Light From Uncommon Stars

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As a civilization progresses, it goes through wars, pandemics, catastrophes. those that survive grow more astute, more perceptive, more advanced. Diseases are conquered, infirmity eliminated. Life spans increase. Suffering becomes largely a memory.

Satomi undergoes her own amazing journey, going from a resigned and somewhat disillusioned though accepting person living only to reclaim her music and her soul, to someone who finds real, unconditional love, a chance at an unexpected and out of this world new beginning, and a family and a purpose she never knew could be hers. Part historical fiction, part magical realism, and 100 percent adventure. Thirteen-year-old Mei reimagines the myths of Paul Bunyan as starring a Chinese heroine while she works in a Sierra Nevada logging camp in 1885. Lan shook her head. "They'll need to find the Grand Unified Theory a few more times before they can even begin to understand what 'everything' is -- sorry, I didn't mean to offend your civilization." Enter her mother’s research intern and resident math genius Farah Ahmed. Tara makes a deal with Farah – help her pass the math course and she’ll welcome Farah into the local Bollywood Drama & Dance Society.Yka Aoki (she/her) is a poet, composer, teacher, and novelist whose books include He Mele a Hilo and two Lambda Award finalists, Seasonal Velocities and Why Dust Shall Never Settle Upon This Soul. Ryka's work has appeared or been recognized in publications including Vogue, Elle, Bustle, Autostraddle, PopSugar, and Buzzfeed. Her poetry was featured at the Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center, and she was honored by the California State Senate for "extraordinary commitment to the visibility and well-being of Transgender people." By the light of her phone, Katrina applied concealer around her eye and to her cheek. It would be better not to face the world with visible bruises. Edwin! Windee! Didn’t I tell you not to run in the halls? Your brother is tuning the warp field. And why aren’t you at your posts?” courtesy IMDB (c) Warner Bros. Family Entertainment) Halloween would not be Halloween without Scooby-Doo! somewhere in the hauntingly spooky and hilariously freaky mix and, of course, solving a great mystery which in the case of 1999’s Scooby-Doo! and the Witch’s Ghost is literally bewitching one quaint New England town. The Continue Reading There was still work to do; there would be good days ahead, and terrible ones. But now there was understanding. And with understanding, all things were possible.”

I know I’m not gay. Gay boys like other boys. I hate boys. They’re mean, and scary, and they’re always destroying something or saying something dumb or both. With unflinching honesty and lyrical prose, spanning from 1960s Hawai’i to the present-day struggle of a young woman mourning the loss of a father while unearthing truths that reframe her reality, Long Live the Tribe of Fatherless Girls is equal parts eulogy and love letter. It’s a story about trauma and forgiveness, about families of blood and affinity, both lost and found, unmade and rebuilt, crooked and beautiful. With time running out, can Maren survive long enough to rescue Kaia from impending death? Or could it be that Maren is destined for something greater than she could have ever imagined? Survival against impossible extraterrestrial odds: Invasion ends its second season with hope … and not? (S2, E6-10) But in a donut shop off a bustling highway in the San Gabriel Valley, Shizuka meets Lan Tran, retired starship captain, interstellar refugee, and mother of four. Shizuka doesn’t have time for crushes or coffee dates, what with her very soul on the line, but Lan’s kind smile and eyes like stars might just redefine a soul’s worth. And maybe something as small as a warm donut is powerful enough to break a curse as vast as the California coastline.Aoki's novel is an exciting, wild web of an adventure, an unputdownable book about music, found family, and identity. Diving into the tough subjects, Aoki's book emerges with a joyful, queer, radical ballad of a story. . .”— Booklist, starred review I tried to play louder to make them listen. I tried to play harder so they would understand. I tried to play and play and play, because as long as I played, everything would be okay. “But then my hand started to hurt. And then the pain got worse. Much worse—to the point where I would touch the violin and my entire arm felt like it was on fire.” The lives of three women—Katrina, Shizuka, and Lan—become entangled by chance and fate in Ryka Aoki’s Light From Uncommon Stars, a defiantly joyful adventure publishing September 28th with Tor Books. From the author: Letting it end there would be tragic. So, with the help of his best friends, the comfort of his haikus and lists, and even strange, surreal appearances by his hero, Oscar Wilde, Ken will find that love is worth more than the price of heartbreak.

Nova Huang knows more about magic than your average teen witch. She works at her grandmothers’ bookshop, where she helps them loan out spell books and investigate any supernatural occurrences in their New England town. Even Miss Satomi didn’t know how difficult it was when you didn’t feel real. Even Miss Satomi didn’t know how it felt when the only real thing genuine about you was the hurt your existence caused.” Light from Uncommon Stars, by Ryka Aoki, is described as “ Good Omensmeets The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet” and wow, is that an accurate comparison. Featuring a bevy of characters and narrative perspectives, Aoki weaves the tale of Katrina, a trans teenager fleeing an abusive home life, Shizuka, an older-than-she-looks violin teacher out to save her soul, Lan, an alien refugee from the Galactic Empire who owns a donut shop, and Lucia, the daughter in a family that only passed its trade through its sons. Shizuka Satomi has sent the souls of six of her students to hell, choosing them carefully, training them as violinists, and then letting them play with her special, cursed dogwood bow so that their souls are consigned to damnation. When she hears teenager Katrina Nguyen playing in the park, she recognizes something in the girl’s playing: she’s far from being a virtuoso right now, but she has an instinct that can’t be taught. Shizuka takes her on as a student with every intention of feeding her soul to the devil in exchange for Shizuka’s own. If I haven’t said as much about the third protagonist, Lan Tran (the galactic traveler who now owns a donut shop on earth but can’t get good donuts out of her replicator because the ingredient that’s missing is love), or the violin shop owner Lucy Matia whose arc is about changing her own understanding of how violins are made and maintained and what her place in that world is, it’s not because I didn’t care about those guys. It’s just because I melted all the way into Katrina and Shizuka’s relationship, how these two people enter into it with the matter-of-fact assumption that Shizuka will do harm to Katrina and it’s just a question of how much harm and when, and then the way it shifts not just into Shizuka loving Katrina like a daughter, but into Katrina stepping up to protect and care for Shizuka as well.

The story of a young trans runaway meeting a woman who has one more soul to gather before she can get out of her deal with a demon, also featuring aliens, Light from Uncommon Stars is a bizarre and brutally honest book about finding the real you, finding your place in the universe, and the healing power of music. courtesy IMP Awards) Creative inspiration can come from all kinds of strange, beautiful and unexpected places – a waterfall at sunset, a colourfully-dressed woman on a train at peak hour or a snippet of history, long forgotten but dredged up to fill a social media post with a fascinating factoid. Continue Reading With stunning urgency and grace, Ocean Vuong writes of people caught between disparate worlds, and asks how we heal and rescue one another without forsaking who we are. The question of how to survive, and how to make of it a kind of joy, powers the most important debut novel of many years.