The Deep Sky: A Novel

“The Deep Sky” is a debut novel by Yuma Kitasei. And if there is one thing I love in this World is debut novels! And after reading about ten novels in a row about serial killers and cheating spouses in “That Unputdownable book with a twist you won’t believe” books I was REALLY looking forward to a good old fashioned ScyFi book.

The synopsis of this book is fantastic. We have a female MC named Asuka who is one of 80 females are on a long range ship to another planet looking to save humankind. Mainly by having children….. But along the way, while Asuka was on a space walk a bomb goes off killing three of them. That sets this book in motion as Asuka is tasked with finding out who was responsible for the attack on their ship.

What follows is a great ScyFi thriller/horror/drama book. It flashes back to Earth when Asuka is in a competition to be one of the 80 to be chosen on this mission to the present day. A great cast of flawed characters joins Asuka on her journey.

It’s not a perfect book……. There are some slow parts but on the whole this is a solid ScyFi book which I highly recommend.

I really appreciate Flatiron books for giving me the opportunity to review this book for free for a honest review and it has a publication date of July 18, 2023.

There were a lot of things this book did that were interesting. It contained a cast of characters that were all designated female at birth in a spaceship headed toward Planet X. I could only count four male characters in the novel, the main character’s father and brother, a random guy at a party, and a crew member. No one was physically described. The novel had a lot to say about technology and politics. It was the technology that most interested me. It had the potential to be a truly horrifying novel. It wasn’t. It was boring. The flashbacks were the worst and didn’t add a lot of context to the current timeline. I never connected to any of the characters, the only ones I could differentiate were Ruth and Micky and that was primarily because I didn’t like them. The science was hazy. The current timeline was fuzzy. The timeline post-explosion was clear and broken up by shift, but how long had they been awake? The fact that they were all being artificially inseminated was an odd detail that was never fully explained. Also, I wish the characters just had been identified primarily by one name. It was confusing that they had first names, last names, and nicknames that were not derived from either. That probably would have been less of a problem if there hadn’t been so many characters that did not have distinct characteristics.

Content warning for sci-fi violence, racism, death, manipulation, and related topics. I really enjoyed this novel. The setting is incredible, I really liked the flashbacks and the worldbuilding. I guessed the saboteur pretty early, but it didn't stop me from enjoying the novel. There are a few things that were a little out of my grasp (some of the science of trajectory and so forth) but it was a really fun read.