Eighty elite graduates of a competitive program are on one single ship as humanity's last hope of
survival. These eighty people are expected to give birth to a new generation as they travel to a new,
livable planet. But things do not go as expected because halfway through their travel, a lethal bomb
happens to knock their ship, The Phoenix of course as well as kills three crew members. Asuka is the only surviving witness and immediately becomes a suspect.

The Deep Sky seemed like an interesting sci-fi thriller but it ultimately fell flat for me.

I enjoyed seeing a diverse cast of characters and they were bordering the more complex side but could have been fleshed out a smidge more.

With the Deep Sky, it is told in alternating chapters where it would focus on the past and current events. With the constant past and present chapters, it became jarring to the point it created an uneven pace and it made me lose focus and interest pretty quick.

Ultimately I felt pretty indifferent about the Deep sky. I neither loved it nor hated it.

Many people who are fans of thrillers and mysteries will probably enjoy The Deep Sky even with the si-fi element.

7/10

I like a good sci-fi space novel and this falls right into that sweet spot.

The premise is that the world is falling apart from man’s destruction. There are 80 people who have been selected to travel far into space to a planet that can hold life, and build a new humanity.

I believe it’s all women on the ship because the goal is for them all to give birth on the trip there.

Anyhoo, the story opens with Asuka and others doing a space walk when I bomb explodes. Asuka is the only one of the group that survives.

Meanwhile, the explosion set the ship off course - which is really bad- and in the meantime chaos has unfolded as everybody is blaming everyone else for the terrorist act.

Humanity’s survival depends on the women making it to the planet.

It’s a good story. It’s a scary story. It’s a great debut.

#netgalley #thedeepsky

3.5

There was so much to love about this debut space thriller! The plot was fast paced and twisty, and I found myself wanting to constantly turn the pages, and I really liked the way Yume Kitasei developed Asuka as a main character. The dual timeline of the mystery in space and the flashbacks of training was done well and I never found myself wishing I was in one timeline over the other. That being said, I really did not understand the bird fact interludes, and I found that a lot of the side characters felt very similar.

I liked the thematic conversations happening in this book. Asuke is Japanese-American and struggles with feeling not Japanese enough and not American enough and is dealing with a mother who has bought into radical conspiracy theories. The generational divide in ideologies and the general existential dread (because of humanity or climate change or what have you) dealt with in this book was so well done.

Overall, I had a great time with this and am very interested in what Yume Kitasei writes next!

Thank you Netgalley and publisher for this advanced copy.

This book was enjoyable even though there was no memorable aspects for me.

An excellent debut book about a ship that has left Earth due to the environmental problems occurring. We follow Asuka as she tries to figure out which crewmember set off a bomb which killed three crew members. The book is written in third person focusing on Asuka and switches from the present to her past throughout the novel.

I thought the author excelled at creating realistic characters and relationships. The way the characters interacted brought the story to life and makes the story much more realistic and enjoyable. The plot is intriguing and filled with mystery and has a hint of thriller mixed in. I also enjoyed the writing as it seemed to flow smoothly as a creek. The author excels at action and cliffhangers.

There is strong language throughout the novel and other themes that may be inappropriate for younger audiences.

The ending, while not totally closed off, is still satisfying and feels resolved. Overall I enjoyed the book a lot. I recommend it to anyone who enjoys a thriller science fiction novel with lots of mystery and complex relationships.

Thank you NetGalley for providing me with this Advanced Reading Copy in exchange for an honest review.

This book started out strong for me, but petered out and I lost interest. Unfortunately I did not finish it, but maybe I'll pick it up again. Thank you for the opportunity.

This book was stunningly gorgeous and absolutely riveting. I was holding my breath through the last six chapters. I loved the multicultural cast, the variety of genders and presentations, and the complex worldbuilding. My favorite types of science fiction stories are the ones with warm, beating hearts and this one is exactly that.

One of the best sci-fi novels I've read in a long time!! The premise of artificial intelligence forming emotional attachments is interesting. How do you teach or program empathy?

THOUGHTS:
- Loved the alternating timeline snippets exploring what collapsed world powers would look like!!

- I also really liked that this was from a new adult perspective. Somewhat naive and innocent even though clearly highly intelligent. It's like we witness their emotional intelligence grow even though surrounded only by a group of their peers. There's no one to model their behavior after... so in a new world - the entire civilization would be patterned off of how this crew interprets the world!!

**Thank you to Flatiron Books & NetGalley for the advanced reader copy. I received this book for free, but all thoughts are my own. – SLR 🖤

I was hooked on this pretty much from the get go. The story cleverly mixes timelines so you feel like you really get to know the main character Asuka. I was hooked through the whole story waiting to figure out who did what. I would definitely recommend this!

The Deep Sky follows Asuka, an alternate crew member on the first mission to send humanity to a new world. After a bomb nearly kills her and knocks the ship off course, Asuka is assigned by the captain to investigate the rest of the crew.

I almost chose to DNF this around 45%. Let me start by saying I'm really picky about thriller/mystery, but I love science fiction.

The first half of the book focuses on the mystery and (too many) flashbacks. These flashbacks felt repetitive and only some truly added to the story. I'm not sure if I even took away the correct message from these flashbacks- were the crew never properly trained? Because they certainly don't act like they were. At the 45% mark, I was convinced this was a psychological thriller in space and not a sci fi mystery.

The second half finally had more action (and more importantly, the sci fi I wanted), and there were less flashbacks. I had guessed the culprit correctly, but the reason behind it was so frustrating.

I really wanted to enjoy this. The premise sounded interesting and science fiction is my favorite genre. I felt as if The Deep Sky tried to be too many things: a psychological thriller, an action thriller, sci fi, and dystopian- which took away from the story. Maybe this just wasn't for me, and I do think thriller fans will enjoy The Deep Sky more than sci fi fans.

Thank you to NetGalley and Flatiron Books for the ARC in exchange for an honest review.

As Earth falls to environmental disasters, a spaceship takes off with the only hope of humanity’s future: 80 carefully selected young people meant to build the next generation. But when a bomb goes off onboard, killing three and shifting the spaceship’s path, Asuka, who barely made the cut for the mission in the first place, is the only surviving witness of the accident. If she wants save the future of humanity, Asuka must find out who’s really sabotaging their mission and find a way to get the spaceship back on course.

This novel has all the most compelling aspects of a locked-door mystery and outer spacey sci-fi, plus a dash of The Hunger Games. I was completely hooked from the beginning, and it kept me guessing all the way to the last page. I want a whole TV series based on this premise that shows us what happens after the end of the book! Thank you Yume Kitasei for helping me embrace my sci-fi girlie era!

This book was an interesting mix. I liked the setting aboard the Phoenix and a lot of the world-building elements. But I didn't really enjoy the main character--she was super passive in some ways, and made some questionable decisions that I wouldn't expect from someone in her position. Additionally the immediate cast of characters was broad, and I felt like I didn't connect with any of them. I think that the momentum of the story would have been better served to remove the flashback aspects and focus on the investigation here and now, because that part was compelling but then the flow would break when we would go back in time. I think the story was trying to speak to too much (racism, imperialism, environmentalism, world wars, terrorism) and so it felt scattered and didn't have as much impact as if it was honed down a little more.

The Phoenix is eleven years into its journey to Planet X, a planet deemed habitable for human life. A bomb goes off, killing three members of the crew, including its captain. Asuka is the lone surviving witness, and in some folks’ eyes, the prime suspect. She was the last picked for the 80 person mission, assigned as an alternative. She has no special skills that apply to the mission, but she acts as a filler, an extra hand. Assigned as the detective, she must figure out who planted the bomb and why, so The Phoenix can continue its mission with its crew still intact. They only have a few days to correct their course or be lost in space forever. Will Asuka solve the mystery before the loyalties of the crew unravel?

I have mixed feelings about The Deep Sky, by Yume Kitasei. I can’t reconcile the technical aspects of the book with some of the emotions I was going through while reading. The book has a very strong set up, as it flits between the past and the present lives of the women who would be Humanity’s last hope to survive the climate crisis. Stakes are introduced quickly, giving the pace a kickstart that skips early information dumps. Characters have distinct voices, so it was easy to distinguish who was speaking during extended back and forth conversations. But around the halfway point in the story, I started to feel a drag in the plot. The characters didn’t feel any more fleshed out than they had been, and the worldbuilding started to wear thin. I didn’t get bored, but I did start to feel frustrated. I plan to touch on my feelings about the story, and while I won’t spoil plot points, I will be in spoiler adjacent territory. I’ll give another warning when I get closer to that territory. So let’s talk about it.

The plot of The Deep Sky is fairly straightforward. It’s a mystery in a locked room aboard a generation ship. The action starts immediately, and Asuka is recruited to figure it all out. Suspicions rise as the situation on Earth deteriorates and the crew is running out of time. Relationships are pulled taut as the crew tries to reorient the ship while Asuka tries to find the terrorist on board. Throw in flashbacks to the character’s lives as children training for the mission, and there is a clever set up to dig into motivations, capabilities and internal anxieties. It’s a well organized set up for mystery that allows the author to build up the world and focus on the “why” of the mission to Planet X.

The execution started to fall apart for me when the characters and story started to spin their wheels a little bit. Part of the problem, this is a personal one, is that the book has the trappings of a young adolescent story that deals with very adult subject matters, while barely giving them attention. For instance, most of the characters are in their early twenties, and we see them grow from an even earlier age of ten or so years old, and some of the conflicts felt superficial. They have the right to be superficial given the circumstances, but sometimes it doesn’t feel purposeful. It wasn’t hormones or the total lack of a childhood or the extreme traumas they were forced through as part of their training, they were just mean girls being mean to each other. And that loses me because while I recognize that as a very human thing at those ages, it felt like an easy out for lack of communication when it came to the story itself. This got in the way of the mystery as the investigation stalled due to lack of communication between characters. I wasn’t particularly engrossed in it already, seeing as the crew had huge fish to fry, but it made me care even less about the who or the why. I was mostly concerned with the story from the perspective of how people react in a state of environmental collapse, so that’s another personal disconnect.

A quick speed run of encounters I had with the book. Sometimes the dialogue felt too functional, without a hint of it being trained into the characters. In the flashbacks, the children acted like semi-formed adults in eleven year old bodies, which was weird. Occasionally, chapters ended with a revelation, internal or external, that felt like an “achievement unlocked” icon was appearing in the top corner. I think this was mostly due to the internal narration of Asuka, but it was very hard to ignore on my end. There was an underexplored mini-plot involving the crew being made up of folks able to give birth, and it being a part of the mission to give births. I wish there was more discussion about this because it felt revelatory, but also swept under the rug to avoid the mess. The two main radical groups felt even keeled, one being a right wing nationalist group, the other being a woowoo environmental group prone to child abuse conspiracies that Asuka’s mom was a part of. They felt equated in a weird way, and only seemed to serve as a character divide, not a part of world building or themes. And then the whole mission was created by a trillionaire, who had countries compete for slots, and that was just completely unexplored. I don’t necessarily need a condemnation of the means, but more engagement with it would have been nice.

But I do think Kitasei did a fine job, even if it was blunt, incorporating virtual reality as a theme within the story, especially as it pertains to how one engages with the world and the connections we form with those around us. Kitasei also digs a bit into national identity and who qualifies for what slots based on need and want. It played into Asuka’s identity really well, especially with her anxiety about being competent for the mission. She also plays with the children’s training as inflicting trauma. While the book doesn’t make a specific point about it, does seem to point it out as an avenue for future exploration.

Despite all that, I found a weirdly deep connection with aspects of this book. Kitasei tapped into something that I have yet to really feel within a book that confronts the ecological crisis unfolding in front of our eyes. She specifically focuses on the kids and the generations who are burdened with the horrifying future ahead, the lack of viable solutions available to them and the dead structures they are forced to navigate in order to “save humanity.” These children are born in some ways with a purpose, to live in a terrible time while giving hope to a beleaguered human species that has spun itself out. Dreams of nations are piled into a billionaire’s project, seats on the ship are jockeyed and lobbied for. Children are chosen by their nations based on heritage, forced to compete with other children that hail from the same country who may or may not be more skilled than them. The anxiety of the situation and the pressure to perform is captured, if not wonderfully, then dutifully. It made me feel for these kids.

Mix that together with Asuka being just a normal girl who didn’t really have any skills or goals in life beyond honoring her dead brother I got the distinct flavor of “I’m here to do what I can to help,” and the helplessness and desire to do good that comes with it. This feeling ran through the whole story. Every problem that arose, every conflict between characters resonated with this underlying anxiety. Asuka being assigned to the mission as an “alt,” a crew member with no special training beyond being a swiss army person, only amplified that feeling of having a purpose without definition.

In the end, I really wanted to like The Deep Sky. Kitasei opens a new avenue of feeling when it relates to envisioning the collapse and the people who have to deal with it. It’s unfortunate that it’s built to a dead end, in my opinion, with several branching exits that lead down more story focused paths and other similar dead ends. I want there to be more stories like this that face the oncoming problems with grief, anxiety and dread, while giving the crisis its proper weight. I want there to be messy conversations about resource allocation where no easy answers exist and people will die because of inaction or even decision making. I’m not saying Kitasei had to write that story, but she clearly has a great starting point for it. The Deep Sky is for those who want to confront that anxiety, see it play out and feel a desire to reconcile that lack of catharsis. It might be good too if you like a good mystery with a science fiction setting that spends time with that setting in interesting ways.

Rating: The Deep Sky – 6.0/10
-Alex

An ARC of this book was provided to me by the publisher in exchange for an honest review. The thoughts on this book are my own.

A debut science fiction thriller, The Deep Sky follows Asuka as she tries to solve a mystery aboard a ship in deep space on their way to a new planet as Earth's climate crisis comes to a head.

There is so much to look forward to in this book! From complex relationships- among family, friends, and frenemies, to the shifting narrative as more evidence is collected, to the dual timeline, to the diverse cast of characters. Asuka is far from perfect and as a flawed MC, it was refreshing to follow her throughout the mystery as well as comes to terms with who she has become as an adult.

The way that imposter syndrome seeped into the narrative and how the author handled it was very nuanced and well done! The action and pacing of the book were excellent, with plenty of cliff hangers at the end of chapters to keep readers on edge.

I definitely recommend if you love:
•Science fiction - in space!
•Thrillers / suspenseful plots
•Reality vs perception
•Complex mother-daughter relationships
•Found/chosen family
•Dual timelines

The author kindly added content warnings as part of the synopsis. Please check those as there is some on page material that may be sensitive for some readers!

I loved the futuristic space-mission capabilities, smart and strong all-woman crew, the mystery and suspicion, and most of all the character-driven storyline in Kitasei's science fiction novel.

The thing about saying yes to the first (and probably only) one-way interstellar voyage to settle a new world was that there were no take backs.
In Yume Kitasei's science fiction thriller The Deep Sky, a mission to deep space is disrupted by an explosion that shakes the confidence of the ship's crew.

With the collapse of Earth's environment imminent, eighty trained elite young people venture into space, where they hope to preserve the human race for generations to come.

But a deadly disaster on The Phoenix halfway to its destination causes suspicion to fall upon Asuka, the only living witness. Asuka must find the real culprit before accusations surrounding the mystery destroy her.

"It's not giving up on the world. It's making more of it. Isn't that the point? If I thought the problems here were unfixable, I couldn't support the mission. Because if that were true, we wouldn't deserve another chance. And we do."
I do generally love a book set on a ship barreling through space, and I loved The Deep Sky. Yume Kitasei offers plot and mystery, but this is primarily a wonderfully character-driven story--with a satisfying amount of spaceship detail, process, and futuristic capabilities (such as alternative realities the crew can pipe into their brains) to capture a reader's imagination.

Asuka is intelligent and capable, but she was chosen for the once-in-history journey as an alternate, and she constantly struggles with impostor syndrome. She fills in where she's needed rather than being valued for a special ability, and she sometimes feels like a glorified handywoman.

Asuka's relationship with her mother was strained before her departure, and her family had suffered earlier tragedies that shaped and complicated its structure and their communication.

Now her mother's involvement in an environmental renegade group on Earth leads some of Asuka's crewmates to cast aspersions on her when the destructive on-ship explosion threatens the safety of the crew--and the mission itself. The book explores environmental responsibility and culpability as Kitasei explains the reason for the ship's departure to populate another world.

Communication with Earth is complicated by the increasing distance between the planet and the ship, and when things begin to go wrong, with more and more seeming sabotaged elements endangering the crew and mission, Kitasei brings the reader into the crew's sense of panic that they're the only ones making key decisions and that they're operating in a vacuum.

Everyone but Asuka is potentially a suspect at some point or another, and I loved the way the author built tension without making me feel manipulated or offering red herrings.

Unrelated to the content of the book but relevant for Bossy purposes, I feel robbed that I read this on an e-reader because this cover, oh my word. It's gorgeous!

I received a prepublication edition of this title courtesy of NetGalley and Flatiron Books.

I recently posted a Greedy Reading List of Six Fascinating Stories Set in Space. If this book interests you, you might want to check out the titles on that list.

You might also like Six Great Stories about Robots, Humans, and Alien Life and AI, Six More Fantastic Dystopian and Postapocalyptic Novels, and Six Four-Star (and Up) Science Fiction Reads I Loved Last Year.

I really wanted to like this novel, but it's utterly forgettable. I finished it a few days ago and I can't really remember anything that stood out to me other than the FMC's, Asuka's, biracial identity and how she struggled with it while growing up. I really liked that aspect of the story.

The tone of voice is very YA, even though it's listed as adult fiction. And if I look at it from the perspective of a YA novel, this actually wouldn't be that bad. But reviewing it as an adult novel makes it seem really juvenile.

The sci-fi is very soft, which I'd be okay with, but it's to the point where it's really generic. Everyone could be on a road trip instead of an interstellar mission and it'd read the same. The sci-fi felt more like an afterthought.

I didn't vibe with the FMC or any of the other characters. They're in their 20s in a small ship that'll colonize Planet X (wut) and there are so many petty complaints and infighting, I felt like I was reading about a bunch of college kids living in a dorm. There are random people pregnant to prepare future generations for colonization and that just seems... Not well thought out. Wouldn't that hinder the mission itself??

The first part starts out very generic space sci-fi disaster scenario (an explosion on the ship!). That grabbed my attention, but as the story went on, everyone sort of acted like it wasn't that big of a deal. You'd think there'd be urgent and mistrustful vibes on the ship, but all the fights and arguments just seemed so petty.

Even before the midpoint, the story felt like it was dragging so much I mostly tuned out until the saboteur reveal. After finding out who caused the explosion, I realized I didn't care anymore.

Thank you to Flatiron Books and NetGalley for this arc.

I had a blast reading The Deep Sky by Yume Kitasei.

The Deep Sky is Kitasei's debut sci-fi thriller. Set in the near future - Earth is on the verge of an environmental collapse. Several nations have come together to fund an outer-space mission that will carry humanity's last hope.

The story begins on board The Phoenix. The crew has recently woken up from their deep space sleep and are getting operations up and running. Things appear to go smoothly until an explosion kills three members of their crew. Is the ship's AI trying to kill them? Is someone on the crew trying to sabotage their mission or is it a work of terrorism from a radical group back home?

The story is told from the single point of view of our main character Asuka. Although Asuka spent years training with her crewmates she was a last minute addition to the mission. We alternate between two timelines - the present as Asuka tries to uncover the guilty party behind the blast and the years leading up to the launch. I couldn't believe this was a debut. We get a blend of an action packed story with complex and believe-able characters.

Apart from delivering an action-packing story Kitasei also introduces nuanced conversations about friendships, mother-daughter relationships and the model minority exceptionalism as our main character finds herself navigating what it means to be mixed.

My personal favorite part of the book is the ways in which Kitasei introduces future technologies into the mix. The incorporation of a malfunctioning virtual reality system added an extra layer of intrigue and mystery that I quite enjoyed. It was used very well.

If you love thrillers I recommend checking this one out.

Chalk full of tension, the thrills of augmented reality, and an interesting library of bird facts, Yume Kitasei’s The Deep Sky is a solid science fiction thriller set on the Phoenix, a spaceship transporting the highly selective crew from Earth to Planet X with the hopes of rebuilding humanity. When explosion kills several crew members—including the Captain—and derails their course, Asuka is tasked with unraveling the mystery of what caused the explosion… and which of the people on their ship is responsible.

I genuinely fell in love with the character of Asuka as the story unfolded and we as the reader learn more about her life before becoming one of the members aboard the Phoenix and the intense years of training before the final few were selected. Asuka feels much more connected to the reader, because she is an Alternate—a jack-of-all-trades, the second choice for a mission she had dedicated years of her life to potentially join. Her deeply fraught relationship with her mother and her special interest in birds further fleshes out her character in a way that enhances the drama and intrigue of the mystery-thriller sections of the novel.

Speaking of mystery-thriller…. I still don’t know if they’re for me, but I think this was a fairly competent thriller entry in the science fiction genre. There were moments where the confusing hallucinations brought on by Asuka’s DAR—a neural implant that allows for fully immersive augmented reality—that made me feel more confused than anxious while reading. I think that sort of element works better in a more visual medium compared to in a novel, but there were still cool and visually interesting moments. Additionally, some of the flashbacks undercut the tension that the previous chapter had been building, which made the pace sometimes feel a bit disjointed.

Despite some of my minor hangups with this book, I’m excited to see where Yume Kitasei goes in their future writing projects, because they have a great talent for character work and conveying interpersonal relationships between characters with an earnest nuance.

I would certainly recommend this for fans who love the dramatic tension, complex parent-child dynamics, and humanity of Interstellar.

Check trigger warnings for this book. I am setting it aside for now due to those but the premise sounds amazing so I hope to pick it back up at another time.

The main character, Asuka, is one of many women aboard The Phoenix, a crew of all women, on just such a mission. But then a bomb wipes out part of the ship and many crew members along with it. She's racing against the clock to figure out who's responsible and why they'd attack the mission in the first place.

Filled with themes ranging from cultural animosity to self reflection, this story is one that will have you questioning everything you think you know about people and their motivations. As well as the interesting inclusion of DAR (Digital Augmented Reality) that all crew members live with that's constantly activated to give them their own personal view of their surroundings. When Asuka's DAR stops working, she starts seeing parts of everyone else's and the pieces almost seem like clues to something she's missing.

A wonderfully written novel about futuristic possibilities and the fragility of the human species in all contexts and cultures.