The Deep Sky

A Novel

by Yume Kitasei

English language

Published July 17, 2023 by Flatiron Books.

ISBN:: 978-1-250-87533-4

(6 reviews)

Yume Kitasei's The Deep Sky is an enthralling sci fi thriller debut about a mission into deep space that begins with a lethal explosion that leaves the survivors questioning the loyalty of the crew.

They left Earth to save humanity. They’ll have to save themselves first.

It is the eve of Earth’s environmental collapse. A single ship carries humanity’s last hope: eighty elite graduates of a competitive program, who will give birth to a generation of children in deep space. But halfway to a distant but livable planet, a lethal bomb kills three of the crew and knocks The Phoenix off course. Asuka, the only surviving witness, is an immediate suspect.

They left Earth to save humanity. They’ll have to save themselves first.

Asuka already felt like an impostor before the explosion. She was the last picked for the mission, she struggled during training back on Earth, and she was chosen to represent Japan, a country she only partly knows as a half-Japanese girl raised in America. But estranged from her mother back home, The Phoenix is all she has left.

With the crew turning on each other, Asuka is determined to find the culprit before they all lose faith in the mission—or worse, the bomber strikes again.

3 editions

Divya Manian reviewed The Deep Sky by Yume Kitasei

Really enjoyed this take on the future with some love for bird enthusiasts

4 stars

People with wombs are selected to colonize a new planet (yuck) because people on earth are too busy destroying themselves & climate change has become too violent at scale. They travel with thousands of specimens to be used for artificial insemination.

I really liked this plot twist on how people get chosen. It's a murder mystery that is sorta melancholic that ends on a more hopeful note. I felt really sad reading about the climate change and how the last hummingbird was caged in a zoo that was then hit by a missile. It really gutted me because thats what is happening now in Lebanon & Palestine.

Otherwise, my only criticism is that this book is too kind to fascists.

Aimee Gunther reviewed The Deep Sky by Yume Kitasei

Overall, an engaging read... especially given the trope #Bookstodon

4 stars

A few explanations felt overly simple, but I was impressed for a few of the explored themes to unexpectedly tie together at the finish.

Phil in SF reviewed The Deep Sky by Yume Kitasei

Competent teams vs teams of competent individuals

3 stars

The Deep Sky is the story of a crew of late teen/early 20s women (mostly) who make up the crew of the first interstellar spaceship. Their goal is to establish a colony on a planet orbiting another star, hence why everyone has to be capable of bearing children. There's mention of one trans dude and a couple of possibly non-binary folk, but by and large the crew is female. The story alternates between episodes on board and flashbacks to crew member Asuka's time on Earth with her family and in the ultra-competitive institute that is both training and selecting crew members.

When the story begins, Asuka and her friend Kate are about to go on a spacewalk to investigate an anomaly on the exterior of the ship. They decide to race, and Kate reaches the anomaly first and thus is the person who dies when the bomb goes off.

Despite …

Despite being told these are highly competent people, the crew never feels like a crew trained to work together. They neglect their duties. They let personal animosities not only interfere, but drive them. To do anything at scale, you need a competent team, not just a set of competent individuals. The book seems to miss that.

To be fair, the entire sabotage plot wouldn't work like it does if this was a competent team. It'd be a very different book.

All that aside, at about halfway through the plot became less navel-gazy and I was finally able to suspend disbelief well enough to read through to the end. When something is actually happening, such as Asuka finally doing some investigation or the saboteur stepping up attacks some of the flaws can be ignored.