Shizuka is bound by a contract that obliges her to deliver seven souls to hell, and so far, she has delivered six. Katrina, who is a talented amateur violinist, soon comes into the orbit of Shizuka Satomi, a renowned violin teacher also known as the Queen of Hell. The novel takes us through the ins and outs of Katrina’s day-to-day preoccupations: her concerns about not having enough hormone pills, her worries about fitting into a dress, as well as the more intractable psychic wounds that give rise to such worries, to say nothing of her history of trauma and abuse. Katrina is obviously traumatized by everything she has had to endure. Despite Aoki’s light touch, there are topics she broaches unflinchingly-within the first fifty of the novel’s nearly four-hundred pages, we hear of child abuse and witness instances of racism, transphobia, and rape. We see Katrina’s desperation mount as she is ill-treated and harassed in Los Angeles, her adoptive city, and the unforgiving work she has to do to stay alive. Light from Uncommon Stars hits the ground running, with the protagonist doing the same-she is fleeing an abusive home and a family that cannot accept her for being transgender. Her new novel is an intimate portrayal of a young woman coming into her own as she faces threats, both to her identity and her person, whose relentlessness and sheer cruelty make an actual demon’s incursions into her life look like a trifling matter. This appears to be the signature style of Ryka Aoki, a trans Asian American poet, author, teacher, and composer. Still, it never allows itself to be completely bogged down by them. This is not to say the novel is weightless it grapples with serious themes, addressing both worldly and otherworldly terrors with a bracing matter-of-factness.

Light from Uncommon Stars is an elegant young adult novel that defies categorization as well as gravity-a light-as-air ride through bildungsroman, science fiction, and fantasy.

Light from Uncommon Stars by Ryka Aoki