Review: Light From Uncommon Stars, by Ryka Aoki
by Rich Horton
The central character in the novel is Katrina Nguyen, a teenaged trans girl in California who has run away from home -- from an abusive father and a not very supportive (and also abused) mother -- as the book opens. She takes only a few things with her, most especially her violin, for playing violin is her one joy (and it is predictably not supported by her father, who resents everything that suggests she's not the boy he had thought she was.) She fetches up in Monterey Park, CA (which in a horrifying coincidence was the site of a mass shooting just as I started reading the book -- in another horrifying coincidence, major characters in the novel share a surname with the shooter in that incident.) Katrina stays with a boy who had previously been nice to her, but this is terribly unsatisfying -- the boy is not very welcoming, and a lot less nice than she had thought. She makes money by doing sex work for people who are excited by a trans girl -- though they hardly accepting of her. Things are getting worse when she encounters Shizuka Satomi, a world famous violin teacher, while playing to herself in a park. Shockingly, Shizuka decides to take this almost wholly untrained player on as a student -- she hears something special even when Katrina is playing simple training exercises. Katrina moves into Shizuka's house, and into the care of Shizuka's housekeeper Astrid.
This would be absurd except for what we know about Shizuka (the novel follows four different major points of view.) She is called the Queen of Hell -- her previous six students all became world famous violinists, and then died in suspicious fashion. We learn that she sold her soul in exchange for her violin prowess -- and then cut a deal -- if she can train seven more violinists to be masters, then deliver their souls to hell, she will save her own soul, and (perhaps more importantly to her) free her music, which has mysteriously been erased from the world.
Shizuka makes another, very different, connection -- she meets the proprietor of a donut shop, Starrgate. Lan Tran seems a normal (if very attractive) Asian-American woman, with five children, all of whom work hard at the shop. But Lan too has a secret -- she and her family are aliens, escaping from a war, and from the terrible Endplague. They are trying to build an actual stargate in the big donut that advertises their shop, ostensibly to attract tourists to visit Earth when a gamma ray burster arrives in a few hundred years. All of Lan's donuts are replicated from original versions the previous owners cooked, so that her family can concentrate on the stargate. But her Aunt Floresta, and her son Edwin, are intrigued by the prospect of actual cooking ...
All this is a rather wild combination of not very plausible science fiction, fairly standard fantasy, and the all too plausible (and very well depicted) life of an Asian trans girl in an Asian community in the Los Angeles suburbs. (And I haven't even mentioned Lucia Matia, the violin repairer who wants to become a true master luthier (like the family her name is an anagram for ...)) It's tremendously involving and readable, as Katrina absorbs Shizuka's teaching -- and Shizuka tolerates her desire to play gaming music for You Tube; while Shizuka and Lan become closer and closer, and even learn to accept the other's dark secrets. The demon who controls Shizuka's contract has other ideas, of course, when Shizuka seems to get too invested in Katrina as a person instead of as a soul to be delivered to hell. Lan, too, has family issues ...
The novel builds to a truly powerful and moving conclusion -- I was brought to tears. (There are multiple, almost Lord of the Rings movie-like codas, that while arguably important to the reader, also drain some energy from the conclusion.) The depiction of Katrina's life and personhood, and her struggles, is wholly believable (to this white cis-male reader) and quite wrenching. Details like Lucia's secrets of violin making are fascinating (even as I'm not sure those sections of the novel were entirely necessary.) Even the donut shop details convinced me -- I have spent a lot of time in the LA area on business, and I make it a point to visit small family-owned donut shops, and I think the Southern California donut scene is awesome.
Does it seem like there's a but coming? Well, there is. The novel is moving as I said, and often quite effective. The central theme, about transgender identity and struggles, is really well delivered. But there are significant flaws -- they don't by any means ruin the book -- it's still a joy to read, and the good parts do outweigh the flaws. Still -- it is very much a YA novel, with the trope of the mistreated teenager who becomes the most awesome in the world at her chosen art. The characterization is inconsistent -- Katrina is spot on, I think, and Lan and Lucia are well enough done. Shizuka is kind of a mess though -- the evil Queen of Hell when it suits the novel, but otherwise evenhanded and totally perfect as a teacher and guardian. Other characters are either cliches or ciphers. The whole SF part is pretty ridiculous, and my willing suspension of disbelief could not hold up. And there are a couple of structural or plot missteps, most damagingly a have your cake and eat it too bit at the end when a major character is shown making a tremendous sacrifice which is later revealed as a) unnecessary, and b) as something the character KNEW wasn't really going to be a sacrifice at all. (This last was wholly unneeded, and I think the book's editor should have intervened. A tiny change, and that could have been fixed.)
I don't want to complain too much. Yes, there were many moments that I said to myself "Now, wait a minute!" But I never stopped being fascinated, and I really was wholly invested in the climax, and, as I said, brought to tears. This is a good book, very much worth reading. If it's not perfect -- well, to quote a character in famous gender-fluid scene from another medium, "Nobody's perfect."
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