Light From Uncommon Stars

The blurb I read touted this as "Good Omens meets The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet in a defiantly joyful adventure", which is not how I'd describe it. Though I quite liked the prose itself, I was either annoyed or irritated by every single character, I hated the Faustian/sci-fi crossover, found the endless descriptions of music and food tedious after a time, and thought the ending was obvious and then silly. If this is your type of thing, you'll like it. I'm not overly sentimental and found it mawkish. Not for me.

This is the best book I've read of the year. Absolutely Fantastic.

 My main take from the story is that it gave me a better perspective on what it’s like to grow up as trans. It has a lot of hurt, but it’s also a reminder that kindness can go a long way.

🎻 There is a lot of music interwoven in a beautiful story. The author describes musical performances in a way that I could even imagine the sound, just from words and emotions. I also liked that it has a high geek factor, there are mentions of Star Trek and references to music from games and anime.

Beautiful story worthy of a recommendation 🧡

Finished this book in about a week. I've heard of Ryka Aoki before but I did not know she was trans, so I was even more hyped to read this book and learn more about her. The writing level is appropriate for something oriented at the YA audience, especially with how it drops pop culture references (lmao Lindsey Stirling, Sword Art Online, and totally-not-undertale) and reaches to the occult and sci-fi. It was easy to breeze through.

I enjoyed the world building and character building a lot for those at the center of the stage, the food is given a lot of care 🤤, it really took the story forward from the start. You start to get draw into the cadence of their life. While the ending felt like what I thought was sufficient for a YA novel, I was disappointed how some characters really did not get their justice/recognition. There are times that this book feels like a typical YA novel and I wish it said more, but there are other times I remember how important it is that it's doing exactly what it's doing (I say as a queer trans Asian person myself). Just... maybe for someone younger than me (in my 20s)?

As others mentioned, this book could use some content warnings on the traumatic experiences that the main character especially experiences. I also noticed that aspects about inter-Asian discourse aren't really touched on: there's a celebration of primarily East and Southeast Asian cultures, not really a mention of many other cultures like South Asian or issues of colorism.

A book driven by its characters. I think it would be hard not to empathise with Katrina. The momentum keeps going and you want it to keep going for the characters. Leap of faith in the storyline, no problem, I want this to happen for them.

Written with the narrators view it was able to weave the stories of several people together, but with a strong emphasis on a couple of characters. The narration was also used to skip some of the exacting detail about Katrina's early life while explaining it. For sure a content warning for some of that though.