Yume Kitasei

A book club pick ;)

I’ve been struggling with myself how to rate this. Four stars was way too generous… Three stars was way too harsh – but maybe not entirely unfair.

The premise is great: a space mission that is humanity’s last hope; a near future Earth full of environmental disasters and global conflict; cool future technology; things go badly wrong and there is a traitor onboard; the crew has to investigate and save the mission.

I liked the latter half of the book, because of all the danger, drama, excitement and whodunit. The pages flew by, rapidly and satisfyingly. Alpha the ship AI was cool.

Are you sensing a “but”? Yes, I do have quite a few of those:

I couldn’t connect to any of the characters. They felt flat and uninteresting. Asuka, I am sorry, but I want more from my main characters than an inferiority complex the size of the known universe and memories of past traumas.

The whole crew selection process? All right, you take a bunch of talented twelve-year-olds, put them into a boarding school and train them for many years. If they (some of them, at least) are to be a spaceship crew, should not cooperation skills be one of the priorities? Not an one-on-one academic battle royale, with rankings? This was possibly the reason so many of the spaceship crew were crumbling so nicely under pressure. Also, there was no difference, personality- and maturity-wise, between the characters at twelve etc and the characters as adults. Annoying!

The mystery was too easy! I guessed the villain (villainness ;) ) about halfway through the book (not all the details, though).

The author said in the acknowledgments that some of the mistakes in physics were intentional. Nice save, but it doesn’t mean that this reader can’t be annoyed. There is suspension of disbelief in sci-fi and suspension of disbelief in near future sci-fi ;) Hmmm, they are supposed to reach Planet X in 20 years. So, I am assuming something like light speed, unless they are using fusion rockets (speculative future technology) and are going to Proxima Centauri, our nearest star. It’s not mentioned where the heck Planet X is, so let’s say it’s not Proxima Centauri. Anyway, the crew has been hibernating for 10 years, they wake up, and lo and behold, ten years have passed on Earth. Isn’t that convenient? There is also lovely instantaneous communication with Earth, using quantum computers (just add quantum – well, at least it was done better here than in Spaceman of Bohemia). For some reason, they only have one onboard and no backup plan for communication when more shit hits the fan. Who planned this mission???

My other “buts” are mostly spoiler territory, so I think I’ll save them for the book club meeting.

There were flashes of promise in this debut novel, however. I might try this author’s other books in the future.… (plus d'informations)

(2023) Very good SF about a hail mary type of space launch where all of humanity is putting all of their eggs in the basket of a deep space probe with over 80 crew members (mostly women) to find Planet X to continue civilization. As usual, all does not go as planned as an explosion set off by some bad actor aboard throws the ship off course. Asuka, without a real job on board, is tasked with finding out what happened and who is responsible. Very good writing and story takes this out of the ordinary SF book. Enjoyed this. Book Page: The Earth is about to die. A single ship will travel to a hospitable planet far beyond our solar system where the 80 original crew members and their children will begin a new chapter for the human race. But in Yume Kitasei?s The Deep Sky, those plans go horribly wrong. The passengers aboard the Phoenix might not be having a good time, but readers certainly will be as the pages in this exhilarating, smart sci-fi mystery rocket past.

Asuka doesn?t feel like she belongs on the Phoenix. The last member to join the ship, she?s merely an alternate to the other 79 crew members, even though she graduated from the same highly competitive school. Perhaps it?s because she?s an afterthought that she?s asked to investigate a strange object on the surface of the ship. Just as she and a teammate reach the object, a massive explosion tears through the ship, killing several crew members and blowing the Phoenix dangerously off course. Now, in a race against time to correct the Phoenix?s flight path, Asuka must uncover the truth about the explosion . . . even if it implicates someone on board.

It?s a pitch-perfect setup for a space thriller, and the stakes could not be any higher: The fate of the human species relies on the Phoenix?s ability to make it to the new Earth. Alliances change and suspicions shift as Asuka?s investigation proceeds and propulsive chapters often end in cliffhangers. Flashback scenes set at the school that selected the Phoenix?s crew counterbalance the mystery, revealing just the right amount of information about characters? history and corresponding with important story beats in the present. In both timelines, Asuka wrestles with her parental relationships, childhood grief and complex feelings about her Japanese-American identity. While these sections deepen the character, they occasionally feel like an interruption of the more suspenseful moments aboard the Phoenix.

The Deep Sky feels very close to our own reality: The Phoenix has landing modules and solar shields, rather than laser cannons. That said, Kitasei?s Digitally Augmented Reality (DAR), which allows crew members to adjust what they see around them through their visors, is a brilliant device. Rather than seeing the stark white hallways of the Phoenix, they could choose a lush rainforest or the deck of a pirate ship. Kitasei gets a lot of mileage out of DAR, especially in some key moments in the later parts of the book.

As interested in where we came from as where we?re going, The Deep Sky is a study in belonging and how Asuka?s intersecting identities (Japanese-American, crew member, classmate, friend, daughter and woman) buttress her during the most important moments in her life. Pick up The Deep Sky to discover how Asuka, and the Phoenix, rise from the ashes.… (plus d'informations)

There's much I liked in The Deep Sky, and some bits I did not. I'll start negative first since my final conclusion is positive. First is the premise, which has many parts: A number of nations are brought together by a billionaire to launch a voyage to another star. A "big brother" style competition to determine the crew occupies national attention for a decade. All the crew are non-male (female or non-binary) because after ten years hibernation, they will be awoken en route and artificially inseminated so that there are children when they arrive at Planet X. Finally, all of them have an implanted VR device that causes each of them to see and live in a different world (forest, ocean, city, ...) overlaid on the cramped and undecorated star ship. I didn't believe a single one of these. I remember no attempt to make any of these ideas plausible or even internally motivated. The second negative was the primary character: she falls in the category of "hero who is really competent but thinks they are not." This can be entertaining when Bujold does it with Miles Vorkosigan, or really annoying when Applegate did it in the Endling series. Here it's annoying. The third and final negative for me was that a lot of the character motivation was high school level drama with friendships and who likes who now. It would have been overdone for a young adult novel, which this is not.

That said, I'm glad I stayed with the book. Eventually the positive elements came together. One of the positive elements is the mystery aspect. Early on it becomes clear someone is sabotaging the mission. For at least 2/3 of the book, this mystery was very underdeveloped and I feared it would lead nowhere. When it finally came front and center, I've read and watched enough mysteries to have a pretty good idea who the culprit was, but this aspect was fine, with suitable red herrings. Another positive element is having all the characters be women or non-binary. While implausibly engineered, it made for a different reading experience. The tension between Japanese and American culture that that drives the main character was well-done, based on the author's own background. It would have been nice to see similar tensions in other characters given some space A third positive element was the environment of the ship. A drawing is provided at the start and like a floorplan of a house in a murder mystery, it's valuable for understanding events. The physics of the ship gets a bit loosey-goosey near the end but is fine for fictional purposes.

Recommended for SF fans, with the warning that it's very much a stew of too many ingredients.… (plus d'informations)