I picked up this book with the expectation of more space war, less family drama. And instead, I got the opposite. It isn't bad, by any means, just not what I was looking for. This is a book about a family broken, first be expectations, than by a son who disappeared, than a father who died looking for the son. The three members left behind all took different paths, with the youngest daughter taking on her father's mission and the older sister dealing with the responsibility of patching the pieces, and making sure their mom is safe and happy while living with severe dementia.

The first half of the story is slow and I hard time staying focused. I liked how Jakob was written from the different perspectives - as a reader I wasn't sure if he was fighting a war in space or just seriously mentally ill.

The end is a bit bittersweet, but does have a good ending. ( )

Because I so loved Chen's We Could Be Heroes, I picked up this latest novel even though, from the blurb, I wasn't sure it would be my cup of tea. And yet, I LOVED it. Even when I could objectively look at it and observe that the themes in another writer's hands would have sent me running, I simply couldn't stop turning the pages. And because of that, Chen's made me a fan of his work for life.

Light Years From Home is a genre blend that spirals from a base of messy sibling dynamics and adulthood, but against a science fiction background that controls forward momentum. Somehow, this meshing of genres not only defies categorization, but also makes for a book that feels all the more real as a result. Chen perfectly balances reality against the speculative, and hard truths against comedy, with wonderfully flawed characters and exceptional nuance.

I'm quite sure that this won't be every reader's cup of tea--someone who only loves sci-fi would probably hate it, just as a person who only reads women's fiction would likely love it without the sci-fi element and not give it a chance in its current form. But for readers like me who want a little bit of everything thrown into a good story, this is very simply a fantastic read.

Absolutely, I recommend it. ( )

Light Years From Home is about a family that has been fractured since the disappearance of Jakob. With his reappearance, the past comes rushing back, and so do all the negative emotions and thoughts tied up with him. But his reappearance, no matter how desperate he is to get back to where he came from, offers hope to his family, and I really loved how this is more a story of family than it is about an intergalactic war. There’s a large psychology piece to this story that I really loved, and I enjoyed how it twisted everything in the middle so I really had no idea where the story was going. There are high stakes and enemies coming after them, but, through it all, Light Years From Home manages to be a beautiful story of family and understanding oneself.

Extended Thoughts
The Shao family hasn’t been the same since Jakob vanished with his father 15 years ago, and only his dad returned. Left to pick up the pieces, sisters Kassie, who is also Jakob’s twin sister, and Evie, their younger sister, set themselves on different tracks. With their father’s obsession over finding Jakob and trying to figure out how to use a piece of alien technology, nothing is ever quite the same and an already fractured family threatens to break further.

Fifteen years later, Kassie is a psychologist living with her mother who is slowly descending deeper into dementia. Evie is a vet tech on the other side of the country working with a group called the Reds who investigates anything alien-related. When data suggests Jakob might be back, Evie decides to travel back home, unprepared and not at all ready for the family reunion about to happen that could break them forever or finally heal them.

The thing I love most about Mike Chen’s books is just how much humanness and heart is in them. Light Years From Home is no exception and really focused on family. While I wasn’t really into the fact that this one has aliens and alien abduction, I found it wasn’t really focused on that as much as I expected. This novel is almost completely set on Earth and mostly swirls around one family and how alien abduction impacted them. It’s beautiful and heartfelt with a lot of pain under the surface, and the ending, while I wanted just a little more, was absolutely perfect and fitting for the family.

Light Years From Home focuses on the Shao family: Mom and Dad (Sofia and Arnold), Kassie, Jakob, and Evie. There are also some other fun characters, like Evie’s friend Layla from the Reds who tells some punny science jokes and Mom’s caretaker Lucy. But it really focuses on the Shao family and how Jakob’s sudden disappearance impacted them for 15 years. It was great to see how they were split between believing the best and the worst of Jakob and how it splintered them. Their family was fractured and seriously hurting and even I had my doubts as to whether or not they could pull together and do something about Jakob’s reappearance and what it means for an intergalactic war they know nothing of.

Most of Light Years From Home is told by Kassie and Evie. As Jakob’s sisters, they have vastly different views and memories of him. I really liked how they knocked heads over it and how it further rent the family in half. But they’re deeper than that. Both have their own underlying issues that have built up over the years as their brother’s disappearance took their toll on them, and it was fun to see it play out. The sisters are very different from each other, practically opposites, but family is family. I loved how achingly awkward and difficult their reunion was and there were so many steps backwards and forwards, but they really did feel like real sisters to me. I liked that Kassie, as the oldest, suddenly took responsibility and just shouldered everything without any discussion and I liked that Evie held such hope and optimism. Watching them dance around each other was wonderful and just felt so full of heart that they couldn’t be anything but family that still loves each other.

Jakob’s story wasn’t as full as I had hoped or expected, but, considering I’m not a fan of aliens and his story line is the one that involves aliens, I did end up enjoying it. I liked that the reader gets to know him from before his disappearance through his sisters, and then the reader is put into his perspective and suddenly things look a little different and there’s a lot more to him than meets the eye. I liked him, but was also kind of frustrated with him and the things he did even if they did make sense. His is also the perspective I wanted more from, but I think much more might have watered down the story too much, taking away from the story of the sisters and one family trying to mend itself.

But my favorite part was the mental health piece. Since my own background is in psychology, I really liked that Kassie is a psychologist and her work came into play several times throughout the story. It clouded some of what she did and sometimes I wished she could just calm down, but she always felt like she was an inch away from just blowing up for most of the book, which was fun and had me keeping a wary eye on her. Anyways, I really liked that it came in handy and played well into the family dynamics. It made the whole middle part both really wonderful and kind of a let down. But I loved how it made me question everything from the characters to the story. I also really liked the portrayal of dementia. It’s confusing and disorienting and so tough and I felt Light Years From Home really captured it well. I also liked that the way it was handled at the end wasn’t jarring, but made sense and really added something lovely to the family.

The story itself is about the intergalactic war Jakob is involved in and his overwhelming need to just get back and the impact his disappearance had on his family. Every step of the way, I felt Jakob’s need, but I also felt those strong, but strained family bonds. While Jakob’s story really drove the plot and kept it moving, Light Years From Home is really about the family. I loved how broken it was, how strained their relationships were, and how, despite that, the story was able to reach the kind of beautiful and soft ending I’ve come to expect from Chen’s novels. It’s a beautiful story of family.

Light Years From Home certainly had it’s slow and not quite as interesting parts, but the raw human emotions, the hope, the despair, really kept me hooked. It offers a story of family wrapped up in alien abduction, intergalactic wars, and a desperate father. I loved almost everything about it, but I really loved how heartfelt and human Chen’s novels are, and I especially loved the focus on family instead of the aliens.

Thank you to Justine Sha at MIRA for a review copy . All opinions expressed are my own. ( )

This originally appeared at The Irresponsible Reader.
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For Jakob, it meant days where time had no meaning, one lifechanging revelation after another. Were there aliens? Yes, there were so many aliens, a number so overwhelming that even now he still didn’t know the name of every species working under the Seven Bells flag. Were there bad aliens? Yes, and it turned out that Dad’s sci-fi shows got some of those traits right—plus mechs from the few years when he indulged in anime—along with holographic displays, faster-than-light speed, smart communication tech that quickly adapted to English, and other things.

It was all of that mashed into one overwhelming reality, something that made him question if he hadn’t taken the best/worst drugs of all time.

FIFTEEN YEARS AGO
Evie, her older twins, Kass, and Jakob are on a camping trip with their father. When Jakob and his father step away for a private word (Jakob's thinking of dropping out, and their father is giving him a talk).

Then everything changes. Jakob and their father disappear. Three days later, their father reappears, disoriented and confused. But there's no sign of Jakob—he's eventually declared dead, and the family is shattered.

EVIE
Evie's following their father's theory, Jakob was taken by aliens. She's moved away from the family and joined up with others convinced that aliens have visited the planet. They research reportings, scientific phenomena, and do a webcast.

When her group notices phenomena in the area near where Jakob disappeared that matches the same strange readings from that night, Evie can't contain her excitement, so she scrapes together enough money to fly across the country so she can look into it first-hand.

KASS
Kass had the opposite reaction, her brother's always been a ne'er-do-well, he has no commitment, no follow-through—always getting by on his charm. She assumes that Jakob found some people to hang out with, leach off of, and was off having a great time while the family fell to pieces.

She stayed home, finished her degree, and is now taking care of their mother in the earliest stages of dementia while working as a therapist, helping others do for their families what she couldn't do for her own.

She's not thrilled about her sister's impending arrival—Kass can't believe Evie's wasted her potential with this nonsense and has abandoned her family to do so. She wants nothing to do with it, or the inevitable request for financial assistance that comes with any visit with Evie.

JAKOB
Jakob actually was taken by aliens—his father was accidentally taken up in the same transporter stream. He's serving in an intergalactic war—he's hiding briefly on earth until he can get some vital information to his side.

Or at least, that's what he tells his sister when he returns. Kass has other ideas. She keeps using words like delusions and psychosis.

A FAMILY AFFAIR
The book hops around, being told from the perspective of each sibling—we get to know them, what they've been up to for the last fifteen years, and how they relate to each other. Whatever outlandish story Jakob is telling, what evidence and theories that Evie has about him, and whatever their mother is going through, the focus is the family—particularly on the siblings. The hurt they've caused the others, the neglect they've shown towards one another, the utter lack of trust that exists between any of them.

But they can't fight the pull toward each other—to help each other, even as they're proclaiming their disgust and disappointment.

Chen's known for writing family drama, and to date, none of his families have had as much drama as these three.

Yes, there's the FBI running around, accusations of fraud (and possible terrorism), and some pretty intense action—laced with SF goodness (as you expect from Chen). But the story is at it's core, a story about these three siblings trying to find some healing. Or at least a definitive way to say goodbye.

SO, WHAT DID I THINK ABOUT LIGHT YEARS FROM HOME?
I thought it was a great way to tell this story, I thought the characters were interesting and the situation was very compelling—bringing in their mother's deteriorating condition was a wonderful addition (in terms of storytelling, I'm not saying I find dementia entertaining).

Yet, I had the hardest time getting involved with the story or characters. I thought it was a great read, but I just didn't care. Or I didn't think I did. But I found myself on the edge of my seat at the right moments and getting misty at the end. Without my noticing, Chen had wormed his characters into my heart—including the one, I'd easily have said the book didn't need.

I'll note that I just talked to a friend, who had an entirely different reaction to the beginning of the book (hasn't finished it yet, but I can't imagine he'll disagree with what I said about the ending). This suggests, as I imagined, this is a Me-problem, not a Chen-issue.

I think this book worms its way into the SF/Speculative Fiction genre differently than Chen's previous works. And maybe that was my hitch—maybe. I think it's great that his works are so stand-alone, that there's not even a Mike Chen-template like so many other stand-alone authors fall into.

With Mike Chen, you never know what you're going to get beyond: interesting and fresh premise and emotionally satisfying ending. Light Years from Home lives up to that and has me eagerly awaiting his 2023 release to see where he's going next. ( )

This is both a sci-fi story, and a drama about family relationships. The two halves aren't all that well integrated in this case, but it's a very ambitious attempt. ( )