Indie Advent Week 1: Light From Uncommon Stars by Ryka Aoki

Good Omens meets The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet in Ryka Aoki’s Light From Uncommon Stars, a defiantly joyful adventure set in California’s San Gabriel Valley, with cursed violins, Faustian bargains, and queer alien courtship over fresh-made donuts.

Shizuka Satomi made a deal with the to escape damnation, she must entice seven other violin prodigies to trade their souls for success. She has already delivered six. When Katrina Nguyen, a young transgender runaway, catches Shizuka’s ear with her wild talent, Shizuka can almost feel the curse lifting. She’s found her final candidate. But in a donut shop off a bustling highway in the San Gabriel Valley, Shizuka meets Lan Tran, retired starship captain, interstellar refugee, and mother of four. Shizuka doesn’t have time for crushes or coffee dates, what with her very soul on the line, but Lan’s kind smile and eyes like stars might just redefine a soul’s worth. And maybe something as small as a warm donut is powerful enough to break a curse as vast as the California coastline.As the lives of these three women become entangled by chance and fate, a story of magic, identity, curses, and hope begins, and a family worth crossing the universe for is found.

Oh, this book, this book … it is one of the most beautiful stories I’ve ever read. It’s been nominated and won a ton of Indie awards and was nominated for a Hugo, and if you haven’t heard about this one you need to go find it now.

Every woman in this story (there is a secondary character who makes violins and she was one of my favorite people in the book) is completely realized. Shizuka is a fascinating character, and her mentorship of Katrina is at first coldly opportunistic until she begins to know and care for her. Likewise, her sweet romantic entanglement with the owner of a donut shop–who is quite definitely an alien in the most interplanetary sense of the word–becomes something which causes the cynical Shizuka to reevaluate everything she’s ever done, every drop of blood on her hands, and what the meaning of redemption can be.

Any musician will revel in this book, as music is the primal, driving force for everything Shizuka and Katrina do. It is a magical, satisfying book that keeps you wondering until the very end.