Skyward Inn sounded quite up my street, from the comparison to Ursula Le Guin and the way it sounded... well, quiet and almost domestic. The summary I read mostly just talked about Jem and Isley, and their existence together -- it made it sound like the Stuff Happening was in the past. This is not quite the case, and I should've paid attention to the comparison with Jeff VanderMeer's work as well.

It actually started off well enough, and I plunged into it for 100, maybe 150 pages. I didn't love Fosse's part of the story -- not much that grabs me about a boy sneaking away from school, partially undressing, masturbating to orgasm and then grabbing an axe to chop things, and that was the majority of his story for that time -- but Jem's relationship with Isley intrigued me.

After a certain point, though, things start getting weird. Partly it was just the visuals that I disliked, and partly it was the increasing reliance on Fosse's part of the story. Jem never really manages to get anywhere, and her relationship with Isley is never quite fully explained -- meaning the part that actually intrigued me didn't get off the ground.

I finished it, because I was just curious enough, but it just didn't go somewhere I was interested in. Perhaps I might've been, if I hadn't felt kind of bait-and-switched; it's difficult to say. Some of the visuals still ick me out, so maybe not.

I was intrigued by the story and I have to confess, the book cover influenced me a lot in picking this book. Unfortunately, this was not for me and I could not finish the book. I am sure other people will enjoy this way more than me.

I took a chance on this novel as a non typical genre read, and I really enjoyed it! It is a post war, apocalyptic, family tale taking place with Skyward Inn, the "local"watering hole, at the center. It is run by Jem and her alien friend Isley. We follow Jem's life and her brother and son as things continue to change in their isolation and new lifestyles. When another alien who knows Isley arrives, curveballs are thrown. This was actually a nice read. It was written very well and descriptively enough to imagine being there when it was happening. Thankful for the ARC!

DNF @ 25%

This book absolutely did not work for me...the writing style was bland and boring, and I didn't connect with anything going on. Others have told me it's not really worth continuing if I don't like it by this point, so I'm going to cut my losses. Just not my thing at all.

This was such an amazing take on Jamaica Inn, one of my favorite books by a favorite author (set in space - how could I not)?

Jem and Isley are innkeepers of Skyward Inn where war veterans come to commiserate or partake of a potent Qitan drink and talk of times before warring occurred. Introspectively, Jem thinks on her relationships, her time spent in the war, her relationship with Isley, and her life as it is and was.

This introspection shifts as a strangers come to both the Inn and the area, affecting Jem's relationships once more and bringing to the surface the differences between Qitan and Earth, human and alien behavior and acceptance.

It'll stick with me for quite some time and I look forward to reading more by Aliya Whiteley.


#SkywardInn #NetGalley

I am a huge lover of scifi books but I struggled getting through this one. The world was interesting but the plot seemed like it was missing something. It took me a while to finish this book as I just couldn't get into it for most part. A lot of fascinating things mixed in with some not totally entertaining passages.
Full review to come on YouTube.

7/10 stars

I requested Whiteley’s novel after I’ve read her collection of short stories, From the Neck Up and Other Stories. These were unusual, dark and difficult to classify, straddling the border between horror, fantasy, and science fiction. Not all of them were great, but they were unique enough for me to want to read more, with questions concerning identity and humanity, and a significant dose of body horror thrown in the mix. And so I picked up Skyward Inn, whose blurb admittedly didn’t sound too interesting – I gave it a pass the first time it was available, because it just seemed like another generic “alien encounter” novel. But after reading the short stories I reconsidered: nothing written by Whiteley could be really generic.

My hunch proved correct; Skyward Inn is certainly not your typical “alien encounter” or “first contact” novel, though it is that, too. It starts innocuously enough, with a pair of unlikely partners, a human woman Jem and a Qitan called Isley, managing the titular inn located in a rural and secluded part of Devon that seceded from Earth after Earth invaded Qita. Jem is a veteran of that conflict, filled with regrets and unrealized longings; Isley is her Qitan mirror, similarly disenchanted, similarly filled with vague hope for better future, or a slice of happiness that may never come. They are surrounded by others: Fosse, Jem’s son abandoned by her after birth and raised by her parents and later her brother, Dom; Dom, locked in eternal conflict of unbridgeable differences with her sister; inhabitants of the Western Protectorate, seemingly technologically locked in 19th century and behaving as if they moved back in time to the slowly tamed Wild West.

They all seem content enough, drinking their fill of Qitan main export, a special brew that brings back memories and sharpens emotions, until an unexpected and unwanted visit from Isley’s acquaintance throws the situation entirely off balance; the sudden appearance of this additional presence acts like a catalyst for the whole Qita-Earth relationship, forcing a far-reaching redefinition of their common history – and their future.

Saying anything more would constitute a spoiler, so I’ll stop myself here. Let me focus instead on this novel’s strengths and weaknesses, as it has abundance of both.

Whiteley has a penchant for slow-paced infusion of the weird into everyday life. She’s very skilled at building a feeling of unease and tension, of presenting everyday situations in a way that awakens questions and anxiety. This novel is no exception. Written in a deceptively simple yet quite poetic way, it creates a depth of history filled mostly with negative emotions: regret, dislike, old conflicts, mistrust, defeat. I’ll be honest: I didn’t like any of the characters at the beginning, and nothing that happened in the novel made me warm up to them. They are flawed and seem wilfully locked in their misery, never trying to change, resigned to defeat even before it happens. But I did feel empathy, and pity, and understanding – and I think that may be more important in the long run.

Whiteley has been compared to Le Guin, Faber, and Vandermeer, but I don’t think these comparisons do her justice; for me, most comparisons with Le Guin are certain to bring disappointment and this novel is no exception. While Whiteley deals with similar themes and topics, certainly in discussion with Le Guin’s The Dispossessed, she gives them her own spin: fills them with keen attention, or even obsession, with body and its secretions, and is focused more on the peculiarities of individual relationships than humanity’s peculiarities per se. That said, I felt a bit underwhelmed by her portrayal of these relationships; maybe I just like a bit more hope in my books, while the whole air of this novel is subdued, melancholy, and slightly dispiriting. Or maybe it’s my view of the choice Whiteley presents here: I’m hard-pressed to find anything positive in it ;).

[...]

Skyward Inn is an imaginative, slow-paced and increasingly creepy trip down the rabbit hole of alienness in all the various meanings of the word – a first contact story in which “contact” becomes much more important than “first.”

I have received a copy of this book from the publisher Rebellion through NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

Skyward Inn by Aliya Whiteley.
Drink down the brew and dream of a better Earth.
Skyward Inn, within the high walls of the Western Protectorate, is a place of safety, where people come together to tell stories of the time before the war with Qita.
But safety from what? Qita surrendered without complaint when Earth invaded; Innkeepers Jem and Isley, veterans from either side, have regrets but few scars.
Their peace is disturbed when a visitor known to Isley comes to the Inn asking for help, bringing reminders of an unnerving past and triggering an uncertain future.
Did humanity really win the war?
This was odd and different. I read it but didn't enjoy it. 3*.

Thanks to Netgalley for providing an eARC in exchange of an honest review.
I DNFed this book at 30% of the story. I have to be honest I don't really remember what made me want to request it except for the fact that is science fiction.
I kinda was lost during the story. I didn't understand where we were on earth, i didn't understand relationships between the characters and where the author wanted us to go.
I think it could be liked by people who loves a character driven story.

I wanted to love this. I went to it sort of expecting a Becky Chambers speculative kinda vibe based on the blurb and some other reviews and whilst there were some similarities, it wasn't that at all, but that's on me for having expectations. Even beyond that though it just didn't work for me.

The idea is stunning and there are so many interesting aspects and story threads in this, just for me it didn't come together in an enjoyable, immersive way. The plot seemed all over the place, there was too much going on and not enough coherent explanations. The characters all felt a little one-dimensional and whilst the writing was solid it didn't draw me in. I do have to mention how absolutely gorgeous the cover is.

Overall this just sadly wasn't for me.

Thanks to Netgalley and the publisher for an e-arc in exchange for an honest review.

I was not able to understand the little things happening in the story leading to the plot. All I understood was that the story is divided into five parts which is written from first person's point of view. I was into the second part of the story still, I was not able to have a clarity of what was really happening with respect to the characters or the world building for that matter. I really struggled myself into completing it for the sake of reviewing it. I guess this was not for me.

This novel took me longer to get through than I would have liked, but if you're looking for slow-burn and atmospheric sci-fi, this might be up your alley. I like how this is an alien invasion story that reads more like a family drama, blending the personal and the cosmic. The concept is cool and by the end, I had bought into it well enough. Next I’d like to read Du Maurier’s Jamaica Inn to see if that adds anything to my reading. Definitely worth checking out.

So, Skyward Inn. It's weird. And character-driven. It combines science fiction with weird fiction and personal drama. Jem runs a pub in a region of Britain disconnected from the modern world. There's a spaceport in the area, but no one uses it.

Before coming here, Jem spent ten years on the planet Qita with a Qitan named Isley. Her story unfolds slowly and revolves around the consequences of humanity's contact with aliens. She may also be serving a psychedelic brew at her inn.

Either way, Jem's family and emotional life is complicated. Her son, Fosse, feels alienated. In addition, the people of the Western Protectorate are suffering from a strange illness, and it turns out that the story of Qitan's surrender to humans is different than generally believed.

Interplanetary travel is possible because humanity has discovered a wormhole. After discovering Qita, a coalition of countries decided to conquer it. Only Britain has vowed to stay out of the war and live a rural life without modern technology. The residents of the Protectorate, including Jem and Isley, want to keep out of the war, but their decision is tested when a desperate visitor from Isley's past shows up one night.

Skyward Inn isn't the fastest book around. Nor is it the easiest to get into. But those who've read Whiteley's works before will appreciate the subtle surrealism, the quirkiness, and the family drama. I love her writing style, but I must confess that I almost lost interest in the story. So look elsewhere if you're looking for a fast-paced, plot-driven story. But if you're more into literary and philosophical themes, you'll love Skyward Inn. Ultimately, it's a thoughtful book about how we as humans relate to each other and come together or break apart.

Skyward Inn is a short science fiction novel by Aliya Whiteley which came out this past March in hardcover, and is set to be released in paper back in January 2022. It had a hook that caught my eye when I saw in in a Rebellion (the publisher) newsletter earlier this year, but I never got to it at that time. So I took a chance on it when it popped up on NetGalley in advance of the book's release in paperback, hoping the hook - aliens who surrendered without firing a shot, but with things not as they appear - would turn out as interesting as it seemed.

And well, Skyward Inn is an interesting novel for sure, dealing with themes of imperialism, of isolationism, of being together and alone (and both at once), and of issues of language and understanding perhaps most of all. The story does so through its two protagonists: first person protagonist Jem and third person protagonist Fosse, who is essentially autistic in a community that doesn't understand his struggles with language and identity, in a galaxy where alien-human interactions, even in an isolationist community, is seemingly falling apart. And yet while there's a lot of interesting stuff here, a lot of the themes are kind of muddled by the book not dealing with much of them directly, instead relying upon things being weird and indirect (I've seen some VanderMeer comparisons, and that's not too far off, although this doesn't quite work as well).



-------------------------------------------------Plot Summary---------------------------------------------------
Jem left the isolationist Western Protectorate after having her son, not quite fitting in, and joined the Coalition war effort as a propagandaist prior to what was expected to be a war against the alien Qita. But the Qitans surrendered without firing a shot, and no war occurred, and Jem and a Qitan friend, Isley, returned to the Western Protectorate to run the Skyward Inn - a bar specializing in a special Qitan drink. Jem wishes she could love Isley and be loved in return, but instead only shares with him her stories of what she saw on his world in her travels.

Jem's son Fosse, raised by his uncle (a leader in the Protectorate), finds himself a teen boy without a place. He can't seem to put this feeling into words, and no one seems to understand him because of it, and so he tries to relieve himself with his own hands - and an axe - on an abandoned farm. But this relief, both sexual and in violence, doesn't last long.

And then the visitors come. First another Qitan who arrives mysteriously to ask Isley for help, which forces Jem to wonder how much she really knows about the one she loves. Then three mysterious human strangers take over Fosse's farm, and talk of magic and disease. And soon the two of them find their worlds seeming to collapse, as people begin to melt together, and the future falls into doubt.....as the real truth of how the Qitans are begins to come clear....
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Skyward Inn is technically Jem's story, as it's told mostly in her own first person point of view. For substantial portions however, the story switches to being told in third person from the perspective of Jem's estranged son Fosse, with the change in perspective later becoming significant in the book's final act. Jem and Fosse live in an isolationist Protectorate in what is now the UK, which doesn't avail itself of modern technology, unlike the global Coalition government outside that uses such technology and attempted to wage war against the Qitans before their surrender.

The setting is one with a lot of interesting aspects - Jem's role for the coalition was to put propaganda leaflets on various places on the Qitan world, exhorting them to give in and surrender....and it turns out in the end, that the Qitans took these for wisdom. The Coalition uses implants in one's head that tell one answers to any question they think, which Jem winds up finding offputting while Fosse later finds them comforting. And yet Coalition technology can't quite match up to real experiences, as Fosse finds out when he sees a VR experience of his own home, which can't match up to the real experiences until he takes a drug that dampens his own memories. More interesting is the idea of how the Coalition, the Qitans, and the humans all make the mistake of thinking of the others as being part of one unified group instead of multiple groups, with the Qitans thinking there are only a few human languages because that's all they encounter, the humans thinking the Qitans are all the same, etc. There's some obvious anti-imperialist themes going on here - made even clearer by the differences between the isolationist wanting to go back to the past Protectorate vs the Coalition.

More interesting are the ideas of language, storytelling, and the struggles of being alone and together all at once. For Jem, she can't quite explain to Isley how she loves him, and can't quite explain her own memories and history, and only tells him the stories of his own homeworld from her experiences. For Fosse, who is very definitely autistic in an isolationist community that doesn't seem to have anyone able to understand and help him with that, it makes him unable to really explain his own feelings to basically anyone. And so for Fosse it's a revelation when he first gets the Coach implant that will answer his questions, and then later meets a Qitan with whom his lack of understanding isn't a barrier. And then there's the communication between the humans and the Qitans, which falls completely apart, until it winds up in disaster for them both (sort of).

There's a lot more here that's hard to talk about without spoiling, such as the idea of being together with people and yet also still being isolated and alone, which the book's ending tackles in depth. And yet while there's so many ideas here, it's all contained within a plot that's so indirect, and yet not QUITE weird enough to be really completely unique (that's sort of where the VanderMeer comparison falls apart for me, as the way things turn out is a plot trope I've seen before, most notably in a certain anime) that it just feels more like a "huh" muddled plot in the end more than something truly insightful. Sometimes being more direct about your themes, or dealing with less of them, allows for a stronger story, and I feel that's where Skyward Inn kind of falls apart.

Jem is human, formerly working on a planet that humans are colonizing, partially driving out the native intelligent species, which is close enough to humanoid for serious misunderstanding to be easy. She and her alien companion—with whom she is in what seems like unrequited love—now run an inn in an Earth province that has seceded from modernity (chips in the head/expansionism, mostly) and sell the alien brew that restores pleasant memories to immediate experience. Her son is one of the POV characters, and he’s callow and unpleasant enough to make reading not super pleasant either. Humanity as destroyer, I think, but I admit I couldn’t finish.

Skyward Inn introduces readers to the Western Protectorate, a small part of Devon that’s rejected the fast evolving modern world outside of its walled borders, a world where people use AI implants and travel to distant planets. The people inside the Protectorate have chosen a simpler life instead, growing their own food, building their homes themselves, and relying on nothing from the outside. It’s here that we meet Jem, a woman who grew up in the Protectorate, but left her home for years to travel to the distant world of Qita, where humanity had begun expanding.

During her time on Qita she met and fell in love with one of the world’s inhabitants, Isely. Veterans from both sides of a small war that never was, they found friendship and comfort in each other, and Isely returned to Earth with Jem once her tour was finished. Now the two of them run the Skyward Inn, a small tavern overlooking the village where Jem grew up, a village she no longer really feels a part of. Having worked hard for the locals to accept Isely, and still working to reforge her relationship with her estranged son, Jem’s life is thrown off course when another Qitan who knows Isely arrives at the Inn, asking for their help.

Skyward Inn is a strange story, one that mixes together old ways of life, of remote rural living, with alien worlds and the fear of the alien and the unknown. It takes a very familiar, simple way of life that most readers will be familiar with, that some might even desire to pursue (no more social media, offices, or commutes sounds wonderful) and begins to add strange elements that alter this dream existence into something very different.

Despite presenting two opposing ways of life, the quiet life that shuns technology, and another where travel to the stars is possible, the book isn’t really about that. It doesn’t ask big questions about which way of life is better, or if there needs to be a balance between the old way of the world and the future; instead, it focuses on the people in the story, and asks questions about what it means to be human. The book is concerned about relationships, how people connect, and what it means to be a part of each other’s lives.

I feel like I’m struggling to describe the book, but I think that’s part of what makes it a really interesting read. It’s not a simple story. It raises questions and themes through metaphor. It bends time and perception in ways that you wouldn’t expect, and the story doesn’t follow a path that you expect. I’m sure that if you were to read it you would have a different experience of it than I, because it felt strangely personal, like the author had managed to get inside my head and was making me examine my own relation to the world and what certain things meant to me.

Skyward Inn might not be for everyone, it has a very leisurely pace, and twists narratives together in unusual ways that might not be to everyone’s tastes, but if you like the strange, if you like stories that are multi-layered and get under your skin, this is probably something that you’ll really like. With strong, well defined characters, and some big questions on the very nature of what it means to exist, Skyward Inn is a book that will get you thinking.

Skyward Inn by Aliya Whitely was read much faster by us than initially planned. The other two had it devoured in days and only me, the LadyDuckofDoom, lingered because I recently moved and had to pack a ton of books into a ton of boxes.

The book is supposed to be a retelling of Daphne du Maurier’s Jamaica Inn, which I haven’t read, and probably never will. So I can not tell you anything about the connection between the two books.

What I can tell you about is how the book reminded me some of Ursula LeGuin’s works. Whitely’s work reads much faster than LeGuin’s, but in the end, I got a similiar feeling from Skyward Inn as I got from some books of the Hainish Circle.

The story focuses on one family in the Western Protectorate, a region that has turned its back on technology. The rest of the world seems to be obsessed with trading and slowly colonizing Qita, a planet with sentient life. The path to Qita was mysteriously opened by the so called Kissing Gate. The mother of the family, Jem, runs the Skyward Inn with the only other Quitan, Isley, in the Western Protectorate. Her son Fosse was raised by her brother while she was away, signed up many years to deliver peace messages all over Qita. Telling more would spoil the story.

The unfolding book is as much a family drama as a speculative mystery, the many layers of the story working very well together. Some of us sci-fi nerds can guess the defining key elements the story is working towards, but that does not prevent the enjoyment of it. At a bit over 300 pages, the book is not that long, either. I would recommend some time to think about the ending, though. It would make a lovely pick for a larger bookclub, too.

"Skyward Inn" is a feast of weirdness that made this book a refreshing read. It's beautifully written, the characters are a great blend of routine and quirky, the plot is solid and compelling, and the setting is easy to imagine and comprehend. It's not going to be everyone's idea of a perfect read, but it hit the spot for me.

My thanks to the author, publisher, and NetGalley. This review was written voluntarily and is entirely my own, unbiased, opinion.