“The Deep Sky” by Yume Kitasei
It is the eve of Earth’s environmental collapse. A single ship carries humanity’s last hope: eighty elite graduates of a competitive program, who will give birth to a generation of children in deep space. But halfway to a distant but livable planet, a lethal bomb kills three of the crew and knocks The Phoenix off course.
Asuka already felt like an impostor before the explosion. She was the last picked for the mission, she struggled during training back on Earth, and she was chosen to represent Japan, a country she only partly knows as a half-Japanese girl raised in America. But estranged from her mother back home, The Phoenix is all she has left.
With the crew turning on each other, Asuka is determined to find the culprit before they all lose faith in the mission—or worse, the bomber strikes again.
Review
While the book starts out pretty slowly I ended up really enjoying it by the end. The book is split between the current timeline and Asuka’s time in training in the program years before. We learn a lot about Asuka’s relationships with the various people on the ship and those she left behind (her mother in particular). All of it ends up being relevant and important to the current storyline. There are a couple plot elements that aren’t really explained in depth which was a little frustrating but not terribly so. I thought the characters were pretty well developed with the help of the flashback sections. Overall I liked how everything worked out and I thought the ending fit the story.
Warnings and additional reviews are available on the StoryGraph page for “The Deep Sky”.
Book Details
- Author’s Website
- Yume Kitasei
- Publisher / Date
- Flatiron Books, July 2023
- Genre
- Science Fiction, Mystery
- Page Count
- 397
- Completion Date
- January 5, 2025