyed this one! The combination of elite pregnant astronauts in space meets tense murder mystery meets dystopian climate disaster with a dash of high school and family relationship drama is the book I didn’t know I needed right now. I burned through it in 2 days, and was quite a good counterpoint to Orbital which I have been reading slowly for months now, about astronauts living on the international space station without any of the associated drama but definitely some parallels with the philosophical musings across both.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Confinement, Pregnancy, Fire/Fire injury
Moderate: Child death, Infertility, Miscarriage, Violence, Blood, Murder, Injury/Injury detail
Minor: Animal death, Bullying, Death, Gore, Gun violence, Hate crime, Panic attacks/disorders, Racial slurs, Racism, Self harm, Torture, Vomit, Medical content, Grief, Medical trauma, Death of parent, Colonisation, Dysphoria, War, Pandemic/Epidemic
adventurous
emotional
hopeful
mysterious
sad
tense
fast-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Plot
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
Content Warnings
Graphic: Child death, Confinement, Death, Gore, Infertility, Racism, Medical content, Grief, Murder, Pregnancy, Fire/Fire injury, Injury/Injury detail
Moderate: Bullying, Miscarriage, Suicidal thoughts, Violence, War, Classism
Minor: Cancer
This was very much a "we need to start over as a race on a new planet and we're now stuck on a long space voyage and have to get along somehow" kind of story and I'm here for it.
The main character, Asuka, is on The Phoenix, a deep space ship destined for a far way planet where humanity will start over. Each of the 80 persons onboard were selected through a fierce process. As part of their mission is to eventually repopulate the new world, naturally there are only women onboard who will be able to reproduce. Part thriller, part deep space voyage, part murder mystery, there's a lot going on to keep you attention in this tale.
Most of the story it takes place on ship but some at the school while they're being selected to join the mission. We learn early on about DAR, the Digitally Augmented Reality technology that everyone on the ship uses to experience the ship. The ship itself is super plain but for each person, they can make any room look how they want it to.
When an explosion knocks the Phoenix off-course and kills some of the crew, tensions start to run high as everyone becomes a suspect.
The main character, Asuka, is on The Phoenix, a deep space ship destined for a far way planet where humanity will start over. Each of the 80 persons onboard were selected through a fierce process. As part of their mission is to eventually repopulate the new world, naturally there are only women onboard who will be able to reproduce. Part thriller, part deep space voyage, part murder mystery, there's a lot going on to keep you attention in this tale.
Most of the story it takes place on ship but some at the school while they're being selected to join the mission. We learn early on about DAR, the Digitally Augmented Reality technology that everyone on the ship uses to experience the ship. The ship itself is super plain but for each person, they can make any room look how they want it to.
When an explosion knocks the Phoenix off-course and kills some of the crew, tensions start to run high as everyone becomes a suspect.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Death, Gore, Infertility, Miscarriage, Violence, Xenophobia, Medical content, Grief, Murder, Pregnancy, Fire/Fire injury
adventurous
emotional
mysterious
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
I had a lot of fun with this book! Murder mystery on a completely isolated space ship, spliced with flashbacks to the protagonist's upbringing preparing for the expensive, one-shot mission to establish a colony on a new planet and terraform it. I had a hard time with the format in the beginning, and felt it didn't work time to time, but when memories of the past were contextualizing the character relationships and events of the present, I appreciated it a lot.
I devoured the back half very fast for my own pace, and really enjoyed the building tension. I had to put the book down for a couple weeks just after I started because the subject matter of the inciting incident was really rough for me, and if you have any triggers relating to pregnancy, I recommend checking out content warning lists, because pregnancy and it's potential complications are a major theme of the book.
I yapped to all my friends about The Deep Sky while I was reading, the details and threads of the mystery were very delicious, and had people asking to borrow it. It's fun!
Content Warnings
Graphic: Confinement, Death, Infertility, Violence, Blood, Murder, Pregnancy, Fire/Fire injury, Abandonment, Injury/Injury detail
Moderate: Child death, Cursing, Racism, Xenophobia, Vomit, Medical content
Minor: Animal death, Cancer, Gore, Gun violence, Hate crime, Miscarriage, Misogyny, Suicidal thoughts, Suicide attempt, War
Death of pregnant people.
Eugenics is discussed.
adventurous
mysterious
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Plot
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
‘The Deep Sky’ by Yume Kitasei is exciting! I found it difficult to put it down, but of course, I had to eat and sleep.
I have copied the book blurb:
”Goodreads Choice AwardNominee for Readers' Favorite Science Fiction (2023)
Yume Kitasei's The Deep Sky is an enthralling sci fi thriller debut about a mission into deep space that begins with a lethal explosion that leaves the survivors questioning the loyalty of the crew.
They left Earth to save humanity. They’ll have to save themselves first.
It is the eve of Earth’s environmental collapse. A single ship carries humanity’s last hope: eighty elite graduates of a competitive program, who will give birth to a generation of children in deep space. But halfway to a distant but to find the culprit before they all lose faith in the mission—or worse, the bomber strikes again.”
Like many books written in the last few years, each chapter switches between two timelines. One follows Asuka as she grows up on an Earth that is experiencing difficulties politically between many countries because of the usual issues, but more virulent because of climate change. The other is Asuka’s present, going about her duties on The Phoenix, a spaceship. Unlike the other crew members, she is a floater, someone who goes wherever she is needed to assist. The crew are all women, and except for Asuka, they are specialists in those jobs necessary for generational survival aboard a ship heading for a distant, hopefully habitable, planet, which they hope to colonize. While going about their daily maintenance duties, once a month they are inseminated from a supply of semen they have brought with them. The plan is to have children before they arrive at their new home. In the year they have been awake from hibernation, ten years after they left earth, some of the women are pregnant. However, it appears Asuka cannot get pregnant despite several inseminations. Her inability to conceive is one more reason she feels inferior to the others.
Asuka is someone who is not comfortable in her own skin. Beside feeling she doesn’t really belong on the ship due to her lack of any deep competency in any required skill, she feels the others dislike her. She is often ashamed of her apparent inability to fit in. Frankly, I found her very irritating because of her constant defensiveness. She becomes upset at the slightest indication she is at fault, especially in her relationships with the others. But she hides her feelings, and rarely opens up. However, readers watch her growing up, why her relationship with her mother is so bad, and where her feelings of not fitting in anywhere begin. It is clear, though, to me, she is someone who is not reading the room accurately. People want to like her, and respect her skills more than she understands. There are things she believes are caused by her inferiority in comparison to the other crewmembers, but actually in my opinion are really because they all are on a spaceship on a dangerous journey, missing their families and Earth.
Asuka has been enjoying the friendship of Kat. Kat gives Asuka a feeling of lightness and acceptance. But then, while on a spacewalk with Kat to check out an anomaly, a strange dark bump on the skin of the ship, it blows up. Asuka is devastated. She had playfully raced Kat to the anomaly, putting them both in unnecessary danger. It goes terribly wrong, and Asuka can’t forgive herself.
And then, suddenly, everything is going wonky on the ship! The AI, Alpha, without whom they can’t survive, is behaving in such a manner that it might mean it is infected with a virus, or that someone is changing its programming. Plus, the explosion knocked them off course. If the AI’s problems doesn’t kill them, being off course will certainly destroy them because of running out of power! What is happening? Is it related to the new wars starting up on Earth, news of which have arrived in their emails and other communications?
Asuka’s backstory explains why she has imposter syndrome. Readers see how political suspicions on Earth are causing some tension on The Phoenix, but I thought this plot thread was undeveloped. However, ‘The Deep Sky’ is an exciting debut novel by Kitasei which was an engrossing beach read. The incidents aboard the ship are very worrying! Will they die? Is one of the crew trying to kill them all, picking them off one by one? Alpha the AI is very interesting, reminding me of HAL-9000 in the novel 2001: A Space Odyssey. Although there are a lot of familiar elements in this story, I liked the science-fiction setting of what really was a murder mystery alternating with a coming-of-age story.
I have copied the book blurb:
”Goodreads Choice AwardNominee for Readers' Favorite Science Fiction (2023)
Yume Kitasei's The Deep Sky is an enthralling sci fi thriller debut about a mission into deep space that begins with a lethal explosion that leaves the survivors questioning the loyalty of the crew.
They left Earth to save humanity. They’ll have to save themselves first.
It is the eve of Earth’s environmental collapse. A single ship carries humanity’s last hope: eighty elite graduates of a competitive program, who will give birth to a generation of children in deep space. But halfway to a distant but to find the culprit before they all lose faith in the mission—or worse, the bomber strikes again.”
Like many books written in the last few years, each chapter switches between two timelines. One follows Asuka as she grows up on an Earth that is experiencing difficulties politically between many countries because of the usual issues, but more virulent because of climate change. The other is Asuka’s present, going about her duties on The Phoenix, a spaceship. Unlike the other crew members, she is a floater, someone who goes wherever she is needed to assist. The crew are all women, and except for Asuka, they are specialists in those jobs necessary for generational survival aboard a ship heading for a distant, hopefully habitable, planet, which they hope to colonize. While going about their daily maintenance duties, once a month they are inseminated from a supply of semen they have brought with them. The plan is to have children before they arrive at their new home. In the year they have been awake from hibernation, ten years after they left earth, some of the women are pregnant. However, it appears Asuka cannot get pregnant despite several inseminations. Her inability to conceive is one more reason she feels inferior to the others.
Asuka is someone who is not comfortable in her own skin. Beside feeling she doesn’t really belong on the ship due to her lack of any deep competency in any required skill, she feels the others dislike her. She is often ashamed of her apparent inability to fit in. Frankly, I found her very irritating because of her constant defensiveness. She becomes upset at the slightest indication she is at fault, especially in her relationships with the others. But she hides her feelings, and rarely opens up. However, readers watch her growing up, why her relationship with her mother is so bad, and where her feelings of not fitting in anywhere begin. It is clear, though, to me, she is someone who is not reading the room accurately. People want to like her, and respect her skills more than she understands. There are things she believes are caused by her inferiority in comparison to the other crewmembers, but actually in my opinion are really because they all are on a spaceship on a dangerous journey, missing their families and Earth.
Asuka has been enjoying the friendship of Kat. Kat gives Asuka a feeling of lightness and acceptance. But then, while on a spacewalk with Kat to check out an anomaly, a strange dark bump on the skin of the ship, it blows up. Asuka is devastated. She had playfully raced Kat to the anomaly, putting them both in unnecessary danger. It goes terribly wrong, and Asuka can’t forgive herself.
And then, suddenly, everything is going wonky on the ship! The AI, Alpha, without whom they can’t survive, is behaving in such a manner that it might mean it is infected with a virus, or that someone is changing its programming. Plus, the explosion knocked them off course. If the AI’s problems doesn’t kill them, being off course will certainly destroy them because of running out of power! What is happening? Is it related to the new wars starting up on Earth, news of which have arrived in their emails and other communications?
Asuka’s backstory explains why she has imposter syndrome. Readers see how political suspicions on Earth are causing some tension on The Phoenix, but I thought this plot thread was undeveloped. However, ‘The Deep Sky’ is an exciting debut novel by Kitasei which was an engrossing beach read. The incidents aboard the ship are very worrying! Will they die? Is one of the crew trying to kill them all, picking them off one by one? Alpha the AI is very interesting, reminding me of HAL-9000 in the novel 2001: A Space Odyssey. Although there are a lot of familiar elements in this story, I liked the science-fiction setting of what really was a murder mystery alternating with a coming-of-age story.
Content Warnings
Minor: Child death, Death, Infertility, Murder, Pregnancy
adventurous
mysterious
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
I struggled with the flashbacks in this book. Every time I would get interested in the mystery storyline and the tension would start to ramp up, the book would cut to a flashback chapter and I'd lose interest. Most of the characters were not really developed and I mixed them up a lot.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Death, Murder, Pregnancy, Injury/Injury detail
Moderate: Xenophobia
Minor: Miscarriage, Vomit, War
adventurous
emotional
mysterious
sad
tense
fast-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Plot
Strong character development:
No
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
No
I’m struggling with rating The Deep Sky because many people think a 3-star rating is bad, terrible, worse than a 1-star. They think it says a book was average and unremarkable. In some cases, that can be true. However, 1 to 5 is a scale. There were many good things about this book, and I almost rated it 4 stars, but there are other things that bring the rating down. I say all this because of that voice blaring in my head about how bad a 3-star rating is. I’m not saying this book is bad at all. I think it’s worth reading, and I do recommend it!
The Deep Sky follows Asuka who is on a generational spaceship. She left earth in search of Planet X, to begin a new society because Earth has so many troubles. She’s on a crew of 80 who competed over years between the ages of 12 and 18 (maybe, I’m not completely clear on the ages) to beat out hundreds of others. Asuka secured an “Alternate” spot, which means she doesn’t have a specific role. She fills in wherever needed.
The story picks up when an explosion occurs on the side of the ship, pushing it off course by a few degrees. The crew does not steer the ship in any way as the course has been mapped from point A to point B in a straight line, so this could be deadly. The book is about discovering who caused the explosion and how they will survive. Of course, it’s also about Asuka. The chapters on the ship are split up by chapters set back at the “school.” The school felt like Hogwarts and Hunger Games combined where all of these children are pushing so hard to get a spot, to prove they are the best, to learn as much as possible.
We learn much about the relationships between Asuka and the crew. They are incredibly intimate, and not in a romantic way. Imagine spending the rest of your life in space with someone you went to school with when you were 12. And that school was extremely competitive. These chapters were my favorite. There is also so much between Asuka and her mother, which affected me personally. My mother passed away in 2018 and I miss her. Our relationship was not good. Asuka is in space, her mother is on Earth. But even while she was in school, she and her mother didn’t get along because her mother didn’t agree with the mission.
So why 3 stars? Well, I’m sorry to say the majority of the book was all plot and action with no real character development. I can’t say I believe Asuka, or anyone, is much different from the beginning to the end of the book. Some relationships slightly change, but I wouldn’t say they’re significant. In trying to solve the mystery, the crew come up against problem after problem after problem. In the last thirty pages or so, I was getting very tired. This type of story is not my favorite. It pulled me along and I wanted to know what would happen, but I wanted more depth. The overall message of how this small crew left Earth in search of something greater just didn’t hit as strong as I wanted it to. The book was too much of an action movie.
The book is interesting and moving, and I loved being in this world. I recommend it, and I’d probably reread it, and I want to read more by Kitasei. I cried a lot once I finished it, so obviously it affected me. But some parts just didn’t fit quite right.
tinyleafbooks.wordpress.com
The Deep Sky follows Asuka who is on a generational spaceship. She left earth in search of Planet X, to begin a new society because Earth has so many troubles. She’s on a crew of 80 who competed over years between the ages of 12 and 18 (maybe, I’m not completely clear on the ages) to beat out hundreds of others. Asuka secured an “Alternate” spot, which means she doesn’t have a specific role. She fills in wherever needed.
The story picks up when an explosion occurs on the side of the ship, pushing it off course by a few degrees. The crew does not steer the ship in any way as the course has been mapped from point A to point B in a straight line, so this could be deadly. The book is about discovering who caused the explosion and how they will survive. Of course, it’s also about Asuka. The chapters on the ship are split up by chapters set back at the “school.” The school felt like Hogwarts and Hunger Games combined where all of these children are pushing so hard to get a spot, to prove they are the best, to learn as much as possible.
We learn much about the relationships between Asuka and the crew. They are incredibly intimate, and not in a romantic way. Imagine spending the rest of your life in space with someone you went to school with when you were 12. And that school was extremely competitive. These chapters were my favorite. There is also so much between Asuka and her mother, which affected me personally. My mother passed away in 2018 and I miss her. Our relationship was not good. Asuka is in space, her mother is on Earth. But even while she was in school, she and her mother didn’t get along because her mother didn’t agree with the mission.
So why 3 stars? Well, I’m sorry to say the majority of the book was all plot and action with no real character development. I can’t say I believe Asuka, or anyone, is much different from the beginning to the end of the book. Some relationships slightly change, but I wouldn’t say they’re significant. In trying to solve the mystery, the crew come up against problem after problem after problem. In the last thirty pages or so, I was getting very tired. This type of story is not my favorite. It pulled me along and I wanted to know what would happen, but I wanted more depth. The overall message of how this small crew left Earth in search of something greater just didn’t hit as strong as I wanted it to. The book was too much of an action movie.
The book is interesting and moving, and I loved being in this world. I recommend it, and I’d probably reread it, and I want to read more by Kitasei. I cried a lot once I finished it, so obviously it affected me. But some parts just didn’t fit quite right.
tinyleafbooks.wordpress.com
Content Warnings
Graphic: Death, Gore, Violence, Blood, Grief, Pregnancy, Fire/Fire injury
Moderate: Child death, Infertility, Miscarriage, Racism, Xenophobia, Vomit, Medical content, Death of parent, Murder, War
Minor: Hate crime, Mass/school shootings
adventurous
challenging
dark
emotional
hopeful
reflective
tense
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
The narrator did an amazing job with all the voices. I even had to check to make sure it was just one person. The different inflection of each character made it easy to follow who was talking when. I think the flashbacks were really well done. I didn't get lost in the transitions and I felt like they all mattered and brought more insights into the story. It's an interesting story with its approach to space travel with a gender diverse, all child-baring crew and its depiction of racism and essentially, eugenics. I feel like there's so much to dig into here.
As of right now, having just finished the book, one of my qualms has to do with theletter in the end. To be honest, it made me emotional to listen to it, I mean I even transcribed it into my journal, but that's actually when the letter kind of faltered for me. Upon re-listening to it, I realized that Asuka took on all the responsibility of how the relationship between her and her mother deteriorated as much as it did. Her mom was not victim to Asuka's descisons, she manipulated and gaslit Asuka every chance she got. It was vile for her mom to have pretended she got in an accident to keep Asuka from going. Asuka responded in an appropriate way to such a devastating offence. Sure, mom repented or whatever in her messages to Asuka, but it doesn't undo the harm she did. Of course Asuka is allowed to forgive her mother, but she shouldn't have to apologize to forgive.
As of right now, having just finished the book, one of my qualms has to do with the
Content Warnings
Graphic: Child death, Death, Infertility, Racism, Sexism, Grief, Murder, Pregnancy, Fire/Fire injury, Injury/Injury detail
Moderate: Hate crime, Miscarriage, Misogyny, Gaslighting