Another book from this highly acclaimed author! I read her first one and this one was good, but very different. More in the science fiction category. There is a lot of technical, scientific verbiage that sometimes I had to muddle through. But the story itself is quite a good one and there is a lot going on here. There is a lot about family relationships and the importance of a father to his daughter. As with most science fiction, the reader has to be able to go out on a limb and just go with the story and enjoy it!

4 or 4.5 stars. Often, enough time passes from when I request a book to when I start reading it that I forget the blurb or anything I knew about it and I generally like that: going in with fresh eyes. In this case, I was a little confused--I couldn't figure out what kind of book I was reading. But I didn't dislike it, so I kept going. Boy, am I glad I did! The book is about Nedda, an astronaut, and takes place in her present and in her past. I really loved Nedda the science-geek child! The journey from her past to her present was both heartbreaking and heartwarming. A tear (mine) might have been involved. I both admired and was angry at her father and admired the strength and smarts of Nedda, her mother, and her fellow astronauts. Turns out the book is what I would call literary fiction with a dose of science fiction. Don't let the slow start deter you--this is worth the read.

Thanks to the publisher and NetGalley for an advance copy.

"Light from Other Stars" by Erika Swyler, Bloomsbury Publishing, 320 pages, May 7, 2019.

It is 1986. Nedda Papas, a highly intelligent 11-year-old girl in Easter, Florida, dreams of becoming an astronaut.

She and her classmates are watching the Challenger launch on television. Nedda's
father is Theo, a NASA physicist, who was furloughed. He is now a college professor. Theo is building Crucible, a machine designed to manipulate time because he is grieving the death of his infant son and he wants to prolong Nedda's childhood.

Cape Canaveral is 10 miles away. When the Challenger explodes, it sends shock waves through Easter and Crucible causes a "time sinkhole," trapping Theo and Nedda's best friend, Denny. It is up to Nedda and her mother, Betheen, a baker, to save the town. Nedda doesn't know that her mother gave up a career in chemistry for her family.

This story is interspersed with scenes from Nedda's future aboard the Chawla, a four-person interstellar ship traveling to a far-away planet when life-support systems begin to fail.

While Nedda worships her father, it is her mother who is the hero of the story.

This is a combination of a family drama and science fiction. There is physics and engineering involved, but readers won't have trouble following the gist of what is happening. It is the interactions between the characters, both during Nedda's childhood and when she is an adult, that make this novel special.

Erika Swyler is also the author of "The Book of Speculation," which I also really enjoyed.

In accordance with FTC guidelines, the advance reader's edition of this book was provided by the publisher via NetGalley in exchange for a review.

2.5 stars - rounding up to 3 because it was very well written. I struggled with this book - I think it was more science fiction that I had anticipated. It was a family story but with a lot of science in there as well. The story was good but it didn't hold my attention the way I expected it to.

Light from Other Stars
by Erika Swyler

Hardcover, 320 pages
Expected publication: May 7th 2019 by Bloomsbury Publishing



Goodreads synopsis:
From the author of national bestseller The Book of Speculation, a poignant, fantastical novel about the electric combination of ambition & wonder that keeps us reaching toward the heavens.

Eleven-year-old Nedda Papas is obsessed with becoming an astronaut. In 1986 in Easter, a small Florida Space Coast town, her dreams seem almost within reach—if she can just grow up fast enough. Theo, the scientist father she idolizes, is consumed by his own obsessions. Laid off from his job at NASA and still reeling from the loss of Nedda’s newborn brother several years before, Theo turns to the dangerous dream of extending his living daughter's childhood just a little longer. The result is an invention that alters the fabric of time.

Amidst the chaos that erupts, Nedda must confront her father and his secrets, the ramifications of which will irrevocably change her life, her community, and the entire world. But she finds an unexpected ally in Betheen, the mother she’s never quite understood, who surprises Nedda by seeing her more clearly than anyone else. 

Decades later, Nedda has achieved her long-held dream, and as she floats in antigravity, far from earth, she and her crewmates face a serious crisis. Nedda may hold the key to the solution, if she can come to terms with her past and the future that awaits her. 

Light from Other Stars is about fathers and daughters, women and the forces that hold them back, and the cost of meaningful work. It questions how our lives have changed, what progress looks like, and what it really means to sacrifice for the greater good.

***

3 Stars

Before you start reading this book I want to warn you. This book is filled with a lot of jargon about NASA and astronauts and time anomalies.

This book is really interesting but I think it will be hard for regular fiction readers to embrace. I think if the author had tamped down on all the technical stuff and focused more on the storylines of the characters I would have been able to engage more with what was going on. It was like wading through a curtain of technicality trying to find the gem of the story.

Then if then if the jargon didn’t turn you off, the switching backward and forward in time might have pushed you over the edge enough to DNF this book. Don’t do that. Wait it out. I had been listening on audio but with all the back and forth in time, I had to just read it and watch for the headers of each section when the time changed.

Some of the stuff in here is a little gruesome. The people experiencing the time loops felt like the individuals were really suffering in their little time bubble. That might be disturbing for some.

I felt like this was a somewhat retelling of the play Brigadoon, just the in and out of time part, not basic details.

Interesting and profound but hard to wade though. I felt like I wasn’t smart enough to read this books. Brainiacs will get a kick out of this, I think.

I received this as an ARC (Advanced Reader Copy) in return for an honest review. I thank NetGalley, the publisher and the author for allowing me to read this title.

This is an intricate genre bending novel that leans heavily toward sci-fi. Nedda is looking back on her life from the perspective of a space ship heading through the universe seeking a new place for humanity. Her life has been shaped by her desire to be an astronaut, yes, but also by an experiment conducted by her father that went, well, totally wonky and affected the small town where they lived in a way that's hard to describe. The science sometimes got a bit heavy for me but the characters carry this through. Nedda is terrific, her mom Betheen is wonderful, and her colleague in the ship are very well drawn. Lots of themes here but they do come together. Thanks to net galley for the ARC.

I appreciate Swyler’s writing. She obviously knows a lot about science. But this story just wasn’t for me. It was slow-moving, I didn’t warm up to the characters and the science was over my head. I did not post a public review as I know the author must have put a lot of time and effort into writing this book. Thanks for the opportunity to read the ARC and best of luck to Ms Swyler.

Light from Other Stars by Erika Swyler is a highly recommended coming-of-age science fiction story.

The dual narrative follows two different stories set in two different time periods. In 1986, eleven-year-old Nedda Papas is living in Easter Florida, a Space Coast town, where she can't wait to grow up and become an astronaut. Theo, her father is a physicist, a college professor who was laid off from NASA, but he has an ongoing project, Crucible, that manipulates time by controlling entropy in an effort to extend Nedda's childhood. Betheen, her distant mother, is a baker and a chemist. Both of her parents, unknown to Nedda, are still mourning the loss of her brother, Michael, several years earlier. On the day after the Challenger disaster, another disaster befalls the town of Easter, which also affects Nedda's best friend Denny and her father. Nedda turns to Betheen to find a solution.

In the future Nedda is an astronaut aboard the Chawla, a four-person spacecraft en route to colonize a faraway planet to save humanity. Nedda and her crew mates are facing several trials, but now are doomed if they can't find a solution to a crisis that is threatening all of their lives and the mission. Nedda's past may actually hold the answer for a way to solve their current crisis.

The narrative alternates between the two time periods and the two stories, with Nedda (and by association Betheen) being the connection between the two vastly different narratives. For me, the young Nedda was the better developed character and the earlier timeline/story was much more compelling. I admittedly read the future chapters a bit faster to get back to the coming-of-age story and the disaster befalling her friend Denny and her dad Theo. It also allows the closeness of Betheen and Nedda now make more sense, and truly highlight the sacrifices that women often make for the good of everyone.

The writing is very good and the two plots are compelling for their own reasons. As a long-time reader of hard science fiction, I didn't find the science intimidating, but it would be easy to breeze over it and get on with the story for those who want to do so. The greater story is the examination of progress, finding meaning in your work, sacrifices, passions, determination, and the relationships between people in various contexts - parents, children, friends.

Disclosure: My review copy was courtesy of Bloomsbury.
http://www.shetreadssoftly.com/2019/05/light-from-other-stars.html
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/2810510842
https://www.librarything.com/work/22706613/book/168462831
https://twitter.com/SheTreadsSoftly/status/1125130935580659712

Thanks to NetGalley, Bloomsbury Publishing, and Erika Swyler for the opportunity to read and review her latest novel.

In 1986, Nedda is growing up in a small Florida town next to Kennedy Space Center and dreams of being an astronaut. Her father, Theo, is a scientist and Nedda loves nothing more than working side by side with him in his lab. Her mother, Betheen, uses her chemistry skills in a different way - by baking unique cakes. Nedda and Betheen have a complicated relationship and Nedda never feels comfortable with her mom. She has a great best friend, Denny, who sticks up for her when the other kids make fun of her and seeks Nedda's family's comfort when his own home life is difficult. Theo is obsessed with his experiment into time travel - he wants to go back to a time when he was healthy, his family was intact, and wants Nedda to stay young so that she can experience everything before she grows up. This experiment will have life-changing implications on their family, their town and the world.

Contrasted with Nedda's story are more time jumps - Nedda is now on a spacecraft and set to be one of 4 people to start colonizing a new world; however, there are issues on the ship that may prevent that.

This is an intriguing and somewhat difficult read to navigate the science and different time periods. But it's also a great character study of family, depression, moving forward.

As strange as this book was it felt familiar. Not as if I’d read it before. Not as one book. It had the feeling of being put together from many things I have read before. The result was a disjointeness I couldn’t overcome. I know that is not even a word, but somehow that makes it even more appropriate.

“Light from Other Stars” is filled with daydreams, compassion, heartache and sacrifice and it has a genuinely interesting plot. Nedda is a curious little girl who is in love with space and astronauts. There are two parallel stories: Nedda's father's science experiment that goes wrong when Nedda is young and future scenes on a space ship when Nedda is an older astronaut. The one thing not mentioned in the description is the fact that parts of the book is science fiction. Other than that this was a good read for me. I was fortunate to receive this novel from Netgalley as an Advance Reader Copy, in exchange for an objective review.
#LightFromOtherStars #NetGalley

I really wanted to love LIGHT FROM OTHER STARS by Erika Swyler, but I often times found it unreadable. It took me a week to get through it, and perhaps that’s because I’m simply not smart enough to keep up with the science that drives the plot. I loved the ideas and the twists, but I think I would have enjoyed it more if the book wasn’t to dense and often confusing.

Light from Other Stars is certainly not an easy book to review. It holds a lot of meaning and very deep emotion, and the idea behind it is definitely interesting – a science experiment gone wrong that sends the whole town into a temporal bubble and makes it effectively disappear for some 50 years, after which it surfaces like some real life nostalgia in a futuristic world of our day. So while it's a great premise, it's just... So, so sad.Light from Other Stars is largely about the trauma the main character went through in losing her dad, her childish innocence, her best friend and the tether to a safe, carefree reality – something we all lose sooner or later, as we grow up. Those kinds of topics are no walk in the part, so I kept stopping as I was reading because it would just keep bringing me down.

Light from Other Stars is told through two perspectives, the past and the present for the same character, Nedda. She witnesses the deaths of a group of astronauts during a NASA launch, but more than that – the very next day something terrible happens in her town and her father is to blame. It's also something really, really weird and nobody will even believe her at first, and she has to deal with it both physically as well as emotionally. The other perspective is also Nedda, but years later, on a colonizing ship to Mars, trying to not die with complications of the trip. Things on Earth also don't seem to be going that well. So none of these storylines are by any means cheerful. However, the biggest problem with the Light from Other Stars for me wasn't that it was sad, but the fact that it dragged. I only became invested way past the halfway point, so if I was a quicker DNF'er, I would have never read on.

Light from Other Stars is about loss, love, pain and regret, lost time. But it's also about science, the future and building a new life somewhere else. It's about parents and children, loners and friends. It's about growing up, growing apart and moving on. These emotional concepts are presented through a temporal anomaly and this makes them even more real. How would it be if you could see your parents as children or meet them young? Or if you lost them for reasons other than old age? What if you could talk to your child before they were born to you? What would your feelings become and how would you deal with the loss, the grief, the confusion? Light from Other Stars deals with these questions and more, and the pain explored is profound, but so is the growth and understanding gained.

I thank the publisher for a free copy through NetGalley in exchange to my honest review. It didn't affect my opinion.

Thank you to NetGalley, the publisher and the author, for an ARC of this book, in exchange for an honest review.
Unfortunately, I have tried reading this book on 2 separate occasions and during this 2nd attempt, I have only managed to make it halfway through so I'd rather stop here and state that this book just wasn't for me.
I wish the author, publisher, and all those promoting the book much success and connections with the right readers.

This book was outside of my usual sphere, but an interesting, thought-provoking approach to a dark subject. Telling the tale from various points of view was an interesting approach in this fast-paced story.

LIGHT FROM OTHER STARS by Erika Swyler was Nothing I expected it to be but ended up being better. Set in the year of 86’ 11-year-old Nedda dreams of becoming an astronaut while watching the Challenger launch on television. Meanwhile her father former NASA physicist now college professor is grieving the death of his infant son, so he attempts to build a machine to manipulate time because is desperately wants to prolong Nedda’s childhood. In the mist of tinker with the machine the Challenger explodes in the air sending a shock wave through the small NASA-adjacent town.
Split between two moments in Nedda's life there are so many secrets to unravel in this story. Being a fan of Sc-Fi reads this book fit in perfectly to my taste in the genre. Fascinating, shocking and still very much grounded in the real world, I absolutely loved everything about this book.

Thanks to Netgalley and Bloomsbury Publishing for the advanced copy in exchange for an honest review.

This is one of those “find a quiet place” books. The intricate vocabulary and in depth story needs your undivided attention. It is a wonderful story and Swyler is an amazing author that causes you to fall into the world like Alice. I definitely recommend this read!

Light from Other Stars is about Nedda, a young girl who loves space and wants to be an astronaut, and how her past directly influences events that happen when she has achieved her dream.

Erika Swyler truly has a way with words. There are sentences throughout the narrative that really hit you hard with the beauty and truth in them. The story was filled with sadness, hope, love, and friendship.

While it took me a bit longer to enjoy the chapters about adult Nedda, Swyler blended the past and future so beautiful you couldn't help but fall in love by the end. And that ending. Wow, It just blew me away.

Thanks to NetGalley for a copy of the ARC in exchange for an unbiased review.

Light from Other Stars, by Erika Swyler, is a beautiful journey through time and space. Nedda, 11, dreams of going to Mars as an astronaut. Her scientist father, Theo, despite losing his job and mourning the loss of his newborn son, hopes he can help her fulfill this dream. Her mother, Betheen, seems to understand her dreams more than anyone. As we travel through the orange groves of Nedda’s childhood to the realms of outer space, we are reminded of the importance of love and loss, ambition, the importance of women in the workforce, relationships between children and their parents, and the reminder to never give up on our dreams. Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for letting me read this ARC.

“Behind every brilliant woman is her doubly brilliant mother.”

** Trigger warning for child abuse. **

She knew them by their light, the gentle differences—Amit’s warm, yellowish brown, Evgeni who glowed like a pearl, Louisa who was brighter than all of them. Nedda would know them anywhere; if she lost their shapes, she’d recognize their light.

They would likely die. It was why they were childless, unwed. Freedom of sacrifice. It was a shame that only three people would ever again be in the same room as Evgeni when he sang. Only three people would know that Singh ate with his pinkie out. That Marcanta pulled hairs from her eyebrows when frustrated. Children would know their names, and drive on roads named Sokolov or Papas. Children would know their ship, Chawla, and who she’d hauled. A little girl somewhere would rattle off everything she’d read about them, and with it everything she knew about space and time, about light.

###


“I got a boat too. It’s not real big, just enough to take a few people out, that’s all.”

“What’d you name it?”

“Flux Capacitor.”

“Doc Brown’s a better name.”

“Yeah, but boats are women.”

“Everything’s a woman. Cars, boats, houses. Anywhere that’s safe or takes you somewhere better is a woman,” she said.

“So, Chawla is a woman?”

“Obviously.” She opened her eye to find him staring.

###

Her father’s machine was as much hope and wish as it was metal and glass.

###

In the present day – her present, our future – Nedda Papas has achieved everything she’s dreamed of. As one quarter of the crew of Chawla, Nedda is humanity’s last best chance. Climate change has wrought havoc on earth: rising sea levels have disappeared entire islands and shrunk continents, hunger fueled by drought is the new normal, and wildfires plague what little land is left. The planet is beyond saving; now flight is the only long-term option.

Sent to colonize another planet in a galaxy far, far away, Nedda will never again set foot on earth. And she’s okay with that – it’s for the greater good, after all, and doesn’t she owe her species at least that much, anyway? But when cost-cutting and politicking threatens Chawla’s success, Nedda must revisit her past in order to salvage our future.
It was 1986 when Nedda’s world imploded: first, with the Space Shuttle Challenger disaster; and again with Theo Pappas’s magnum opus, the Crucible.

Light from Other Stars unfolds in two parallel narratives: aboard the Chawla, and in January/February 1986, when Nedda is eleven years old.

Middle-schooler Nedda lives Easter, Florida, in the shadow of Kennedy Space Center. She and her professor father Theo – newly laid off from NASA after the latest round of budget cuts – are inseparable, whether devising and executing experiments or trying to spot Halley’s Comet shoot across the night sky. Her relationship with mother Betheen is a little frostier, but not necessarily for lack of mutual interests: Beth is a chemist. But her (women’s) work is undervalued, because of course it is. It also doesn’t help that Betheen has been drowning in grief for most of young Nedda’s life. But spoilers!

Theo has suffered from psoriatic arthritis since childhood, and the joint pain and inflammation makes his work difficult (as does the markedly inferior resources at Haverstone College). Ostensibly, this is the impetus behind his crowning achievement, the Crucible, a machine that can slow down, stop, or even reverse time (and thus heal all manner of physical injuries) by manipulating entropy. (Swyler includes a fair amount of background on the science, only a fraction of which I can claim to understand, and I have no idea how sound it is. But I didn’t find these bits boring or excessive, fwiw.)
Theo’s machine is a success, in a manner of speaking, but things go sideways, because of course they do. When Crucible threatens to devour all of Easter (including Nedda’s best friend Denny), it’s up to Nedda and Betheen to save the day.

Judy Resnik, Sally Ride, Gus Grissom, Roger Chaffee, Ed White – Nedda’s heroes have always been astronauts. WWJD – What would Judy do?

As much as I loved Swyler’s previous novel, THE BOOK OF SPECULATION, I think she managed to outdo herself with LIGHT FROM OTHER STARS. It is beautiful and magical and excruciating in the best way. I am writing this review weeks after turning the last page, tears coursing down my face anew. (Okay, that makes my ugly crying sound a lot prettier than it is. A spectacle, I am making one.)

A big part of this are the passages on death and dying and the afterlife. I’m an atheist, and don’t generally envy people their religious beliefs … that is, unless it’s the comfort that the grieving can find in stories about heaven (or reincarnation, or what have you). Some days I’d give anything to believe that I’ll be reunited with my deceased love ones, eventually. But I can’t make myself believe in something I don’t, even when it’s convenient, and so I go scavenging for secular comfort wherever I can find it, like a sad, lonely little heathen magpie.

I find it in all sorts of places (but mostly books, to no one’s surprise): Aaron Freeman’s essay, “You want a physicist to speak at your funeral.” The passages in THE SUBTLE KNIFE where Lyra and Will lead the ghosts out of the world of the dead. The entire science-based religion created by Lauren Olamina in Octavia Butler’s PARABLES duology. Add to that Theo Pappas’s ideas about thoughts, memories, and electrical impulses; heat and light; gas and carbon and star parts. (Carl Sagan’s quote about starstuff! I knew I was forgetting something!) There’s some truly breathtaking stuff in here. This is a wonderfully godless book; a wonderful book for the godless. I’ll hold it close to my heart and cherish it, always.

(I want desperately to include some excerpts here, but spoilers!)

LIGHT FROM OTHER STARS is also fiercely feminist, even if the ferocity sometimes comes in a whisper instead of a shout. It’s a story about fathers and daughters and fathers and sons … but also, especially, about mothers and daughters and mothers and sons. Nedda’s relationship with Theo is as magnificent as it is tenuous, but her bond with Betheen is all the more wonderful for its complexity, for the way it grows and strengthens and changes – and holds fast even across the vast chasm of space. Nedda’s evolving perception of her mother as she discovers what Betheen is capable of is a revelation. I wonder if they ever perfected that champagne cake together?

Last but not least, it’s a joy to watch as these two narratives come together, often in unexpected ways (Amadeus, I’m looking at you).

Swyler’s writing is exquisite and will pummel you right in the feels. I really hope Netflix picks this one up for a screenplay or miniseries. I need to see what time made liquid looks like, stat.