Book Review: The Deep Sky by Yume Kitasei

About the book

It is the eve of Earth’s environmental collapse. A single ship carries humanity’s last hope: eighty elite graduates of a competitive program, who will give birth to a generation of children in deep space. But halfway to a distant but livable planet, a lethal bomb kills three of the crew and knocks The Phoenix off course.

Asuka, the only surviving witness, is an immediate suspect. As the mystery unfolds on the ship, poignant flashbacks reveal how Asuka came to be picked for the mission. Despite struggling through training back on Earth, she was chosen to represent Japan, a country she only partly knows as a half-Japanese girl raised in America.

But estranged from her mother back home, The Phoenix is all she has left. With the crew turning on each other, Asuka is determined to find the culprit before they all lose faith in the mission—or worse, the bomber strikes again.

Find it in this month's Science Fiction & Fantasy Book Box

Why we love it

On the surface, this book could be regarded as essentally a murder-mystery on a spaceship, with a dash of boarding school melodrama and more than a hint of Nancy Drew. Except it's not - it's so much more complex and multi-layered.

The Deep Sky is an incredibly well-thought out, exquisitely plotted, dystopian end-of-the-world novel that just hits all the marks for me.

In the dying days of earth, a contingent of young people have trained since childhood for a one-way space expedition to a potentially habitable planet. They are the future of humanity.

Told through a series of flashbacks, we follow Asuka as she joins the highly competitive, and oftentimes harsh, training program to win a much-coveted place on the expedition. 

It's a book with big themes - if earth is failing, do we cut and run or invest everything in trying to save it? If people are the cause of war, prejudice and environmental degradation, can we ever really hope to start over on a new planet and do better, or do we just inevitably bring the worst aspects of humanity along for the ride?

It's a credit to Yume Kitasei's finely-balanced storytelling that the novel still somehow remains intimate and relatable throughout.

Told exclusively from Asuka's perspective, we're taken on emotional journey through all the inevitable insecurities and emotions that might come from abandoning your friends, family and entire world forever.

How can family and friendship survive if you're on a completely different path to the ones you love? And how do you balance being told since childhood that the hopes of humanity lie on your head, with the inevitable doubts and anxieties which would arise with even the smallest failure in such a high pressure environment?

I loved it, every page. And if well-written, multi-faceted, coming of age stories with a ton of action, drama and great characters is your thing, I think you'll love this too!

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