Light from Uncommon Stars by Ryka Aoki (Kindle version)
Summary: Excellent, complex work with a couple of slow spots and scattered bits of lesser-quality writing/editing. Aoki sweeps the reader away from reality in details, emotions and truths. It’s a nicely done piece that sets a high bar for whatever I read next. Strongly recommended.
2023.10.01 — Chapters 26-38 (end). After a few dry, bordering on tedious chapters, Aoki wraps up a stellar ending.
2023.09.28 — Chapters 18-25.
Aoki’s style gets a little sloppy again at the beginning of Ch 25, where she uses Thinh Dinh and Asshole Boyfriend in succession. They seem to be the same person in the intro, but the punctuation makes it ambiguous.
The formatting of texts is weird – bold type followed by regular text in a smaller font size than the rest of the body text. It’s at least partially consistent, but a weird choice of formatting that Aoki probably didn’t make. It could be Kindle conversion weirdness that no editor bothered to read or fix.
2023.09.27 — Chapters 13-17.
Aoki’s still solid up to Ch 15, where something seems off the rails. Shizuka and Tremon are at Caputo’s. (Parentheticals mine).
Tremon sat at the table and looked at the menu. He scanned it again, then shifted his glance to the other diners.
“Doesn’t this place still serve pizza?” (Okay, that’s Tremon.)
“Times have changed.” (Aoki doesn’t attribute this line to anyone, but it’s clearly meant to be Shizuka.)
I wonder what our colleagues in Paris would think if they saw us eating boiled chicken.” Tremon muttered. “Anyway, how is your student progressing?” (obviously Tremon.)
“It’s not boiled.” (Guessing Shizuka again, as she and Tremon are the only ones in the conversation or description.)
“What?” (Guessing Tremon, as it’s back-and-forth.)
Katrina motioned to the server, who took her order, bowed and disappeared. (What? Where did Katrina come from? She hasn’t been mentioned since the start of the chapter!)
“The chicken. It’s poached.” (Is this Shizuka, who was talking to Tremon about the chicken? Or is it Katrina, who was last mentioned?)
“Shizuka, your student. How is she—” (Tremon, again, but he’s talking like Katrina, the student, is not present.)
…
“Yes, Tremon, Katrina’s doing fine,” Shizuka finally said. “Why are you so worried?”
Shizuka doesn’t seem to see Katrina either, but she was ordering a few lines up. Is she there or not? Then, we go back to Lucy Matía, whose luthier story has become more interesting than Katrina’s.
In Ch 17, Aunty Floresta does something unusual – “Aunty Floresta put his hand on his (Edwin’s) shoulder.” Gender fluidity is fine, but I don’t think this instance was intentional—Aunty Floresta was a “she” a few sentences earlier.
2023.09.25 — Chapters 5-12. The quick POV transitions are interesting, but Aoki’s style lets the reader follow without getting lost —Lan sees “Sunglass Lady,” and Shizuka sees “Donut Lady,” and paragraph spacing clues the reader to the shift in POV; I wonder how this looked in her manuscript—maybe a # separator or something. There are some bits that make for awkward reading — “Eventually, Katrina must have fallen asleep.” — but no red cards. There’s a verb tense error; shame on you, editor(s). Spellcheck wouldn’t catch it, but Grammarly probably would.
Katrina could felt her breath and heartbeat quicken.
There’s a POV shift from Shizuka to Lan that had me rereading. The best mechanics of style used to transmit everything to the reader fluently interests me. In this example, Aoki uses paragraphs to go from narrative to thought without italics, even though a thought (“Seriously”) was initially in italics:
Shizuka looked down at the duck turd. Seriously.
This was all so stupid! Just for once could she not put the secrets away?
That brings me to my first real reading glitch. Lan Tran asks:
How did you know we escaped the Galactic Empire?
This smart, battle-scarred starship captain slips all too conveniently. Oh, my, another editing miss—one that neither spellcheck nor Grammarly would find.
…seaweed soup, rice, some grilled fish, and picked vegetables.
2023.09.23 — Chapters 3-4. Still going strong. The prodigy meets the teacher in the park. The meeting’s a contrivance, of course, but Aoki makes it work. The e-book formatting isn’t ideal, but ok. “The music was sunrise, permeating the park.” That’s good stuff.
2023.09.22 — Chapters 1-2. Demons, donut-shop starship hangars, transgender virtuosos — Aoki has me in for at least the next chapter or two. I’m liking the 3-way structure and sparse dialogue annotations.