DNF


I had been super excited to pick this one up -- political space operas are one of my favourite sub-genres of sci fi, and the concept for this one sounded really cool. Unfortunately it fell short of what I had hoped for. I struggled to connect to the characters, and everything happened so quickly that I felt like it was difficult for different elements to pack an emotional punch the way I suspect the author intended.

I think these are all issues that will likely be resolved as the author matures (this was a debut), and I absolutely want to check out work from them as their career progresses. I think this book is worth a try if you're not already a space opera fan; but if you love this sub-genre, you might want to sit this one out.

I liked this book quite a bit! It was far less about tea than I expected, and far less cozy. It was full of political intrigue, backstabbing, and triple double-crossing. So that was fun. It also had a lot of commentary through the story about colonization, imperialism, and racism. What kind of things does a regular person do when they are faced with no choice but to try to survive and help their people? This book brought that up and provided a lot of food for thought. It was a tiny bit long - I kept thinking, ok this must be the finale, only to realize there were still three hours left in the audiobook, for example! The amount of failed assassination attempts became almost funny after a while, there were so many. But overall I truly enjoyed this one and it was pretty unique. Thanks to netgalley and the publisher for the advance eARC. This book is currently available.

The Splinter in the Sky’ shows promise as a debut novel, but lacks substance and doesn’t really hang together as a narrative

Kemi Ashing-Giwa’s The Splinter in the Sky Gets Under Your Skin in a Good Way

During covid lockdown, Kemi Ashing-Giwa discovered tea and N.K. Jemisin’s The Fifth Season. And like her protagonist Enitan Ijebu, tea-specialist-turned-spy, this debut author has brought us a space opera thriller with notes of some of your favorite SFF while discovering inventive new ways to critique colonialism through a sci-fi lens, in a standalone novel that nonetheless has an eye toward a hopeful future.

What sends Enitan up to the eponymous Splinter in the Sky is loss: Koriko, her lunar homeland, has been colonized by the Holy Vaalbaran Empire, with any shreds of independence threatened to be swallowed up by their relatively new rulers. Her sibling Xiang goes missing, and when she appeals to Koriko’s governor Ajana Nebaat (also her ex-girlfriend) for help, she gets murdered for interfering. By the time Enitan maneuvers her way into becoming a political prisoner up in the Splinter, Vaalbara’s floating capital, she is determined to find Xiang without anyone else getting hurt. But then her shuttle gets intercepted by representatives from the Ominirish Republic, who supposedly just signed a peace treaty with Vaalbara but who can’t help but take advantage of this desperate Korikese representative who will make the perfect spy for them.

But once Enitan becomes embedded in the Splinter, she discovers that there are many Vaalbaran citizens and aristocrats who want a piece of her: her modest fame as a tea specialist, her scandalous training as a scribe, her “exotic” appeal as a supposed barbarian. Before she knows it, she’s an unwitting double agent, spying on Vaalbara for the Ominirish but also keeping tabs on Vaalbara’s inner circles of conspiracy for the recently-crowned God-Emperor herself. These personal and political threads make for a propulsive drama that only occasionally falters in the spots where it tries to do too much.

In addition to Jemisin’s Broken Earth series, Ashing-Giwa pulls other influences from Arkady Martine’s Teixcalaan (the Splinter is like the dark inverse of the Jewel of the World) and Ann Leckie’s Ancillary Justice and its sequels. Enitan wields her uniquely blended Korikese teas in a manner that feels in conversation with the Radchaai’s love of the drink and its attendant rituals, especially as pertain to key moments of intrigue and revolution. But Enitan turns her performance into an act of subterfuge, using the distinctive stages of the ceremony—and her status as a barbarian prisoner—to eavesdrop on the arrogant Vaalbarans.

It’s a brilliant device that serves different purposes depending on where in her search Enitan is. It also casts her in different roles according to who she’s serving and when: The same cup she might have brewed with love for Xiang as they studied for their architectural exam becomes a foreign artifact to be cooed over by bigoted and ignorant Vaalbarans who, left to their own devices, would dilute or outright steal the drink and pass it off as their own. Much as Enitan struggles to keep her focus on finding Xiang, her interactions with the Splinter’s inhabitants make it clear that they have no intention of regarding Korikese culture as an equal, but instead as artifacts to steal and pervert, resources to drain and hoard. What begins as a rescue mission boils over into the need to upend the entire empire.

It’s not all as easy as pouring a special brew, either; as Enitan delves deeper into the conspiracies that prop up the throne, she gets the shit kicked out of her more than once. These interludes of unflinching violence are shockingly realistic, as Enitan has no soldier training nor ability to protect herself. And yet every time she licks her wounds and prepares to try again.

Ashing-Giwa gives especial care to portraying a vast array of relationships, familial and romantic, in nuanced ways. Enitan and Xiang have been siblings since childhood; while each has blood relations, Korikese society paired them together instead, and their love and care for one another is unconditional.

Then there’s Deora, a Vaalbaran countess and Enitan’s host in the Splinter. She’s Three Seagrass (from A Memory Called Empire) without the romantic attraction, a well-meaning ally who seems to respect Korikese culture—and, to Enitan’s chagrin, has learned to cook it nearly authentically—yet who will never be a true friend because she will never stop thinking of her charge as a barbarian to be studied at arm’s length.

Where Enitan’s relationships in the Splinter do hew closer to Teixcalaan’s intimate intrigues is in her interactions with the God-Emperor. To friends (or conspirators trying to usurp her) she’s just Menkhet, a brilliant general who nonetheless was not ready to become an Imperator who’s more figurehead than divinely-crowned ruler. Their shifting dynamics, from down-to-earth attraction to Menkhet occasionally pulling out her power like a sheathed sword, make for a fascinating burgeoning romance. But just as these Vaalbarans may never fully see Enitan, can Enitan trust them seeing the entirety of who they are and what they represent?

At one point in the novel, Enitan wields the typical poison and its antidote as she interrogates a conspirator for more names of Vaalbara’s shadow council. Except—she doesn’t necessarily say antidote, she says that the second dose will ease the woman’s suffering. And it does, by killing her. It’s a keen metaphor for the subjugation of empire: Despite all false promises of university degrees or court invites, there is no real growth, only death. But perhaps death could also pave the way for actual change.

There are a number of tonal shifts that come about as more puzzling than intentionally disorienting. The introduction of synths, forbidden in the Vaalbaran Empire, adds unnecessary clutter to the narrative without a proportional amount of depth: An established cultural taboo is broken without much fanfare, and then the plot moves on without much examination of what it means to have these characters occupying the intrigue, other than being conveniently strong bodyguards for Menkhet. And while Enitan and Xiang have a strong bond built on humor, wisecracking moments between the two of them don’t always fit with the incredibly high stakes, not even in a gallows-humor sort of way. A rushed surprise final act drags one mythical figure out of hiding and elevates another more mundane player to gamemaster status, but unfortunately by that point the reveal is rather telegraphed.

Not all of Enitan’s tea rituals are performed flawlessly; more than once she mourns the impact lost when a Vaalbaran mishandles the brew, or hurries through the stages, or (completely misunderstanding the ceremony) drinks all of the cups at once instead of spreading them out and letting their individual flavors linger. At times, The Splinter in the Sky resembles a rushed tea ceremony, with certain plot points not given their proper time to linger or develop into something deeper and more nuanced. But if you look into its figurative dregs at the end, you’ll still find a profound message that will stick with you long after you’re done.

Enitan is a young tea expert and scribe for the local religious order, eeking out a decent existence with her sibling, but when they are kidnapped and her lover is murdered, she’ll set off on a mission to bring her sibling home. Then, she’s pulled into an intergalactic plot to spy on government officials. And that’s just the beginning of a long journey toward justice and vengeance.

Space operas are hit or miss for me, so I decided to give this one fifty pages and then reassess my choice. I couldn’t stop reading it, and decided well before my original mark that I’d not only finish it, but tear through it pretty quickly. I love some queer and BICPOC rep in SFF, and Enitan was an amazing, flawed character with her heart in the right place. Forced from everything she knows and faced with impossible decisions, she navigates her new world the best she can, all while being completely devoted to saving her sibling.

If you enjoy N.K. Jemisin and Nnedi Okorafor, I definitely recommend this one, and if you’re into SFF that moves quickly with twists and turns with the smallest hint of romance and the devotion of sibling bonds, check it out.

This is sci=fi dystopia done compellingly without being overly convoluted. If you like what R. F. Kuang did with the conversation around trust and allyship in Babel and you like science fiction, you should pick up this book.

The prose is lovely and there's something profoundly impactful about the slow-dawning horror of near-constant xenophobia and the fetishization of the MC'S culture, however the actual plot is few and far between. There don't seem to be any consequences to Enitan's lack of respect for the Empire and it feels like we've forgotten about Xiang and Ajana completely, leaving Enitan to a) get seething mad at bigoted nobles and b) just kind of wander around with no consequence for either of them. Perhaps I would have enjoyed it more on audiobook...

Definitely recommend for fans of A Memory Called Empire (for the slow moving political machinations and the care and detail put into the differences in culture and history in the context of a galactic empire)

The Splinter in the Sky is the debut novel of author Kei Ashing-Giwa and is a novel that deals with a theme that is getting more deserved attention in the books I read these days: the issue of Empire, its treatment of colonized peoples, and how those people can, should, and may be able to react to a foe who sees them as inhuman and seeks to change them to fit the Empire's own standards (as Empires in our world have done, time and time again). The novel is centered around a woman Enitan from such a conquered colonized people who takes desperate action in heading to the seat of the Empire when her sibling Xiang is kidnapped mysteriously by said Empire....and follows Enitan as (in her attempt to save Xiang) she gets involved in the political conspiracies and intrigue of the Empire that she hates so much.

It's a setup that I've seen done a number of times in various and often really interesting ways (see C.L. Clark's The Unbroken, Seth Dickinson's Baru Cormorant, Arkardy Martine's A Memory Called Empire, etc.), and The Splinter in the Sky starts really promisingly, especially as Enitan winds up working for the ostensible leader (but really figure head) of the Empire - to whom she's attrated - as well as sending reports to the Empire's main political rival. But The Splinter in the Sky kind of struggles with what to do with this setup once it's established how awful people are to the colonized people, settling on becoming kind of a conspiracy thriller race to kill the members of a shadow council governing the Empire before they can embark on a new deadly war, and then assuming that with the council dead that the now empowered good emperor can change things for the better. I don't mean to ding a book too hard for optimism (or for being more optimistic than those other works I mentioned), but the Splinter in the Sky's setup suggests a realist view of how things work and how difficult it will be to change them and then its ending just kind of throws that away, and I didn't think that really worked for me, either in fitting the story or carrying the themes.

More specifics after the jump:



Plot Summary:
Years ago, the distant moon habitat of Koriko was conquered by the Vaalbaran Empire, one of the two superpowers of the planet of Gondwana. Koriko has little of material value to offer Vaalbara, but the Empire has subjugated its people anyway, placing them under a half Korikan, half Vaalbaran governor, forcing them to learn a new language (but not the most holy Vaalbaran one), and forced to live under conditions enforced and watched by faceless sentinels. To the people of the Empire, the Korikese are less than people - simply savages - and they are treated as such.

Enitan Ijebu just wishes she could live her life without Vaalbaran interference, but at the same time is entirely willing to keep her head down and continue her job - working as a scribe for a Vaalbaran monastery (to their great annoyance due to her heretical skill with their languages) - and her passion - crafting special teas for customers, friends, and family. She has an on again off again relationship with the governor, Ajana, and is fiercely protective of her sibling, Xiang, who wishes to become an architect...even if that means going off into the Empire.

But when Xiang is seemingly kidnapped by the Empire, Enitan becomes determined to find a way to bring them back and save them from whatever fate may have befallen them. To do that, Enitan gets herself taken back to the capital of the Empire as a hostage, where she hopes to find out what happened to Xiang. But to her surprise, Enitan manages instead to come to the attention of not only the leader of Vaalbara's most powerful enemy, but of the Imperator/God-Emperor of Vaalbara herself, a woman who is surprisingly interested in Enitan and promises her freedome for all of Koriko if Enitan will simply act as her agent in rooting out the most powerful people in all of Vaalbara.

It's a task Enitan is decidedly unqualified to achieve...but one she cannot afford to turn down...even if the most likely outcome is her death....


The Splinter in the Sky is a tale that wants to deal with the harsh truths and dark realities of Empire and Colonization. Our story features a protagonist Enitan whose people are conquered by the Vaalbaran Empire and treated as subhuman just because their cultures are different...even though they have just as many technological achievements as their conquerors (not that that would ever be recognized). And as Enitan moves to the Empire in search of a way to save Xiang, Enitan suffers the reality of colonized peoples living amongst their conquerers - being treated as inferior in all the different ways, even when the conquerors are trying what they think is being good to her. So you have the usual sort of nobles and merchants who treat Enitan as exotic and something to be gawked at, you have some who want to try her teas to pretend to enjoy part of the exotic culture, and you have just as bad those who think they are helping by stealing Korikese artifacts and pretending their research allows them to imitate and understand who the Korikese are. These people are at best willfully blind and at most are openly racist and prejudicial, and Enitan's dealing with it all feels incredibly real and is done very well.

And so when the book provides Enitan with a connection to the Empire's figurehead leader, the Imperator Menkhet, well the book starts at first in a similar vein - that Menkhet, despite her wellmeaningness in her communications and overtures to Enitan (with whom she obviously shares a mutual attraction even if, unlike what the rumors say, the two aren't intimate), can't really understand the suffering that Enitan is going through just being in the Empire and how hard she is affected by the prejudice and the oppression and her people's treatment. And in many other books, that lack of ability to understand, or difference in statures (even if Menkhet isn't really noble born like similar characters in other books) would be a recurring barrier...especially with the Empire being too set in its ways and too systematically incapable of change to really be swayed by Menkhet having a change of heart or understanding.

The Splinter in the Sky is not such a book, but how it tries to go in a different direction doesn't really work. What it does is invent a shadow council of oligarchs who secretly rule the Empire for Enitan to have to hunt down and assassinate, and once that's done, with a little light but not too hard trickery, Enitan and Menkhet are able to reform and dissemble the evils of the Empire. This does create a thriller plot that draws one in, and keeps you intrigued, but at the same time, it feels wholly unrealistic if you think about it for more than one second and feels like a laughable way to resolve the book's deeper conflict and themes. Add in the fact that there's a number of subplots that just don't wind up mattering (Enitan for example gets recruited as a spy for the Empire's democratic rival in a subplot that has ZERO impact whatsoever on the story and could be excised without affecting anything at all) and well, the book kind of feels like it wasted its strong setup to resolve it all with a generic thriller confrontation that's been done time and time again.

This is not to say that a happy ending or a dissembling of Empire couldn't be the end result of such a book - but that such a treatment requires a lot more intensive effort than this book really seems to pull off. And that's a shame given how strong and interesting, if depressing, the start to this book was. Hopefully Ashing-Giwa will manage to pull together her next novel in a stronger fashion, because the potential and promise was here, it just couldn't quite be pulled off.

A war has just ended. The Emperor of the Holy Vaalbaran Empire surrendered to the Ominirish Republic after the death of their daughter. Enitan, a scribe from the imperial territory of Koriko, is hoping to grow her own tea business when disaster strikes. Her sibling is abducted by Vaalbaran forces, and her lover, the Vaalbaran governor of Koriko, has been assassinated. To avoid unrest, the Empire demands a hostage, and Enitan volunteers in the hopes that she can find her stolen sibling. She is whisked away to serve as personal emissary to the new God Emperor, and thrown into the palace intrigue that plagues the Holy Vaalbaran Empire. Armed with only her wits and her teas, she is contracted by the Republic to spy on the new God Emperor. Menkhet, the new Emperor, has other plans and hires Enitan to spy on her own aristocrats to secure her new title. Will Enitan be able to keep her plans secret, and still escape with her sibling?

The Splinter in the Sky, by Kemi Ashing-Giwa, is a debut space opera that explores the nature of empire through the eyes of one of its subjects as they deal with the duality of assimilation. It’s a palace intrigue story that follows a woman who has no plans for vengeance, and abhors violence as she learns the rules of empire. While it doesn’t do anything particularly new within the space, it offers a fun exciting romp, with a lead who struggles to maintain her humanity in a world that is far more brutal and exacting than she expected. While this would normally appeal to me, I think The Splinter In The Sky skews more towards a simpler narrative than I normally prefer.

Each chapter is well paced, leading to either a revelation, an action set piece, or a quiet moment between newly bonding friends. It’s readable, and moves quickly from event to event making for a fast paced thriller where the clock feels like it’s always about to run out. While it makes for an exciting novel, I found that it breezed past some of the more interesting implications of the worldbuilding. I never felt like I had time to breathe it in, and it left me wanting.

However, Enitan is a great fish out of water. She is proud, but understands the dual nature of her presence. She is both incredibly noticeable, but able to slip behind the perception of those around her as they assume she is lesser. She uses it to great advantage to collect secrets as most just see her as a curiosity of service, not an intriguing person in her own right. Ashing-Giwa captures these moments with deftness, showing how situations change based on the type of people Enitan engages with. Unfortunately, some of these scenes also went by quickly as Enitan is called away on more important business, and they can sometimes come off as fluff.

On the whole, the characters feel a little wonky to me. I liked Enitan, but I wasn’t subsumed by her narrative. I felt for her plight, and understood her motivations, but I also felt disconnected in some way. While it’s harder for the stakes to be higher in the sense that her lover was killed, and her sibling kidnapped, I just didn’t feel personally for Enitan. I didn’t feel brought into her problems and perspective, despite the perspective of the story. The stakes were raised instantly and I didn’t get a deeper feeling beyond the general sadness and the rage I should feel at her situation. She has a clear sense of morality heading into the Splinter, and tries to adhere to it, but fails out of necessity, learning the nature of empire in the process. Still, even her journey feels a little unpronounced. I don’t need lessons spelled out for me by the book, but I’m not entirely sure that Enitan really changes a whole lot during her time on Vaalbaran. She just sort of seems to do what is necessary, despite her hate of those actions.

But everyone else around her just felt unmoored and frankly, a little unhinged. The God Emperor herself, while interesting in her position and the power she wields, was a little too free traveling for my tastes. I understand that the setting gives Menkhet a little room to be a person, and to slip away from prying eyes, but for pete’s sake, what were her duties to the Empire? It seems like all she had to do was show up for social functions, and carry out the occasional sacrifice with the use of her ax. Which would have been an interesting discussion, but it seems completely ignored. Otherwise, she can just sort of pal around with Enitan with disguises as they both cavort around the Splinter. I had a hard time just accepting someone with so much power, be it tangible or symbolic, could so easily just disappear to get up to hijinx. The rest of the supporting cast just didn’t really have much else to do. That’s not even to get into the flurry of characters that appear for a moment, disappear, and then reoccur as an important hinge point in the various plans.

As much as I liked the setting, I also found myself confused by it. I felt like I didn’t really know where things were in relation to the Empire and the Republic. I got confused about whether the various colonies were on different planets, or if everything was self-contained on the same main planet. I understood that the major power players, the Empire and the Republic were at war on the same planet, but how far it extended I was at a loss. This was also an issue with Enitan’s travels within the Empire itself. I just never felt grounded around a specific focal point that gave a sense of distance. This mostly became an issue during the several times that Enitan or Menkhet was involved in saving the other’s life. It just drained any tension that had any time to build up.

Which leads to my last gripe, the pacing. Everything just sort of happened. Personally, I like a little buildup. On some days, I’ll even take an inordinate amount of buildup for a single bombastic mindblowing payoff. But The Splinter In the Sky just moved from set piece to set piece, especially once the main plot really kicked off. It felt like I was watching chess pieces just get removed in a time lapse video, only for the board to be repopulated and watch it happen again. It’s not to the point of all payoff, there are definitely a couple of neat set ups, but I just found the “set it up and immediately knock it down” formula tiring by the halfway point.

I wanted to like this book more. It has a lot of fun weird things in it that needed some time to bloom. It views empire and co-optation with an aggressive stance that felt fresh, despite the fact that it just seemed to rely on “empire bad” as a core theme. While the relationship between Enitan and Menkhet was fun and occasionally interesting, the entire cast needed more time to stew with each other to really dig into their psyches, motivations and shifting alliances. If you can forgive all of those bits, it is an exciting downhill train ride, but it starts mostly at the top already.

Rating: The Splinter In The Sky – 5.5/10
– Alex

An ARC of this book was provided to me by the publisher in exchange for an honest review. The thoughts on this book are my own.

Thanks to NetGalley and Gallery Books for an e-ARC in exchange for an honest review.

DNF @30%-33%

I had to put this book down. I was very bored with this book. I tried to tandem read w/ the finished audiobook to get through it quickly. I could not keep my interest in Enitan and her struggle to find her sibling. The world intrigued me in the beginning, but I quickly grew bored once Enitan was sent to the Empire. The writing style was easy enough for me to read but couldn't immerse me into the story or world. I think promoting this book for "fans of N.K. Jemisin and Nnedi Okoroafor" is a disservice to this book. Also, I don't think this read like a space opera with political intrigue. If so, then it was quite surface-level and uninteresting.

I was looking forward to reading this, only for me to end up feeling disappointed.

I picked this up because the description sounds SO intriguing and I always thirst for more sci-fi reads. The author is completely new to me so I went into this with no expectations, just excited for some good outer worlds spy shenanigans.
I really enjoyed my time with "The Splinter in the Sky"! It's a creative work of fiction that doesn't invent anything new, but uses established scifi genre ideas and uses them well to build its own world. There's an Empire and a Republic, but both are kinda shitty, and there's a planet overtaken by the Empire, slowly forcing its inhabitants to lose their own culture and even language, turning them into willing subjects of the colonizers that destroyed their home and killed their people. The citizens of the Empire don't even really view them as people - they are savages, barely worth anything but especially not their respect. Our protagonist, Enitan, is a scribe and tea brewer living with her sibling. Their disappearance is what starts the whole plot, and it is followed by the death of Enitan's former lover. To find her sibling and maybe also her lover's murderers, Enitan willingly becomes a hostage in the Empire's capital. To free not only her sibling, but maybe even her whole planet, she agrees to spy for the Republic - and then for the Emperor herself.
Now, does it sound a little far-fetched that both leaders of the most powerful nations to ever have existed in the history of humanity would choose Enitan, a scribe and tea brewer, as their mostly trusted spy? No, and the reasons stated are rather flimsy too. You do have to suspend your disbelief more often than not during the wild ride this book takes you on, but it can be great fun if you don't think about it too hard. There's also a love story that I really enjoyed, although I do question how Enitan manages to make not one, but two of the most powerful women she knows fall for her, but you know what, I don't care about that either. I like her relationship with Menkhet, the Emperor herself, and it fits the story well. Together, these two women do their best to undo a shadow government that has ruled the Empire for ages without anyone ever having had even a chance to stop them before. While this sounds impossible, there is, admittedly, a lot of plot convenience allowing them to succeed where they really shouldn't. It's still fun and exciting to read, and I enjoyed some of the minor characters, too. The villains themselves remain rather boring and onedimensional, but there's a nice twist later on that I really didn't see coming.

All in all, a fun, quick sci-fi read that doesn't invent the wheel and could have benefitted from a bit more complexity in its spy thriller plotting, but it's wonderfully queer and fun nonetheless. 3 stars.

Generally speaking, I found Splinter in the Sky poorly marketed. "Exciting debut space opera," "recruited to spy on government officials," and "just how far she is willing to go for justice" made me anticipate a highly political, sci-fi heavy, action-filled story. Seeing references to N.K. Jemisin and Nnedi Okorafor has me anticipating guttingly emotional stories that are unafraid of the dangerous, ugly, and violent wrongs of the world. Instead, Splinter in the Sky reads more like a YA novel that skipped a grade.

Enitan is an exceedingly naive protagonist stumbling her way through situations that probably should have gotten her killed. While she makes pointed references to her sibling at least once each chapter, she largely lacks any real emotional response to the tragedies she's suffered (except when she is exploding in ways that should definitely get her killed). 50% of the way through the book and she's still done very little spying (and what little she has done has come in a montage). She's not necessarily unlikable or boring, but it's hard to root for a character that is tripping from convenient plot point to convenient plot point with very little agency of her own.

It is also not my personal preference for the morals and messages to be quite so heavy handed. Enitan is, of course, absolute correct in the racism and colonization forces she calls out throughout her time in the Splinter, but it is done with so little grace the reader is left with a lecture instead of a story that they can connect with and feel personally. She is so self-aware (in contrast to her usual naivete) that it draws the reader out of the book. It feels like writing for a much younger reader that may need some hand-holding with complex themes, rather than an adult space opera.

Had this novel been marketed as young adult or more clearly labeled to the softer side of sci-fi, I think it would have had better luck finding its readers. But as it is, I am definitely not one them.

Now THIS is the kind of book I love!

It has all the ingredients needed for me to love a book: tea being a central point in the plot and the protagonist's life, top-notch worldbuilding, amazingly developed complex imperial politics, queer representation, and anti-colonialist themes.

I liked and sympathized with the main character, Enitan, from the very beginning. Poor Enitan's story starts with her working as a scribe in a job she hates, her lover being assassinated, and her sibling Xiang being kidnapped. There is such a delightful, balanced mix of politics, action, and double (triple?) agent espionage in this book, I couldn't stop reading.

With space operas like this, it is very easy for the story to just become a jumble of names of political officials you don't care about and planets you don't remember the significance of. But the opposite is true in this book - it felt easy to keep the rather large cast of characters straight, and I never felt confused. All of the characters, from the most important to those who just show up once, felt sufficiently different from one another and had personalities that jumped off the page. I particularly loved the concept of the God-Emperor, Menkhet; she was a very interesting character, and the only thing I would change about the book is to add some POV chapters from her POV, because I absolutely adore how her and Enitan's relationship developed throughout the story.

If you liked Arkady Martine's A Memory Called Empire or Ann Leckie's Ancillary Justice, this is the book for you. 5 enthusiastic stars for this amazing space opera! Can't wait for more from Kemi Ashing-Giwa!

Enitan is a scribe and tea specialist that is set to save her home from the crippling oppression of the empire after her sibling, Xiang, was kidnapped. The story begins when she is taken as a political prisoner to the Splinter.

Let me start by saying that the world building in this is THOROUGH. You can tell the author took great care into creating such a unique world. It’s complex but not too complicated to follow.

What do you do when you’re faced with such a corrupt empire that’s absorbing and destroying your home? Can you change it by burning it all down? Or rebuild from within There is strong commentary on slavery, cultural appropriation, the white savior trope and so many others.

I see a lot of reviewers complaining about there not being enough character development or they weren’t connected to Enitan. I disagree completely. I could feel the rage that she always had when she was serving the elite of the empire during her tea ceremonies. The way she had to “behave” and code switch in order to get anywhere on the Splinter with elitist Vaalbarans.

This is a queer normative space opera that I would recommend.

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

Thank you S&S for the ARC in exchange for an honest review.

I really wanted to love this book. I think it simply wasn’t sci-fi feeling enough for me. The basic premise—Black, queer, tea specialist turned spy in space was super compelling, but there’s no substance to back it up. Instead we just get a rather dy. sequence of events that play out in the most convenient contrived possible way—an extremely dull love story and characters that never do anything to feel notable despite being at the center of what is allegedly the biggest event happening in this world. Not for me.

The Splinter in the Sky was a good, fast paced, political space opera with immersive descriptions and well developed politics. However, I felt it was sometimes lacking in the plot and characters.

As someone who enjoys the political aspects of books (I know not everyone does), I loved learning about the politics of Enitan's world. I thought it was a powerful message that a world so physically and culturally far from our own (yet is implied to have roots in our own) still continues to have the same issues of oppression we do in our own world.

While I loved the political landscape, and thought it was very well developed, I thought that this sometime came at the cost of the plot. There were times where I would read a certain portion of the book and have a good understanding of the political ramifications of what had just happened, but still be confused about what had literally just occurred (aka how we got from point a to point b). There were sometimes time jumps that felt a little choppy, and I wish more time was spent in the immediate aftermath of high stress situations to help the characters and the readers process what happened.

Overall, I'd definitely recommend this book to anyone who's a fan of science fiction, space operas, spy thrillers, tea (both literal and figurative), and anyone who's looking to diversify their sci-fi and fantasy picks.

Thank you to NetGalley and Gallery Books/Saga Press for the eARC. All opinions are my own.

DNF at 56%

This was not a bad book, but it was not a book for me. This felt a bit like it was one book trying to be several different books and it just wasn't coming together for me. The writing was really nice and I really like a lot of the ideas in this, just the execution was falling a bit short. I will definitely check out other works from this author as she releases them, but for this one, I just am not invested. At my stopping point, it feels like a pretty solid 3 star read.

So some of the things that I liked:
- Nontraditional family structures
- An angry/prickly heroine
- Queernorm society
- Rebellion story with anti-imperialist themes
- MC is a tea expert
- Political intrigue

Some of the things that just weren't working super well for me:
- While I liked the character we were following, I felt like the only thing that was super well fleshed out about her was her anger. I felt like we were meant to have a lot of feelings for what I was experiencing but she didn't have the depth to her that would make me feel her emotions
- Where I stopped, there was the beginning of an enemies to lovers storyline that already felt incredibly insta-lovey
- There is a heavy political intrigue theme as the MC is a political prisoner who is using her status to spy for multiple different entities; however, she starts out way out of her depth and then is all of a sudden an expert and taking on weirdly advanced assignments.
- Part of the reason for the above things though is because I don't think there is a clear indication of passage of time. It felt like we were supposed to be covering months, if not years in the first 50% but based on the way it is written, it seemed like it was just a few days. This I think contributed to the flatness of the characters, the insta-love feel of the romance, and the sudden prowess of the MC in her spy game
- There was already a lot of changing of plot threads and motivations from the beginning of the book to the middle with very uneven pacing. I think that had I been more invested in either the character or the storyline I would have pushed through to see how it ended, but as it is I'm not particularly enthralled with either.

So, long story short, there are good ideas, but not a great execution. There is other SFF that tackles these ideas in a more nuanced and enjoyable manner; however, I do see a lot of promise in the writing and will look for this author's sophomore novel.

Thank you to Netgalley and Saga Press for an eARC. All thoughts and opinions are my own. The Splinter in the Sky is out July 11, 2023.

A big thanks to NetGalley and Gallery Books for providing an eARC in exchange for an honest review.

"A diverse, exciting debut space opera about a young tea expert who is taken as a political prisoner and recruited to spy on government officials—a role that may empower her to win back her nation’s independence." Wait. WHAT?

The Splinter in the Sky by Kemi Ashing-Giwa is a science fiction novel that follows tea-expert turned assassin Enitan, as she traverses the empire to save her brother, after her lover is killed and brother kidnapped.

I literally have no idea what this book was about. It felt like a bunch of pretty words were being thrown at me. The setting lacked a time period, and characters were a little strange at times. To the point that they were being completely out of character. And don't even get me started on the pacing. It felt like a trilogy crammed into a single book.

Ashing-Giwa's debut is fast paced with a good hook: a tea hobbyist braves the colonizing empire in order to save her sibling. I'd be interested in reading more from Ashing-Giwa down the line as she's honed her craft more.

This gave me some Inheritance Trilogy vibes. I did enjoy the world building but I would have like some further character development. I feel that there was more attention to the world building than to the actual story. The premise was good but not as executed as I would have liked.