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Page-count–wise, there’s not a lot to this novel­la by Amal El-Mohtar. The sto­ry isn’t quite a hun­dred pages, and some of those are full-page illustrations.

Sto­ry-wise, there’s plen­ty: sis­ter­ly devo­tion, unre­quit­ed love, racism^[1]Or is it speciesism if it’s human ver­sus fae?, shapeshift­ing, witch­craft, bak­ing. Truth, lies, and con­se­quences. Wil­lows. Grammar.

Esther and Ysabel live near the edge of Faerie, where the riv­er Liss runs between two giant wil­lows called the Pro­fes­sors. Esther is court­ed by a local farmer, but her heart has been cap­tured by a per­son from the oth­er side of the line, an inhab­i­tant of Faerie. This lit­tle love tri­an­gle^[2]Pos­si­bly a rhom­bus by the time the dust set­tles. has far-reach­ing consequences.

Cap­tain Cal­lie and her band of mer­ry^[1]To a first approx­i­ma­tion. mis­fits^[2]To a first approx­i­ma­tion. aboard the space­ship White Raven stum­ble onto a derelict star­ship in the fron­tier wilds out past Nep­tune. It’s a star­ship that can’t pos­si­bly be there: the Anjou was launched cen­turies ago, in an at-the-time last-gasp attempt at col­o­niz­ing extra­so­lar sys­tems. The Anjou should be light-years away, pos­si­bly even orbit­ing a new­ly-col­o­nized world. Yet, here it is.

On board the derelict they find one sur­viv­ing crew mem­ber, Ele­na, asleep in a cryo­genic bed. They wake her up and she tells them a tale of first con­tact with a weird alien race.

But Cal­lie and the rest of the crew already know about aliens; the Liars have lived among them for a long time now. How­ev­er, it seems Ele­na’s aliens are dif­fer­ent, and much, much more dan­ger­ous^[3]Prob­a­bly.

There’s a lot going on in this book, the first of a tril­o­gy (plus a book of short sto­ries) about the human race’s encounter(s) with alien menace(s). I found much to enjoy, though I almost quit read­ing a cou­ple times. Let’s cov­er the good stuff first: There’s no short­age of action here, and it’s set in a future that’s been knocked around a bit. Details about the world we’re in—physical, polit­i­cal, and personal—are hand­ed out as need­ed, and they all fit togeth­er pret­ty nice­ly. Sev­er­al plot twists upend every­thing we under­stand about the world, but noth­ing nul­li­fies what came before, only casts it in a new light.

On the down side: there’s a long-run­ning thread of “will they or won’t they” run­ning through the first half of the book, and its han­dling felt clum­sy, full of false starts and hokey mis­un­der­stand­ings like a for­get­table C‑list rom-com. There are a few details, most­ly about char­ac­ters, where the author with­holds infor­ma­tion for seem­ing­ly no oth­er rea­son than to have a “shock­ing rev­e­la­tion” moment. It remind­ed me of a spe­cif­ic type of per­son: the kind who has a secret and will nev­er tell you, but des­per­ate­ly wants you to know that they know some­thing you don’t.

Once the rom-com got resolved, every­thing else seemed to fall into place. Every­thing accel­er­at­ed. An awful lot of plot hap­pened in the last third of the book; even the last chap­ter was a breath­less ride into ene­my ter­ri­to­ry. There was­n’t real­ly time even to breathe, it seemed.

All that said, I’m glad I fin­ished read­ing, and I’m plan­ning to read the oth­er two books. (And pos­si­bly the short sto­ries, too.)

If I was the type to assign grades, this one would get about 6.5 / 10.

The Wrong Stars, 2018, by Tim Pratt. First in the Axiom series.

(Point of triv­ia: I think this might be the first book I’ve read based on a rec­om­men­da­tion from a Bluesky post^[4]It’s entire­ly pos­si­ble I’m wrong, of course..)