Light From Uncommon Stars - Ryka Aoki

Abbie recommended this book to me during June's Cephalohead cocktail chat. I love getting recs from Abbie — she and I have some overlapping likes and dislikes, and there's usually something interesting or thought-provoking about her suggestions even when it's not my usual cup of tea.

I absolutely love Shizuka Satomi, a former superstar violinist who sold her soul to the devil and now, to get it back, has to entice seven other prodigy violinists to sell theirs. She's delivered six and she's hunting for the seventh. I also love Katrina Nguyen, a young trans runaway Shizuka discovers playing violin in a park and takes on as that seventh student/tribute.

What I'm not a fan of is Lan Tran, retired starship captain, interstellar refugee, and owner of a donut shop. It's sweet watching Shizuka and Lan fall for each other, but Lan is very…alien, for lack of a better word, and I honestly don't know what Shizuka sees in her. (I also legit wondered for the first half of the book whether Lan is really, truly an alien from another galaxy, or just a slightly crazy, unintentionally mean human woman who just believes she's fleeing an interstellar plague.)

I nearly quit reading around the halfway mark when Lan disparaged Shizuka's music in the most offhandedly cruel way. Abbie told me in response to my newsletter post about this book that she read Lan as autistic and not intentionally cruel, which I can see.

I finished the book and am glad I read it. Shizuka didn’t solve everything the way I expected her to but the ending was satisfying.