Thank you to Netgalley and Titan Books for the ARC in exchange for the honest review.

The Moonday Letters follows the story of Lumi, born on Earth but serving as a healer on Mars, while she investigates the disappearance of her spouse, Mars. The story is told through successive letters from Lumi to Sol, as she narrates what's going on around her, interspersed with some replies from Sol, snippets of worldbuidling. All in all, I felt the author created a lyrical world with an emphasis on character and relationships, in contrast to heavy plot choices that you usually see in sci-fi. I felt like this book would aptly describe cozy sci-fi, so if you're looking for a story more reminiscent of Star Wars, this isn't it, but that doesn't make it a less worthy read.

The author's capacity for prose is beautiful. They have a real skill for description and bringing out the character in such a soft, deliberate way. I found the structure of the book to be the most compelling. The worldbuilding was solid but of a style underlying the surface, which makes for a very haunting literary experience.

Ethnobotanist Sol Uriarte is caught up in their environmental research and wants to help ease tensions between wealthy Mars and crumbling Earth.

Their spouse Lumi has been left in the dark about Sol’s true involvements.

This book was definitely not for me. I was looking forward to a constant back and forth exchange of letters between spouses that demonstrated their love as they navigate an inter-planetary environmental issue. That’s really not what I got. I described it to someone as a story about a couple where one goes on an exciting multi planet adventure and we’re stuck following the perspective of their worried spouse at home. I found this book to be very slow paced. I felt like I was reading a diary/journal rather than letters to a spouse. Because we were following the “worried spouse” the action we see was pretty minimal. I never really fell in love with the characters either. By the end I was not rooting for anyone to get anything done. I just did not care. And if you were hoping for epic declarations of love, spicy scenes, and grand romantic gestures save yourself time and find a different book. The love is a bit more nuanced and subdued.

There was also a lot of time spent discussing Lumi’s career as a healer which I’m not sure I understood the purpose of including in the book.

If you were looking for a book about potential consequences of inhabiting other planets, socioeconomic consequences of multi planet living and a potential outcome of global warming, this might be a book for you. I do feel if you were inclined to participate in a book club/group discussion that cared about the environment this might be a good book for discussion.

As I finished the book, I stared at the Mediterranean landscape unfolding in front of the train window, stunned for a moment to be here, wondering why I was back on Earth, and at the same time, feeling lucky to be on Earth and hopeful, while feeling dread at the current and future effects of climate change.
This book is one of the book gems that allows a reader to truly feel an experience and be in someone else's shoes, akin to an outstanding video game. A cli-fi set in different bodies of the solar system, that explores different topics without feeling all over the place. A mix of fantasy and science fiction that works incredible well and stays believable. An epistolary novel that feels intimate and global at the same time. A study in grey areas that still has values and opinions, not avoidance.
I loved following Lumi's journey as the main character searches for their spouse Sol in the galaxy, with themes of sustainability, the environment, social/economic justice and more, unravelling in a crescendo.
I really want to read Emmi Itäranta's other books now!

I want to thank NetGalley and Titan Books for providing me with an advanced reader copy of the book in exchange for a fair review.

I really, truly, desperately wanted to love The Moonday Letters. It was pitched as This is How you Lose the Time War but also climate fiction and a mystery. The description is apt, but the whole is less than the sum of its parts. Which is a crying shame, because I still liked this book--I just couldn’t love it, and it seemed determined to push me away every time I started to get drawn in.

It’s impossible not to be enchanted by the sentences and the world-building in this novel. If I were rating purely on world-building and vocabulary and vibes, this book would get a solid five stars. There’s a description of the society on Europa that I am still thinking about, and when I do my heart skips a beat and my breath catches. The way magic and science interact is great and like nothing I’ve read since This is How You Lose the Time War. But the characters' motivations are equally gauzy and the longer you look the less well they hang together.

But if you’re good with floating along on vibes alone and willing to ignore that the mystery doesn’t really hang together, you could still have a pretty good time reading this book. And perhaps I would be feeling more positively about it if I’d had the warning I’m about to give you--which is that there’s an on page very explicit and very tragic pet death which I was absolutely shocked by and found quite upsetting.

Ultimately I think this book confused plot ambiguity with moral ambiguity, and had enough missteps that I regretfully say it was merely good, and not great. But if you can hang with some pet death, and don’t mind ambiguity, this could be for you. I’d also recommend fans of Jeff Vandermeer give it a shot.

I was provided with an advance copy by the publisher in exchange for this honest review.

Actual rating: 4.5 stars

The Moonday Letters is set in a future world where humans have colonized parts of space. It is a series of letters by the main character Lumi, to her spouse Sol, an ethnobiologist who has gone missing from her lab during increasing threats of ecoterrorism.

I absolutely loved this book. The beautiful, lyrical writing was such a treat. Despite being a slower paced book, reveals from the past and the writing kept me interested the entire time. The letter format made the exposition feel natural. One of my favourite parts about this book was the world building and how Emmi Itäranta imagined humans living in space in the future.

This was just an absolute treat to read.

At first I didn’t know what to expect. I was irritated by the contents and the style, it took a bit time to get used to it. But then I realised that the book is different and found it very refreshing kind of sci-fi, dystopia and deep relationship. I also liked the “magical” elements of the story. I liked the main character of the story and the way we learned about the other characters through her eyes. The parts with encyclopaedic entries or newspaper quotes reminded me of Asimov’s Foundation Trilogy.
Overall very interesting read I would recommend.

HIGHLIGHTS
~run, don’t walk, when a lynx comes calling
~“Have you considered…FLEAS?”
~Earth is a holiday resort now
~Martians are the new 1%
~lichens are the key to everything

The Moonday Letters is as beautifully strange, and as strangely beautiful, as all of Itäranta’s books so far, and I’m so happy that it was translated into English so I could read it!

Itäranta takes the bare bones of a story we’ve seen many times – one spouse uncovering, bit by bit, the other’s very unexpected secrets – and frames it within a distant but all-too-plausible future; one where Earth is ruined, scraping by as a holiday destination for the wealthy of Mars and various space-cities. Planet Earth has been reduced to little more than a series of theme parks and holiday resorts, such as Winterland, where those born off-planet can visit to experience snow and reindeer. (A few subtle clues make it clear that Winterland is almost certainly an amalgamation of Finland and Lapland post-climate change.)

But the story doesn’t start there; it starts on Mars, where Lumi, born on Earth but a recipient of a more-precious-than-gold visa, is travelling to meet her spouse Sol. The two of them are often apart for weeks or months, so Lumi keeps a kind of diary which she shares with Sol whenever she finishes a notebook. The Moonday Letters opens with Lumi beginning a new notebook, and this journal – which could also be considered a very long letter, written in first-person and directed at Sol – makes up the bulk of the book, although there are also articles, excerpts from fictional books, and emails between various characters included.

ANYWAY.

Sol isn’t at the rendezvous they and Lumi arranged; nor the next one; nor the one after that. At which point enough red flags have appeared that Lumi starts digging into Sol’s current work and past. What she finds has implications for the entire solar system and the future of humanity.

I don’t think it’s quite correct to label this an ‘eco-thriller’, simply because The Moonday Letters feels much more soothing than edge-of-your-seat. There are no high-speed chases, heists, daring rescues, or the like. It’s measured, calm, a slow and careful unfolding, question and answer following one after another like someone delicately placing the pieces of a puzzle on a table, one after another.

And I think that was exactly the right way to tell this story, where all the characters feel so immensely, completely human, messy flaws and all. The Moonday Letters may be set a few hundred years in our future, but I had no trouble at all believing in every character – they all felt so real, even the frustrating or unlikeable ones. For example, although I despise the manufactured drama of characters-not-talking-to-each-other, I wholeheartedly believed that Sol really was the kind of person who would keep these secrets from their wife. It didn’t feel manufactured; it felt like the kind of idiotic decision real humans make every day.

(In this context, that’s a compliment!)

That realism – that sense of it all being so real – is even more impressive when you consider the setting and staging of this story. Itäranta has created a far-future, post-planet-Earth society as sci-fi as you could possibly wish…but Lumi herself is a shamanistic healer, who routinely travels to other worlds with the help of her soul-animal to retrieve the lost pieces of her patients’ souls.

???

It shouldn’t work, but it does; there’s no dissonance between space travel and astral travel here. Lumi talks about her work and experiences in a matter-of-fact way that doesn’t leave room for disbelief, never mind scoffing or mockery, and it serves as a ribbon of quiet spirituality that’s fundamental to the story, beautifully intertwining with the book’s environmental themes.

The only thing I didn’t like about The Moonday Letters was Sol themself, who in no way deserves the awesome Lumi, as far as I’m concerned. There were many points where I would have liked to tell Lumi to quit searching and let Sol disappear, if that was what Sol wanted to do; Lumi can do better than this patronising cheese-rind of a spouse (Sol’s take on Lumi’s work made me fume!) I completely failed to understand their marriage, even if I very much believed in Lumi’s love and her need to make sure Sol was okay.

SOL YOU DO NOT DESERVE YOUR AMAZING WIFE!

Ahem.

I’m not sure I’d call this a fun book, exactly, but it’s a very good one, and I loved how quiet and meditative it felt. It pulled at my heartstrings, but gently. I loved the message that we don’t have to give up spirituality and magic as we go forward into the future…and that we should never forget where we came from, no matter how far from Earth we end up going.

Another beautiful work from Itäranta that you definitely shouldn’t miss.

Rating: 2.5/5 stars

Discovering Emmi Itäranta’s previous novel The City of Woven Streets was such a wonderful surprise, back when it was first released. Although not a full five-star read from a story- and character perspective, it was Itäranta’s beautiful prose and ability to create vivid atmosphere, completely pulled me in. Following this hidden gem, I was very excited to read more from her voice. Her latest release brings back some of what I enjoyed about her previous work, but also a lot more of what I didn’t enjoy, therefore making the whole feel like an unbalanced experience that didn’t work for me personally.

The Moonday Letters combines a mystery and a love story, inside a sci-fi setting. Lumi is an Earth-born healer whose Mars-born spouse Sol disappears unexpectedly on a work trip. As Lumi begins her quest to find Sol, she delves gradually deeper into Sol’s secrets – and her own.

The prose, worldbuilding and the boundaries for the story to take place in where once again immaculate, just like in The City of Woven Streets. Itäranta knows just the right words to pick to bring her world to life in front of your eyes, alongside with the feeling that it’s supposed to invoke. The Moonday Letters presents a world that is rich in melancholy and hope, that has depths of mythology and history to back it all up. Massive credits go to translator (whom I cannot find the name of) as well, for capturing those nuances within the English version. Unfortunately, the set-up and presentation were stronger than everything else. The stage was set beautifully, the backdrop was gorgeous, but then the show didn’t get off the road, and the characters fumbled their lines. For a “sci-fi mystery”, The Moonday Letters is very light on the mystery and plot, and heavy on the relationship between Lumi and Sol. The fact that neither of them felt very memorable as individual characters, combined with their relationship being set up almost exclusively through letters to another, made it difficult for me to connect or get invested in them. When so much of your plot hinges on two characters finding their way back to each other, but you as a reader can’t feel the chemistry between them, my investment quickly waned. Add an unbalanced, but overall glacial pacing (an issue I overlooked in The City of Woven Streets because I liked the rest of it) and I found myself at times struggling to even continue.

Note that epistolary style novels, especially in which the central relationship develops mostly through letters, are something I’ve struggled with in the past before. It may be partly a “it’s not the book, it’s me”-situations. If you are a fan of this genre, and are looking for a lesser known author to support, Itäranta is one to check out! Personally, I’m hoping her next novel and I get along better.
As a final thought: I truly hope the publisher will consider releaseing an audio-version of this novel. Not just to make stories available to a broader audience, but also because I feel like the characterisation (and differentiation) in this novel would greatly benefit from a good audio-cast.

Many thanks to Titan Books for providing me with an ARC in exchange for an honest review. All opinions are my own.

In the year 2168, when Sol mysteriously disappears, their wife Lumi sets on a quest to find her. The journey is beautifully told mainly through letters from Lumi to Sol; we’re taken from colonies on Mars to the few still habitable parts of Earth and to Sol’s personal history.

This is story has mystery, sci-fi, eco-terrorism and a small fantastical element but in the heart is the love between Lumi and Sol.

The writing and world-building are stunning. This book serves as a reminder of how terrible humanity is of learning from its mistakes, no matter how bad the consequences were.

This was a highly entertaining and gripping read, would love is Itäranta would set more books in this world, will be checking out more of her work.

This gentle, quiet clifi novel is written primarily in the form of diary entries of Lumi as she searches for her spouse, Sol. Lumi is a healer of souls and Sol is an ethnobotanist trying to find a biological cure for the climate disaster on Earth. Lumi is following Sol's trail across colonies, moons, and orbiting satellite cities, revealing to the readers what she learns about Sol's disappearance and potential ties to a terrorist organization. We also learn about Lumi's development and practice of healing souls. This slow-pacecd novel is more philosophical exploration of how far would a person be willing to go to do good than a thriller or mystery. The pace is more along the lines of the recent "Sea of Tranquility" by Emily St. John Mandel.

This is somehow the third book I've read in the last month that has something to do with fungus. It was not intentional, and I’m kind of weirded out by it.

But that's neither here nor there. This was a good cli-fi book. There’s science and magic and mystery: all wonderful ingredients. It was also beautifully written--the author has a lyrical way with words. It seemed like a believable world for over 100 years in the future, and it was both optimistic and dystopic in a way that felt very realistic.

Lumi’s spouse, Sol, has disappeared, and Lumi finds herself thrust in the middle of a mystery. She learns about herself and her partner and the world they live in, and it’s an introspective adventure.

If I had known it was an epistolary novel, I wouldn’t have picked it up. I usually find them hard to get into as the format moves the reader further from the action. In this case, the letters were a useful rather than distracting device.

Thank you to Titan Books and NetGalley.

A really enjoyable read that was interesting and intriguing. It was well written with beautoful prose, vivid descriptions and rich imagery. I couldn't put it down.

This book is beautiful. It’s such an interesting story, with beautiful worldbuilding and great writing. I enjoyed the characters and had a great time reading it.

An intriguing read, worth checking by readers interested in imaginative worldbuilding, solid characterization, and clever plots. Highly Recommended.