Reviews with content warning for Racism - Light from Uncommon Stars

Reviews tagging 'Racism'

Light from Uncommon Stars by Ryka Aoki

365 reviews

sirthatsacowboy's review against another edition

This book seemed waaaaaay too busy to me. Personally, I didn’t think it made any sense to have a story with space aliens AND magical musical instruments AND demons from literal Hell while simultaneously being set in modern-day California? Felt like the author was trying to mash together a bunch of mismatched things and it made for a super confusing vibe. The constant changing of perspectives could have been really cool and engaging, but ended up being super jarring from all of the things I mentioned above.

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spadedigsbutts's review against another edition

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emotional funny hopeful inspiring relaxing sad slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

2.5

I really really wanted to like this book. Trans coming of age story combined with devil deals, older Sapphic romance, and science fiction magic? Absolutely sounded like my cup of tea, unfortunately the negatives just personally outweighed the positives for me.

On a technical level, the book is a huge mix. Sometimes parts are written in the most lovely way with pretty language and clever witticisms, but other times I am struggling to even understand what some sentences mean and having to reread entire paragraphs over and over. The latter happened more for me than the former unfortunately, and the issue was exacerbated by the fact that about every few paragraphs there is a POV shift, so we rarely spend much time with any one character. As a result, we only have strong characterization for a handful of characters as we ping-pong between the "main" protagonists and multiple secondary characters without much relevance. The back-of-the-book blurb for the novel is a bit misleading, because it would make you think we have three protagonists, but we actually have more like 4 as there is a violin repair woman who gets an entire story arc and multiple chapter appearances, yet only interacts with the main three maybe twice? This leads into another major technical issues, which is if you are not good at remembering names (like me), this will be an awful experience for you. Almost every character introduced, no matter how minor, is often introduced with a full first and last name, and description, implying they will be important and recurring, only for them to drop off the face of the earth. Except when they don't and they reappear several chapters later and you, having by that point been trained to ignore most named characters, you have to flip back to the beginning to remember who that was. For context on how bad it gets with the names, I was live-tweeting my friend about my reading experience and by page 50 about 35-36 individual names had been introduced. If these are the sorts of technical issues that don't bother you as much, definitely dive in, but for me it was personally super distracting.

Speaking on the story of the book, it's hard to really call it a story. It would be easier to call it a slice of life with fantastical elements and characters interacting until the last fourth of the book where more of a plot with the central protagonist, Katarina, comes up and we get some much needed payoff to her and Shizuka's arcs. If there is anything to say about this book, it is that almost everything with Katarina and Shizuka is excellent!! I loved seeing Katarina come into her own and gain confidence under the protection of her strong and loving mentor figure. While the book never once made me believe Shizuka would sacrifice Katarina, the inherent drama of the possibility and what they're willing to do for each other is great! If this book had just been about them and condensed to cut the many many side characters I would have rated it like a 4 minimum. Even if you don't read the whole book, read Katarina's stuff!! It's really good!! Unfortunately the biggest weakness of the book is Shizuka's love interest, the space refuge Lan, who just constantly feels out of place in the book. I wouldn't contribute this lack of cohesion to the fact everything else in the book is mundane or magical and Lan's parts of the story are super sci-fi, as I've seen other books do similar successfully, but that she never quite gets integrated into any one character's life. Even Shizuka, who is Lan's romantic interest, just has entire scenes and arcs going on independent of her to the point I forget Lan exists until she appears. Lan comes with a number of plot points and character arcs that unfortunately just flat out don't get a resolution, like with her son who

literally murders two people, is put into stasis, and is then never once brought up again.

Because there's just so many characters and things going on, Lan just doesn't really get the development she needs and it hurts the book a lot as so many chapters are dedicated to her and her family.

Anyways, if none of these are deal breakers for you, go read it!! Katarina's trans coming-of-age story is really good!! Unfortunately everything surrounding it is just very messy and underwritten and I wish i could have liked it more.

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clarabooksit's review

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emotional 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? It's complicated

4.25

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popsicleplease's review against another edition

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emotional hopeful inspiring reflective sad medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.25

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forestfloor's review against another edition

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adventurous fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Plot
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? No

3.0

A read I really enjoyed, with a lot of creativity and complexity to the plot. However, I found that the complexity came across as hurried and almost chaotic. Katrina rising out of her situation to stardom, Shizuka's souls harvesting to make good on a deal with the devil, and Lan Tran and crew taking refuge from an intergalactic war by disguising themselves as doughnut shop owners could all very easily been enough plot for their own books. The interaction between these three stories is what made this read so great, but executing that density of plot in the space of the pages fell a little short for me.

I also had qualms about the portrayal of Katrina's trans identity. I don't want to dismiss the authentic perspective Aoki writes from, a lot of it was very real. However, being trans myself, I found it painful to read how much of her identity is routed in self-hatred, rather than conviction in her gender. Constantly through the story, in a variety of scenarios, she responds immediately with self hatred and internalised transphobia. I started to struggle to resonate with her because of how constant and immediate it was: I would have potentially been more convinced by her character if there was more of a downward spiral in her thoughts to arrive there. I also found myself getting distracted from the plot because I was wishing she would have moments of gender euphoria. I spent a lot of my time reading wishing she would catch a glimpse of herself and see herself as she is.

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crrieandrsn26's review against another edition

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adventurous emotional reflective 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? It's complicated

3.0

I loved the parts with Shizuko and Katrina (and Astrid) and the parts with Lucy but the whole side story with Lan and her family felt very unnecessary and irrelevant.

I think I would have enjoyed it more and it would have carried more emotional weight if they were a normal immigrant family but the sci-fi/alien aspect really just didn’t work and felt very heavy handed and were the weakest points of the book.

Not to mention making the comparison of a hologram girl “struggling to feel like she fits” with Katrina’s struggles that were very much based in reality felt more than a little side-eye inducing.

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