I was on the fence about reviewing The Vanished Birds. To make up my mind, I read the first four reviews on Goodreads. That is something I never do, but I was conflicted. The reviews were evenly conflicted about the book. So, I decided to take a chance on it. For the most part, it was a good book. But some parts made me wonder why they were written, even after finishing the book.

The Vanished Birds had a slow to a medium-paced plotline. When the book focused on Nia and her relationship with Ahro/their travels until he was 16, the book moved at a medium-paced. But, when the book focused on Fumiko Nakajima (past and present) and her travels, it slowed to a crawl. I will be honest; I skimmed over a large part of her story. I started paying attention when she was on the secret base and the events afterward.

I enjoyed reading about the type of space travel that Nia used to go between planets. It fascinated me. I couldn’t imagine being in space for what I would have thought would be a few months and to find out that 15 years have passed.

Nia was a tough cookie to like during the book. She made some questionable decisions that affected the people around her. Nia kept people are arm’s length. She did unbend, slightly, when she met Ahro. She unbent, even more, when Fumiko asked her to keep him safe for 15 years. But, I couldn’t quite bring myself to like her.

When Fumiko was introduced in The Vanished Birds, I didn’t understand what her role was. I mean, it was explained relatively early on that she was the founder of the colonies in space, and she invented the engine that allowed space travel. But I didn’t know why her backstory was being told. It didn’t go with the flow of Nia’s story. Even when her story was brought to the present, I still wondered: “Why?” I also wondered why she was so invested in Ahro. It was explained, and it didn’t show her in a good light.

I loved Ahro. I loved seeing his character growth throughout the book. I wasn’t prepared for what his secret was, though. I honestly thought that it had something to do with music and his affinity for it. So, when it was revealed, I was shocked. I loved watching his relationship with Nia and her crew grow, which made what happened and who caused it such a shock.

I do wish that more time had been spent on the times they visited the planets. There were so many locations!!! All exotic and all made me want more. But that didn’t happen.

I wasn’t a fan of the last half of the book. I had questions about what was going to happen to Nia and Ahro once the dust settles. I also had questions about Fumiko. I can only assume what happened to her. And then there is the question about where Ahro originally came from and who The Kind One was.

Life is very strange for Nia Imani. She traveled through time while in stasis. Still young and feeling like only a few months have passed, she is left with nothing but work as her family and friends have all passed on. One day a young boy falls from the sky, only able to communicate with music. Nia is happy to take him in as her own, but something is yearning to tear them apart.

While this is a powerful book, it didn't really strike a cord with me. I feel like a devoted science fiction fan would really enjoy this book.

A mute child appears mysteriously on a planet and finds himself placed in the care of a ship’s captain. The pair forming a solid bond on the short trip to their next company stop. As a result, Captain Imani finds herself agreeing to a strange and dangerous contract to keep the boy--who may wield an astonishing power—safe. It’s a dystopia and space opera, as well as a story of found and made family and about the choices that shape lives.

Nia's life is arranged to minimize emotional baggage. She and her crew collect the harvest of a backwater world and deliver it to civilization, their repeated journeys through pocket space meaning the decades pass in a blink. Then a mysterious mute boy appears on the isolated planet and the unnerved locals foist him off on Nia. Their surprising bond is so strong she accepts an absurd contract just to keep him. If he's as special as her employer believes, the boy could change humanity forever, but Nia just wants to keep her little family safe. A lovely blend of myth and scifi.

The Vanishing Birds
by Simon Jimenez


This is a truly epic science fiction adventure across time and space. A large cast of characters, lots of political drama, serious issues and 400 pages. Sigh. 400 pages that dragged and wandered all over the rather slim plot. Maybe I completely missed the point of it all. Only in the last 50 pages did Simon Jimenez's novel come alive. I read The Vanishing Birds courtesy of NetGalley and Penguin Random House Publishers. I appreciated the opportunity, I just wish the book lived up to its advanced reviews.

The premise of the book is intriguing. A young boy falls from space. He is naked, appears mute, and is unhurt.A woman, who captains a commercial space transport capable of jumping through time, takes the mysterious boy in to live amongst her crew. Their story, and that of many other who connect with the boy, fills the windy, winding novel. I was tempted to give up about a quarter of the way in, but after coming that far, I will still hoping the novel would be much more that the sum of its vast parts. It wasn't.

A Sci-Fi adventure.

Nia Imani travels through time. Years are like months for her, but not for the people she has loved and known. They age, they die, but not Nia. Solitary Nia.

But on one of her stops, she meets a boy that fell from the sky. The people in the area would just as soon see him gone. He doesn't speak, just plays the flute that long ago Nia gave to a man.

When Nia leaves she takes the boy with her and together they travel the skies, each filling in the empty spots in each others life.  They become a family. But that is also threatened. The past wants the boy back and what will Nia do when it finds him?

Good Read.

NetGalley/ January 14th, 2020 by Del Rey Books

At first time the story about mute, naked boy who recently fell from the sky and found himself at the doorstep of the village leader Kaeda’s house attracted my attention. The mute boy’s way of using communication is using a wooden flute to create his magical music.

Kaeda protects the boy and shelters him till the next scheduled Nia’s ship when the village suffering from an uproar.
I mostly enjoyed the lyrical depictions and way of story-telling of the author ( I think he has a great potential and he is gonna be one of a successful sci-fi writers in the fear future. It could be easily seen by his choices about the words and gift of combining the different stories) but when it comes to Nia’s ship crew and Pelican Station parts, I started to lose my attention and began to yawn because slowly this book turned into my obligation to finish which I didn’t like it.

It includes militarism, power games, metaphysical elements, family bounding, communal problems, space traveling. It’s a great start for the debut writer but not my kind of favorite reading. Especially after the middle parts, I was about dropping out but for my respect to the author’s efforts I finished it.
I’m still looking forward to read the upcoming projects of the author.

Thanks to NetGalley, Random House Publishing Group-Ballantine for sharing this ARC COPY in exchange my honest review.

This book blew me away. Easily a favorite book of the year. And honestly, its the kinda of book one should go into blind, It's Sci-fi, but not overly technical, it reads more like a dream than science class, so if your looking for a jumping in point for Sci-fi this is it. Beautiful and haunting. The Vanished Birds is a stunning debut novel about what it is to be human on a grand scale and touching on issues of today. It's exactly the book I didn't know I needed, and one that will stay in your mind long after you close the cover.

This was a great science fiction blended with the past. Wonder and magic come head to head in this great story. This wasn't what I expected but everything I fell in love with. The tale set across time was one that will make you think where the story is going only to surprise you in the end. With a multitude of characters and one killer story I am excited to see what else this author has for us. This was a great debut!

Well written with both rich characters and rich world building. The story, while too slow for me at times, is so well done, you won't mind the slow bits much.

The Vanished Birds is a piece of beautiful and precise writing that is rare in a debut novel. Jimenez has crafted words and characters that draw you in and make you care for the characters, specifically for a unique child and his guardian. As the story unfolds, the bond that develops between them strengthens and slowly adds insight to how it all might fit together. This reader found Nia, the boy's guardian, most fascinating because she was a common thread through time and space and often questioned her choices while wanting the best for everyone she worked with. At times I wasn't quite sure what direction the story was heading, however the entire story comes together by the end. I look forward to more from Simon Jimenez in the future.

Excellent read. I wasn’t sure where it was going but stuck with it to the very bitter end! Well worth it.

I received a copy of this book from Net Galley in exchange for an honest review. I’ll start by saying that I look forward to this author’s next book. Sections of this book hint at great talent, particularly the middle, but overall I found this book frustrating and the style inconsistent. The beginning and end read like a fable, while the middle is more hard science fiction, with a lovely found-family story running through it. I go back and forth between thinking this book needed stricter editing and thinking it needed to be expanded. More of a miss overall than a hit but, again, I'm very interested in seeing what Jimenez comes up with next.

I received an ARC of this novel from Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.

Set in the future, the novel follows some fearless career women who are torn between progress and following their hearts.

I appreciate the poetic writing style of the author. The words come from a very talented person. They paint an elaborate picture of the world and space. The characters are dynamic and alive. Mr. Jimenez clearly has great potential as an author.

Unfortunately, I was unable to finish the book. This is not my style of reading. I don't need to read about someone's pubic hair nor the intimate things people do with each other. For me, this is a non-recommend. I see this book making a big splash, though, with modern readers.

This was one of the creepiest "life at a private school" stories I have read. I *loved* it!!!! It held my attention from the first sentence and I was sad when it was over, glad to be able to breathe again but sad it was done.

This book was intriguing...and baffling. I liked the first half fine, but it got weird once they got to the spaceship. I stayed confused from then on. Right until the last few pages. It came together in the end.

It's a journey and a heartbreak all in one.

Due only to my immense confusion during most of the book I am giving it 3 stars. It's closer to 3.8, to be honest. I don't think I can say too much more without spoilers.

Thank you NetGalley for the opportunity to review this book.

Book: The Vanished Birds
Author: Simon Jimenez
Rating: 4 Out of 5 Stars

I would like to thank the publisher, Del Rey Books, for sending me an ARC.

I was honestly surprised about the direction this book went. I guess if I had read the summary a little bit closer, it would not have caught me off guard as much. I was sent an ARC because I loved The Bear and the Nightingale, so I was expecting something along those lines. Yes, it started out like that, but things changed. It really took me, but I ended up really enjoying it. I was expecting a fantasy and got a science fiction book instead.

I love the rich writing and how Simon really took the time to flesh out the world. It feels like you are experiencing the story right along with the characters and I love that. I love how much detail goes into just writing a simple scene. I could just picture the world right along with the characters. Not only that, but I was able to feel what the characters were feeling. I just love it whenever authors pour in so much raw emotion into their books.

I also liked that it was hard to tell just where the story was going. Yes, it started out feeling like a fantasy story, then we are thrown into the science fiction elements. Not only that, but there are a lot of hard questions in here. We explore the world of a designer baby and what could happen as a result of that. We have space travel and getting to see the characters in different elements. We have the question of doing what it right and easy. We also get to see loose and all of that.

This is not really the fastest paced novel. Sure, there’s a lot of stuff in here, but this is not an action packed read. This is more character based-I think it is anyway. This is one of those novels in which we get to feel things rather than actually having the fastest moving plot. It’s fine; it works very well here. Now, did I think that some parts went on for longer than they should? Yes, which is why I gave this book a four star rating. Now, did I enjoy the slower pacing? Yes.

I’m just putting this out here that this may not be the best book for everyone. It is slower paced with a really in depth world and equally detailed characters. It does have a plot, but it may not be as fast moving as what some people like.

This book doesn’t come out for a while, so you may have to wait to read it. The Vanished Birds will be released on January 14, 2020.

Youtube: https://youtu.be/_pYY4gWwhwQ

I received a copy of this book from the publisher via Netgalley.

What an astonishingly deep, meaningful book--one that I fully expect to be up for awards next year. Even more remarkable that this is the author's debut. That said, I didn't find it to be a flawless work, especially at the very end.

The cover copy mentions that the book is about 'space and time,' but that minimizes the book's true genre. It ends up being straight-out space opera with very literary-style elements. The book starts out on a world that has a vibe of rural Africa or Asia, where people live and harvest and await a space transport every 15 years that will pick up their wares. A boy crash lands there. He has no ship, no clothes, and no voice. He's taken in by a man who presents him with a flute given to him by an interstellar trader. The boy becomes obsessed with the instrument. When the trader returns again--unaged, due to the nature of space flight--she agrees to take the strange child for treatment and to find out the mystery of his origins.

The book flows between many points of view, though it primarily follows Nia--the starship captain-and the boy, who comes to be known as Ahro. At times, the transitions in POV come as a bit of a jolt. The mystery around the boy continues to build: Who is he? What is he? When his mystery gains the attention of a 1000-year-old famed scientist of old Earth, the book shifts in a very unexpected way. Really, much of the book's plot comes as a surprise, which is refreshing for me as I normally can predict things a bit too well.

Like so many great science fiction books right now, <i>The Vanishes Birds</i> explores the innate nature of what defines humanity--love, found family, faith in one another--against a fascinating far-future. It's beautiful. Sometimes disturbing. And always, heart-wrenchingly human.

Then comes the ending. I won't state any spoilers, but I will say that something about the end feels... off. I can't put my finger on what I would do differently, though. I like that it's not a cookie-cutter happy ending, but a resolution that involves considerable time and work. At the same time... I don't know. It didn't ruin the book for me, not by any means, but neither did it resolve what I hoped it would resolve for all of the major characters.

This book is amazing, and I don't say that lightly. It feels like Ursula K. Le Guin at her best, perfectly spliced with the best Heinlein juvenile out there. That's not to say this is a juvenile by any stretch, but it shares some similarities, given that one of the protagonists is a child growing up throughout the novel. Also, the word novel isn't quite right, either. The story is told through a series of well connected stories that shift from one character's viewpoint to another's, often changing style completely. For example, one section is composed entirely of one of the character's diary entries.

A very unique approach, by the way, in that it helps not only to move the story along, but also to answer the many questions that crop up along the way, and whose answers aren't known by any one protagonist.

The story itself is a tragedy unfolding throughout a space ballad. The characters are all loveable, in their own way, even the very flawed ones. The universe this author created is one in which space travel and commerce are controlled by a monolithic company, and crossing light years takes little time for those traveling, but years elapse for the rest of the universe, in often unpredictable fashion.

One character, the child, may offer a solution to that time slippage problem, and is being sought after by different parties, and protected by one of the other main characters. The story draws you in, though I admit I was initially put off by the shifting viewpoints. By the third chapter, I wasn't noticing it any more, I'd been lured into the story too deeply.

Simon develops the social impact of his universe masterfully, and indeed, if this is his debut novel, I'm going to be eagerly on the lookout for his future work. If he improves from this great start, he's going to soon be challenging the established grandmasters of the genre. This is science fiction at its best, and I'm very glad I was given the opportunity to review it before its release in a few months.