Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

“No, I mean, it’s all in pieces.” “Yes. So are we all.”

Light from Uncommon Stars by Ryka Aoki

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Light from Uncommon Stars is both entirely typical of my reading (characters going through it, romance main or subplots, coming to terms with one’s choices, a commitment to reading trans and non-binary authors) but also feels quite a bit outside my comfort zone. I had initially put this book on my to read list because of the 2023 Read Harder tasks asking us to read a book about a trans character by a trans author and a book from the Ignyte Awards. Then my 2023 […]

Aliens with doughnuts

Light From Uncommon Stars by Ryka Aoki

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CBR square- Queer Lives. What a lovely, absorbing, moving book. I really loved Light From Uncommon Stars, the Hugo nominated book from Ryka Aoki. It’s about a transgender girl named Katrina who runs away from her abusive home and runs towards Shizuka Satomi, a woman who has made a bargain with a demon to bring seven souls to Hell in order for people to know her music again. She plays the violin and so does Katrina. Once she hears Katrina play she knows she is […]

“…with understanding, all things were possible.”

Light from Uncommon Stars by Ryka Aoki

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Riddle me this: what do you create when you combine a violin prodigy, “the Queen of Hell”, and an alien doughnut maker? If you are Ryka Aoki, you create a wild, delicious, devastating, hilarious brew. Does it hold together in a tight narrative? Light from Uncommon Stars does not. Does it thrill your senses and grow your heart? It absolutely does. We are first introduced to Katrina Nguyen, a teenage trans girl, as she is running away from a brutal home, carrying her beloved violin. […]

An Unexpected Delight

Light From Uncommon Stars by Ryka Aoki

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I am going the confess here that I have been dragging my feet a little bit when it came to writing this review for this book. Light From Uncommon Stars was actually the first of the Hugo Best Novel Nominees that I read when the voting packet was first made available, and if I didn’t scrunch up and focus on my resolve this afternoon, it would have been the last one I wrote about.  This is one of the most unusual speculative fiction books I […]

lovely standalone book for fans of alternative(?) scifi

Light From Uncommon Stars by Ryka Aoki

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CW: so much transphobia. it is overcome, but so much of it. our transgender character also is briefly in a very precarious housing situation that veers into assault. As I started planning for the “I’ve Heard No One Works in August in Europe 2022” trip (pro tip: London is not in Europe, Londoners do work, oops), I started going through my “Want to Read” list here on Goodreads, which I don’t do a good enough job of turning into reality (or curating, for that matter–there […]

A wondrously weird book. #CBRBINGO – Free!

Light From Uncommon Stars by Ryka Aoki

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Thanks to Tor/Forge for the eARC! It has not affected the content of my review. This book was so very weird and so very lovely. I very much enjoyed it. I’ve been dragging my feet on this review but it’s pub day* so I need to buckle down. This is one of those cases where the description really doesn’t do the book justice, and also it very much will not be everyone’s cup of tea, because it resists classification, and takes three very good ideas […]



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