Books 61-62
Light from Uncommon Stars by Ryka Aoki
My rating: 3 of 5 stars
I really wanted to love this novel, a mash up of SF/urban fantasy, trans female lead (by a trans female author) but I never connected well with any of the characters.
Before I begin let me begin with the triggers because this thing is nothing but a few hundred pages of triggers leading off with trans phobia (in major ways, huge gobs of it) self loathing, body dysphoria, homophobia, abusive parents, selling your body to survive, racism and there's probably more I'm forgetting because I waited weeks to do this.
Katrina Nguyen is a transgendered violin prodigy (and the center of 98% of all the above mentioned triggers) she's on the run from her family, trying to survive, when Shizuka Satomi hears her play. Satomi has made a deal with the devil. She has to give seven souls to him or he takes hers. If she does it she'll get her own music back.
Also in this is an alien family pretending to be Asians and running a donut shop that's a front for their star ship as they flee intergalactic war and other horros.
No, these stories don't mesh perfectly but they are interesting but the real issue for me isn't the two genre mash up. Satomi's sapphic relationship with the ship's captain is interesting. My issue is Katrina doesn't grow one iota. She's so mired in her trauma and her bad transitional experience that she seems incapable of change and that was disappointing.
I wanted more from this than I got but I think it's more of a me not it thing.
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Sacrifice by Kathleen Heady
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
I won this one in a GR giveaway which did not influence my review in any way. I got this thinking it was a mystery but it was more suspense as the main characters don't really investigate the crime. Nara (Afro-Caribbean/British) and her husband, Alex, have been sent to Spain by the museum they work for to recover the journals of a British artist/freedom fighter who lost her life in the Spanish Civil War. Her journals have surfaced in a church in a remote village.
Before the priest can turn them over, he’s murdered. Nara and Alex are of course concerned about it and want to find the journals which makes sense. They don’t feel the need to find the murderer, happy to leave that to the police which is actually unusual for an amateur sleuth story.
Mixed into this is a separate series of point of view characters, a lady smuggler who wants out. Apparently the town has been into smuggling since the war.
Naturally, the story lines dovetail. The characters are interesting. Nara trying to reconnect with her father and half sister was good too. It is character driven and that’s always a fun thing. I was a little disappointed in the resolution of the priest’s murder story line. That said I’d read more of this series.
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