Light From Uncommon Stars

"You don’t know this one? Oh, my goodness, I’m so excited to tell you about this book! Ryka Aoki is a dear friend of mine, a trans Asian author. What is so wonderful about this book is that it is science fiction and fantasy all boiled into one. Most of the cast is Asian; all of the cast, from what I remember, is queer; much of the cast is trans. I got to read an early copy of this before it came out, and I remember thinking: Who the hell is Ryka Aoki? And why have I never heard of her before? If you look at the book cover you can see my big, lovely blurb across the front, because I love this book so much. It’s set in the San Gabriel Valley in California. It is about donuts. It is about cursed violins. It is about bargains with the devil. And there’s also spaceships and aliens. There’s this woman who is trying to escape damnation, and so she must go after seven violin prodigies – and the main character, Katrina, is one of them. She is a young trans woman who is on her own, going out into the world, and she meets this woman named Satomi. Satomi is vastly powerful. It sounds like a lot, and every time I try to explain this book, it makes me sound like I’m a little bit crazy. But that’s okay, because if it does sound like a lot, Ryka Aoki handles it like a master. This is my opinion: Light From Uncommon Stars is one of the most important queer novels written in the last ten years. I think it is tremendous, I think it is important. And the trans representation in it is so vital and paramount, and at the front of the story – and we get to have books like this. How crazy is it that we get to have books like this? I’m so thrilled that Ryka got the success with this book that she did; it was nominated for a bunch of awards. Well the last the person that I didn’t put on the list, but I think it’s important to mention, is not cozy fantasy. It’s a little different. My biggest inspiration is Bill Watterson, who wrote the Calvin and Hobbes comic strips. If you have not read Calvin and Hobbes as an adult, if you only read it as a child, please go back and read! It works on levels that you could not even begin to imagine when you were a kid. It is the funniest, most concise, smartly written comic. And yeah, there’s moments when it’s stupid and goofy and wonderful, but there’s also pointed critiques throughout the entire series. It comes back to the wordplay, the turn of phrase, and it’s just extraordinary to me. The character of David in Somewhere Beyond the Sea , the boy yeti, is inspired by Calvin from Calvin and Hobbes . I love Calvin and Hobbes with my whole heart."