Light From Uncommon Stars by Ryka Aoki

Publisher – St Martin’s Press

Published – Out Now

Price - £19.99 hardback £9.11 Kindle eBook

Shizuka Satomi made a deal with the devil: to escape damnation, she must entice seven other violin prodigies to trade their souls for success. She has already delivered six.

When Katrina Nguyen, a young transgender runaway, catches Shizuka's ear with her wild talent, Shizuka can almost feel the curse lifting. She's found her final candidate.

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.

As the lives of these three women become entangled by chance and fate, a story of magic, identity, curses, and hope begins, and a family worth crossing the universe for is found.

One of the hardest things to do in fiction is explain the power of music. I don’t mean have lyrics (that is poetry by other means) but what music can actually do in terms of how the audience feels it and even more rarely what the performer themselves is sharing with us. I once read a line describing music as inner space travel and that is so apt when reading Ryka Aoki’s brilliant story Light From Uncommon Stars we combine deals with Hell, aliens fleeing war in space and a desire to do better than who we are; a delight to read making it easily into my reads of the year.

Shizuka Satomi is known as the Queen of Hell for how hard she makes her successful violin students work and while she scares many there is a constant queue of young people trying to gain her attention. Shizuka though is looking for her seventh student now and wants to make it special as that one will be the final fulfilment of a contract that she made with the forces of Hell so she can have her own musical ability back. Arriving in LA now is Katrina a young trans woman fleeing an abusive home sleeping rough and playing music in the park. Nearby Lan is the new owner of the Starrgate Donut shop is settling in with her family; they’re replicated the recipes to the atoms and experiments with warp drive are underway they want to live a quiet life on Earth. This may not be possible as these three women collide their lives and all find they need to learn from each other to survive.

Combining musical deals from Hell and alien donuts could very easily have pushed a story into pure whimsy which usually is a huge turn-off for me instead I can honestly say this is one of the most powerful, thoughtful and enjoyable books of the year. Aoki brings to the table an emotional truth that means we soon accept this reality because we get to feel the struggles each of these characters is feeling. Each main character seeks a new life. For Katrina that has meant escaping a physically abusive father who could not accept she was a woman while we witness a range of assaults, dead-naming, and the hostile reaction of many strangers in the streets. All she really wants to do is play some music on her very small Youtube channel.

Playing some truly beautiful music in the Park calls Shizuka who outwardly in her blood red dress and dark sunglasses lives up to her reputation as a Queen of Hell but inwardly we see someone feeling very guilty about her past students and so with Katrina the drama unfold that Shizuka is prepared to betray Katrina for her own hell contract and yet the teacher-pupil relationship aids both of them. Katrina gains confidence with a teacher who doesn’t think being trans is a issue and Shizuka finds she actually does want to teach a pupil she realises could be brilliant. These two very different characters interact and need each other is a lovely evolving relationship that is at the heart of the book.

Added to this is Lan’s story and here we have a gentle love story as Shizuka and Lan bond in regular visits to the coffee shop that become lunches and feeding ducks that then turns into something romantic. For Shizuka this allows her to be a person not an icon again and for Lan the chance to let her guard down from the responsibility of being a Captain to her family. Lan’s story of fleeing a war and very dangerous environment in space and finding a new life for her family is as Shizuka points out not that unusual in LA and so as with so many other migrant families she has to battle causal racism (as they’ve adopted Asian personas; the fickle nature of human donut customers and a son who wants to return back to his home. This is a story filled with characters each trying to find out how they live their life and its only all together can this be delivered.

Alongside this wonderful character work is the theme of learning to commit to something. Katrina copies music and struggles to sound authentic; Shizuka is a violin teacher but knows its all about her own aims not her pupils and Lan is hoping her machine replicated donuts all based on the old owner’s samples will meet everyone needs and so is disappointed to find many are moving to other shops. At the heart of the story is learning to commit to things and not being afraid to share your emotional states with people. This helps our charters all connect with each other but also the audiences too learn to commit by feeling the honesty of the emotions shared be it in food or music. It’s a tale of empowerment that learning to own being yourself allows you to do better and watching the subtle changes in characters across the book is a delight to notice. There is also a wonderful plot thread about a woman who owns a run-down violin repair shop who learns she is nowhere as useless as her male family patriarchs told her to be and this becomes key to the end of the story

Aoki is a brilliant writer at creating a picture of these lives. It is not all sweetness and life we see the micro-aggressions of the racist and transphobic populations that all the characters have to deal with. It is sobering to remember that this is many people’s daily experience even in 2021. Despite this intolerance these characters learn to push back and not let this dominate their lives even when a demon from Hell tries to destroy them. By the end of the story, we get a enthralling finale where each character works together to aid the other and while pacing the story can be off I loved being in the company of these characters to see where they went next.

This was one of the most unusual reads of the year and one of the most enjoyable reads on top. A perfect mix of wonderful characters; inventive situations and emotional truth that made this a very satisfying read that will stay with me for a long time. I strongly recommend you give this your attention.