It's always a bigger let down when you have such high hopes for a book. The Deep Sky was one of my most anticipated reads of the year, and it just fell flat for me. Character driven narratives are my bread and butter, but I fell into the unfortunate circumstance of not really caring for the main character Asuka, her motivations and her relationships. It felt like my enjoyment of the book was hinging on caring about Asuka, and when that wasn't my reality it really hindered my overall experience.

There was a lot of give and take for me between things I liked and things I didn't. The science is always what gets me if done well, and I was very intrigued by integrated and immersive virtual reality. But I just had no patience for most of the characters and their whims.

I felt like there were a lot of loose threads worth exploring that frayed out, and for a conflict where lives depend on resolution, nothing felt particularly high stakes to me at any point. Also, I could see whodunit from a lightyear away.

Overall, this one just disappointed me more than anything because my expectations were let down. I would definitely pick up from this author again since I think she has a voice worth reading, this one just didn't end up doing it for me.

Thank you to Flatiron Books and Netgalley for the ARC!

The Deep Sky is the kind of book that will stay with me for years to come. If I’m being honest, I’m not sure I can put all my feelings into words, there’s an aspect of this book that you simply have to experience for yourself.

When I first came across The Deep Sky, the stunning cover immediately caught my eye. It’s beautiful, full of the human longing for something bigger than ourselves, and unexpectedly layered – exactly what The Deep Sky is as a story. When I began reading, I expected a thrilling mystery on a spaceship tumbling off course into darkness. What Yume Kitasei delivers is an enthralling locked-room style mystery but also so much more. The Deep Sky is so achingly human, so intimate and connected in the face of the isolated void of space. It’s a stunning debut with complex characters, a twisting mystery, and a delicate mastery of craft.

Within the fast-paced mystery, Yume Kitasei finds pockets of slowness. Barreling through space in one moment, we are brought back to Earth, grounded in flashbacks filled with sensory memories.

I love a story told non-linearly, in this case with flashbacks. Yume Kitasei handles this dance across timelines with ease and playfulness. Ultimately, the way she weaves sensory experiences into her writing is truly magical and the standout quality of this book.

We get to know the world and its characters through their senses. Both on the Phoenix and back on Earth, Kitasei roots us into the characters’ experiences by exploring their lived-in reality. This makes The Deep Sky incredibly immersive. I have rarely read a book that managed to transport me into a world with all my senses as intensely as this one!

All the sensory details were my favourite aspect of this story. The prevalent use of augmented reality that provides all crew members with their own worlds was a delightful way to explore different settings in the confinement of a spaceship. Additionally, it was a unique way to get to know the various characters through their personal worlds. Ultimately, when Asuka’s augmented reality program malfunctions and she gets access to everyone else’s when she touches them, it creates this shared reality that’s strangely intimate.

Asuka is both Japanese and American, a two-fold identity that contributes to her always feeling out of place and less than. I appreciated how nuanced Yime Kitasei explored Asuka’s feelings regarding her heritage and that at no point either side of her identity feels less important. Asuka gets to exist, in all her multitudes as a complex person.

This complexity was what drew me to Asuka. Yes, I find her constant sense of imposter syndrome deeply relatable. But I particularly loved how Asuka truly gets to contain multitudes and be a jack of all trades. She thinks she’s only good at surviving, but what she really excels at is adapting and solving problems of all kinds. Seeing her grow into those skills and gain confidence across the twisting events of the story was delightful! Additionally, I will always be invested in (and cry about) complex mother-daughter relationships and Asuka’s strained relationship with her mother took me by surprise. I thought it was executed with such nuance and yes, it made me cry. A lot.

I can’t talk about The Deep Sky without at least mentioning how diverse the cast of characters is! Considering all crew members are required to undergo artificial insemination and raise children, it would be easy to assume that this is an all-female crew. However, the Phoenix’ crew includes a range of gender identities, including a trans man (who happens to be German which was particularly delightful to me, a fellow German). The queerness and variety in gender expression are woven into the fabric of the world in a way that made my heart sing!

Ultimately, I adored all the characters in this book. They’re so vibrant and complex in their identities, if not always likable. I found myself invested in all of their stories and rooted for them to save their mission.

Somewhere in here, there’s a joke about hope and birds, I’m sure of it. My favourite unexpected part of The Deep Sky was the role birds played in the story! If you have ever wanted to learn about birds as a fundamental metaphor for the human relationships in a story, you’re in luck.

The Deep Sky examines humanity at its best and at its worst. In the face of climate disaster, the nations of the world come together for one last ditch effort to save themselves.

But they are also waging wars, destroying the planet, and playing political games. This book wonderfully represents the complexity of humanity, our need to survive, and our longing for something greater than ourselves. The story oscillates between intimate, tender human connections and estranged relationships, reaching across the spectrum of human experiences.

Despite the tense moments and the race against the clock, the destruction of the Earth below: The Deep Sky is a fundamentally hopeful book. It looks at our humanity and our past with a critical eye but also with tenderness. In all the horrors of the world, Yume Kitasei finds beautiful, human moments. The shared glances, the chocolate cake, the promise to create something new.

Overall…
The Deep Sky will have you glued to the page until the very last chapter. Yume Kitasei weaves a space mystery that ambitiously explores earthly disasters and political turmoil, human relationships, and the responsibility we share for each other.

{3.5 stars}

"All authority is fiction."

--------------------

Asuka is an alternative on a space mission bound for a new planet to help humanity start over. It's her job to fill in any other role when needed. That and the fact that she was the last selected for the crew has left her with a chip on her shoulder. When a bomb goes off killing three crew members, she is the one tasked with solving it. As her investigation continues we are given flashbacks to her path to joining the program and ultimately ending up on the ship.

I think I would have liked this one more if I hadn't figured out the culprit pretty early. I liked Asuka and her methodology. Not the smartest in the room but the most resilient. Her arc with her mother and the politics back on earth were pretty interesting.

Read this one if you liked Artemis or The Apollo Murders.

Thanks to Flatiron Books for the gifted copy. All opinions above are my own.

I'm a huge sci-fi fan. Any adult sci-fi that sounds good, sign me up. (Don't get me started on YA.) So I signed up for <i>The Deep Sky</i>. The story follows Asuka, a half American, half Japanese woman part of a crew on a mission to save the human race by repopulating on Planet X. When an explosion happens killing one of the crew, everyone is a suspect.

If you've read other sci-fi books with generational ships, there's a sense that you're drifting through space in a rather large ship. <i>The Phoenix</i> is supposed to be a large ship, but it never really felt like it. After all, a ship where women have to raise their newborn children on the ship should be big. Which brings me to the next point. There's a rather unsettling fixation here with pregnancy (which by the way really needs to be listed as a content warning and it's not). I understand the purpose of the book is women becoming pregnant and repopulating. And I assume that these women were selected because they were the prime candidates to do so, but this book has a rather large number of it's crew pregnant that it almost seems comical. What's worse than that though, is I didn't really like Asuka, the main character! That's a big problem. Yes, I get it. She constantly feels like an outsider no mater where she is. Where does she fit? Will she ever? After a while, it started to grate on me. And remember what I briefly said about YA books. Asuka felt like a YA character to me. I will say, she's the only character who's truly fleshed out. All the others felt like cardboard cut-outs to me. Because of this I lost interest in the story and didn't really care who sabotaged the mission.

Thank you to NetGalley and the publishers for this ARC. I wanted to like this book. I really did, but in the end, this just wasn't for me.

3.5⭐️

If you want a thrilling space mystery with hints of societal commentary on the environment and radicalism, this is for you. The thriller was really high stakes as bombs in space are horrifying, which kept the page turning. I don’t know if the flashbacks to the school was quite necessary, but that could be a me thing.

Thank you to the publisher and NetGalley for an arc in exchange for my review. The book comes out today!!

A space explorer discovers that someone connected to the one-way mission wants to sabotage it. As she investigates the other explorers on the spaceship, she fights her insecurity and memories of her estranged mother. Author Yume Kitasei employs an impressive amount of scientific knowledge without overwhelming readers while also offering a compelling plot in her debut, Deep Sky.

In the near future, Earth is suffering through the worst of the climate crisis. Technology has advanced far enough for major nations to combine their finances in final space mission: sending 80 female graduates of an elite decade-long training program on a one-way trip to Planet X in a distant galaxy. Representatives from several nations have been chosen to continue the human race somewhere else.

Asuka represents Japan, even though she’s only half Japanese herself. Estranged from her mother, Asuka leaps at the opportunity to try out for the mission. Never mind that she’s only 12 years old at the time and needs parental permission. More than anything, Asuka wants to leave everything behind and start over.

Despite her severe doubts in her ability to last beyond the first week, somehow Asuka manages to make it through 10 years of training and competitions. A last-minute snag means she gets on the mission to Planet X just before it takes off. Her mother disapproves strongly, but Asuka doesn’t care.

She boards the shuttle with 79 other females; some are friends, some are rivals, and some are complete strangers. After going into hibernation for 10 years on the shuttle, the crew have all now been awake for 11 months and settling into life in space. Even though they know it’s a one-way trip, tensions still exist. Political loyalties and personality clashes keep the tension simmering.

Even now that she’s on the mission, Asuka still feels out of place. When she and her friend, Kat, go on a space walk outside the ship, a bomb goes off and kills Kat. Asuka manages to make it back inside the ship alive and relatively unharmed, but the ship has been knocked off course and needs a correction as soon as possible or the crew won’t reach Planet X and will be stranded in space forever.

Suspicion runs rampant about how the bomb detonated and how it came aboard in the first place. Two additional crew members died in the blast, including their captain. The new captain puts Asuka on the task of finding out whether anyone on board knew about the explosives, as much to test Asuka’s loyalty to the mission as to keep her occupied with something productive.

As Asuka begins to investigate, she can’t help but reflect on what brought all of them on the mission in the first place. Is it possible the clues to their current predicament are in her memories? Why does her personal tech keep glitching, leaving her unable to experience virtual reality like everyone else? What happens if one of the crew members is responsible for the bomb—what do they do then?

Author Yume Kitasei writes with a confidence and assurance that other debut authors would do well to embrace. Despite the technicalities of flying a one-way mission in space, Kitasei takes her time to explain everything along the way. A handful of the asides feel slightly awkward, more of an information dump rather than an organic part of the narrative, but the majority of them fit right into the story.

Kitasei’s protagonist is a winner all the way around. Asuka matures from a tween to a grown woman through the pages, and readers will find themselves compelled to keep reading to stay with her. Her estrangement from her mother is heartbreaking and even frustrating at times, as strained relationships often are in real life.

The plot falters a little toward the end when the culprit is revealed and the crew come up with their plan to correct the ship’s course. With the buildup throughout the novel and some clever plot twists along the way, some readers might feel slightly underwhelmed at the solution. By that point, however, Kitasei has built a strong enough protagonist in Asuka that most readers will stick with the book until the end to find out whether the mission is abandoned or the crew keep going.

Those interested in science fiction that makes space travel seem realistic will enjoy this one.

The Deep Sky is an intriguing mystery set in a space ship, giving it an isolated setting, locked-room style that served to build tension nicely. The ship has left a struggling Earth in pursuit of a new Earth-like planet to set up a colony world and continue the human race. In support of this effort, the ship is crewed entirely by people who can carry pregnancies and each crewmember is required to carry at least one pregnancy during the journey. This setup stretched my suspension of disbelief just a bit. Though I have not experienced pregnancy and do not have the capacity to, from what I understand it is hugely impactful on one's physical abilities and state, and at worst it can be downright debilitating. Here we see crewmembers going into labor at inconvenient times, or simply being ineligible for tasks due to their pregnancies. On top of this questionable choice by mission control, all crewmembers experience the ship's environment through a system called DAR - an augmented reality system that masks their environment to whatever they prefer to see. Our main character sees forested pathways filled with a variety of birds, and the ship AI recites bird facts to her to soothe her anxiety. Because of DAR, no two crewmembers see the same ship and when things start going wonky there's an added layer of confusion and uncertainty caused by the DAR that often broke the tension of a situation for me.

Crewmembers were trained from childhood through application to an elite private school, followed by years of eliminating those who weren't top performers, who had any sort of illness that may impact them or their ability to carry a pregnancy, or were too politically active. When we see them on the ship, they are young twenty-somethings, but much of their behavior and interaction feels juvenile. I will say it was mostly believable given the setup, but it still grated a bit on me. Complaints aside, the mystery was compelling, and the story does touch on the eugenic-like selection process, the traumas the school put them through, and some interesting political imaginings given the state of the world. I enjoyed a lot about this book, and it proved to be an engaging read overall.

I very nearly gave up on this book early on because I didn't find some of the worldbuilding believable, things that felt particularly off because there's a mystery at the center of the story and half the battle in a good mystery is laying a trail of clues--and, more importantly, missing information. But the information has to be seamlessly missing, explainable in a way that makes sense within the world but ambiguous enough not to become a flashing neon sign that gives the game away.

Kitasei's execution in this regard was lacking, in my opinion. I find it hard to believe that critical areas of a ship would not be under constant surveillance, or that crew members wouldn't have basic biometrics like fingerprints on file. Once I got through these clunky early mechanics, though, the dual-timeline story did manage to pull me in. I wanted to know who sabotaged the ship, and while I wasn't surprised by the answer, I was surprised by the reasoning behind the sabotage.

Beyond the mystery, Kitasei explores quite a few intriguing subjects, including our propensity to escape reality, the ethical dilemma of staying on Earth and trying to fix it v. leaving and trying to colonize other worlds, and the age-old complexity of mother-daughter relationships with a healthy dose of trauma and survivor's guilt as complicating factors. All in all, a good read.

I received an eARC review copy via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. I read this book a bit ago but held my review to drop around the release date.

The book appealed to me/I requested a review copy because it sounded similar to Red Rising blended itself with Harry Potter.

Perhaps because I had just finished reading Golden Son, but I found this book to be a good-but-not-great experience, and there's nothing wrong with that, it just didn't hit as well with me. The main reasons this YA sci-fi novel wasn't a hit for me were that the setting and the timelines didn't blow me away

3.5/5 stars (rounded to 3).

I love space books. And the setting in this is no exception. I love it. I love how this book starts, definitely gets you invested very quickly. I didn't guess who the traitor was so that was nice. I really did not like the chapters leading up to them boarding the ship.

This was a good setup for an outer space murder mystery, but it had several things working against it. The wasn't enough distinction between characters to make them memorable as individuals. The use of the DAR (VR) seemed overly used and confusing in the writing. Hard to get character's motivations and suspicions.

<b>3.25✨</b> A decent debut overall that I wish I’d been in a better mood to read / wasn’t completely sure why the blurb appealed to me to begin with aside from space. 🫢😅 A whodunnit isn’t usually something I go in for without other contributing factors, and while the second half of this book did pick up and become more compelling, much of the first half felt like work. I mostly enjoyed the non-linear storytelling (I very rarely don’t), and the parts back on Earth felt the most interesting and poignant for me. I also enjoyed Asuka as the main character - I feel like she kept quietly believing in herself and working the problem, and that went a long way toward my finishing the book.

+/- short chapters
- a bit too much present day slang in the first half
+ non-linear
+ LGBTQ+ rep
- guessed a few twists
+ emotional undercurrents / motivations done very well

<b>CW:</b> fertility issues, miscarriage, death of a child, strained parent/child relationships, racism, terrorism

<i>Thanks to NetGalley and Flatiron Books for an eARC of this book!</i>

Thanks to Flatiron for the copy of this book!!

Yume Kitasei coming in hot with an incredible debut!

The mission is straightforward: 80 recruits head to deep space in The Phoenix as humanity's last hope when the Earth is on the edge of environmental collapse. The recruits also have childbearing potentail to start a new generation. But it goes off course when a bomb kills multiple members of the crew. Asuka, our main character, is the only survivor of the explosion and the obvious suspect.

While the mission is simple, the charaters are complex. The narratives on mother/daughter relationships, estrangement, pregnancy and childbearing potential, belonging to multiple ethnicities, and friendship are all so well-developed in this dual timeline, locked-room mystery.

This is perfect for fans of:
- books with a diverse cast
- locked-room mysteries
- Project Hail Mary
- the movie Sunshine

This is a very good science fiction book. The main character is Asuka who is part Japanese and part American. She is on the first Earth voyage to a distant star. They were in hibernation for the first ten years and are near the beginning of the next ten year cycle where they will become pregnant and start raising their children before going back into hibernation for another ten years before arriving at their destination. Asuka is representing Japan on this journey that was the brainchild of one woman and was partially funded by many countries, who also have representatives on the ship. The story goes back and forth between the present challenges that they are facing and the years of training that started when everyone on the ship was 12 years old. The concept of an entire crew who is capable of bearing a child to grow their population is not one that I have seen before and I found it interesting. The last quarter of this book was a real nail biter, wondering how it was going to end.

I received a copy of this book to review through NetGalley.

THE DEEP SKY, the debut novel from accomplished Yume Kitasei, is a gloriously Pride-filled Space Drama. I say Drama rather than Opera, as it focuses much more intensely on the emotional human cost and on the intangibles of Friendship, family, love, loyalty, and particularly of nationalism and chauvinism. Actually I am surprised that the LGBTQ+ elements and individuals are never the targets of ostracism, whereas national nativity, ethnicity, and political views certainly are targeted. The more I consider this, the odder but more gratifying this is. [I am not gratified about political divisions, national chauvinism and rivalry, nor ethnic bigotry!] But seeing LGBTQ+ issues treated matter-of-factly is gratifying.

For my own interest, I would have enjoyed more Hard Science [never can get enough], but that's not this novel's intent. Instead, THE DEEP SKY provides an entertaining and thought-provoking 416 pages of Space Drama, Coming-of-Age in a rigid Earthside Space Academy, friendships, birth family and found family, and discovering one's purpose...at last.

An explosion imperils an interstellar expedition from Earth, setting up a mystery that is the core of the plot. There is a great deal of backstory about the relationships among the characters, which is presumably there to highlight possible motivations for their attitudes and actions. Naturally, it takes time and mistakes to solve. I am not a person who much enjoys what to me is kind of soap opera personal relationships, if you do you’ll like this book. It is well written, with a logical plot. I think that refering to the book as a thriller is totally off, it’s a mystery and a decent one.

When an explosion sends the interstellar colony ship, Phoenix, off course, it’s Asuka’s job to find out what happened. As the ship's “Alternate” she is uniquely qualified to investigate any part of the ship and all of the work crews. Was it a mechanical malfunction? Rogue AI? Or sabotage? And can Asuka figure it out before anything else goes wrong?

The plot as I just described it is the framework on which the story’s themes hang. This is a sci-fi story with interstellar space travel, matter recyclers, and physically integrated computer AI. And while that and the mystery are fun, the real meat of the story focuses on identity, interpersonal relationships of all sorts, and a person’s responsibility to their planet, their family, and themselves. The story jumps back and forth in time as we follow Asuka’s journey to the stars and then her journey through them.

I liked the characters. That’s not to say all the characters were likable, but I found them compelling and Kitasei did a fantastic job of differentiating each character through language, voice, and mannerisms. Asuka’s relationships with many of these characters is fleshed out, not in the present, but in flashbacks as they all train for this mission. We get to see how they all grew up, or didn’t, over the last 22 years.

This book is somehow a slow paced page turner. I devoured this book. Every time I put it down, I wanted to pick it right back up. I was sneaking in pages on my phone at work. I wanted to finish it so badly. And I’m still not sure exactly what about it snagged my attention so hard, but I’m so glad I requested this ARC.

⚠️ Content Warning ⚠️
Pregnancy plays a huge role in the plot of this book. Many of the characters are pregnant and there is death in the book of a pregnant individual. It’s not graphic, but it is there.

This book follows a long term space mission manned by crew of all women and non-binary people, while the environment on Earth may be beyond saving. It alternates back and forth from the years they spent growing up and training together, to the present on the spaceship where things start to go sideways.

I love the fact that the cast of characters are all AFAB (the mission needs people able to carry pregnancies). There was interesting dynamics between crew members - they knew each other throughout their formative years, in a grueling competition for a spot on the mission, and now they must rely on each other in deep space. There is great tension and mystery as our main character Asuka tries to figure out what caused an explosion on the ship and who is to blame. This is definitely heavy on solving the mystery, but there's thrills and plenty of science fiction too.

The sci-fi elements were interesting and I especially loved the aspects of AI and digitally altered reality. Overall, a fascinating sci-fi thriller that explores many important things including racism/nationalism, identity and belonging, and hope for humanity.

I love a sci-fi thriller/mystery, so I was delighted to receive an ARC of Yume Kitasei’s The Deep Sky. Set in a near future in which Earth’s environment is collapsing, The Deep Sky follows a group of young women astronauts who plan to give birth while traveling to a distant livable planet. However, not long after coming out of their initial 10-year cryosleep, a bomb kills part of the crew and knocks the ship off course. Asuka, the only surviving witness, takes it upon herself to get to the bottom of this locked room mystery.

The Deep Sky is written with a dual timeline—in alternating chapters, we see the young women enter an elite boarding school to train for the mission and compete for one of the 80 spots on the spaceship. The set-up reminded me of Ender’s Game and this storyline helped provide background on the characters that Asuka investigates in the alternate timeline. In the “present”, Asuka’s undertaking to discover the bomber’s identity and get the ship back on track is ACTION PACKED.

The Deep Sky features climate change, AI, virtual reality and includes a diverse, largely queer cast. In addition to being a total page-turner, Kitasei’s novel feels like a refreshingly progressive re-write of the sci-fi that many of us grew up with. Thanks so much to Flatiron Books and Netgalley for the advanced reader’s copy! (Out 7/18)

ume Kitasei’s debut novel is a whodunnit set in a spaceship, where the stakes are high not just for main character, Asuka, and her crewmates, but for the future of the human race. Kitasei balances the forward momentum of a classic mystery with a dual timeline that helps readers contextualize THE PHOENIX’s mission - interpersonal relationships, geopolitical tensions between home countries - as Asuka is tasked with casting doubt onto every person she has grown up with in order to find a potential murderer.

Asuka’s position as the “alternative” makes her best suited to play detective, but also enforces the imposter syndrome that plagues her constantly. This constant feeling of inadequacy - as a countrywoman, as a crew member, as a daughter, as a mother to the next generation - is Asuka’s largest character flaw and endearment. It’s also incredibly relatable. The meritocracy inherent in the program, funded by a billionaire, as a last ditch effort to bring countries together amidst a crumbling Earth feels so large; but a woman comparing her achievements to others in her workplace keeps the story grounded.

I loved the presence of technology as both a form of escape and something more sinister. Alpha, their AI, and DAR, which allows the crew to see the world in unique, personal landscapes, help develop an almost gothic atmosphere in contrast to the ship’s actual clinical and mass-produced feel. Coupled with the far away presence of Mission Control back on Earth, the pure isolation of the characters who are traveling into the unknown feels especially creepy, and the current emergency more urgent.

My main frustrations with the book are more personal than technical. I grew frustrated by Asuka’s insecurity, which made her feel inconsistent as a character at times. Her relationships with supporting characters felt disconnected, making it hard to understand why she was so sure this or that person didn’t have it in them to sabotage their mission. Her growth by the end of the novel was warmly welcomed by me, though, even if the journey there didn’t necessarily feel fully earned.

This is a great read for folks who love:
- Space
- Found (competitive) family
- Lots of queer characters
- Climate Literature
- A mystery with a satisfying end
- Explorations of pregnancy/birth (both literally and metaphorically)