Genre: science fiction

Maya is a *reformed* art thief. She’s trying really hard at the reformed bit, now that she’s a graduate student studying comparative culture (rare artifacts, er, space archaeology) at Princeton. A settler from the Outer Worlds, relocated to New Jersey to connect with her ancestral roots, Maya is struggling to remain focused on her studies, so when her erstwhile co-conspirator, the Frenro alien called Auncle, reaches out in need, she jumps at the opportunity. Joining their crew are Wil Jenkins, a former soldier, and her companion Medix (Med-IX), medical robot with Class III sentience. Their mission: locate and retrieve the potentially mythical artifact The Stardust Grail, which may unlock the secret to the Frenro’s ability to procreate, but may also contain a much darker secret.

Kitasei leans into her worldbuilding with her sophomore novel. The interstellar web - actually connected through a node network - has components of well thought-out believability. She never info-dumps, only builds the details out as you need to understand them, particularly as you learn about the diseases that affected so many civilizations and the wars ravaged between interstellar races, leaving the lingering after-affects of socio-political devastation (with a bigger impact for some of the characters than others).

I love a good space crime, especially one that forces the main characters to evaluate their morals and sense of identity. Similar to Kitasei's first novel, the tone of Stardust Grail is more serious than whimsical (though it has its moments, considering Auncle is a potato-shaped aquatic ancient alien). Unlike in The Deep Sky, Kitasei keeps The Stardust Grail primarily in one narrative timeline, which improved the reading enjoyment and cohesion of the book overall. Interstellar politics and high stakes death of a civilization are always a good listen.

The Stardust Grail is for anyone who loves the idea of heists, archaeology and exploring, and taking on a colonial Empire. One who thinks their survival is worth whatever the cost. Who gets stuck in these cycles of fear, aggression, defense, and offense. It's about a researcher, student, and 'former' thief who knows what it is like to be seen for what we can do for the "good" the "empire". With subtle digs at academia and the politics of it, The Stardust Grail had me fully invested.

What I love about Kitasei's books is that she writes openly about how she envisions a future of our population and it's interactions with the wider universe. She brings a perspective to the science fiction genre that really opens the mind in terms of how things could be.

At its core, this book is a space heist, but its so much more that that. Filled with impressionable characters that are all different life forms from around the universe trying to find themselves and navigate a world that will always be complicated. No matter how advanced any species is. A fantastic ride along the galaxy that left me appreciative of the struggles of all and I enjoyed every minute of this book.

3.75 This one didn’t quite work for me.

I did like the main character. There were some really cool aspects to the world building. The space heist was a fun concept (though it wasn’t as big of a plot point as I expected).

But overall, the pacing was a little slow. The found-family characters lacked chemistry. The plot was a bit disorganized.

It was almost there and may still be worth checking out — just didn’t quite live up to The Deep Sky for me.

Thanks to Flatiron for providing me with an advanced copy to review!

Described as a sci-fi heist adventure, but ended up being so so much more than that. I am absolutely in love with these characters (one of whom is a sentient robot, if you know me you know I LOVE a sentient robot), and I'm sad that I'm done with them. Amazing world building & character development. The pacing of this was perfect, not so fast paced that it becomes overwhelming but fast enough that it didn't drag at all. This felt like a masterpiece, and may end up being a favorite of the year!

Big thank you NetGalley and to the publisher for the chance to review this book pre-release. I really loved this book. It was my first book from Ms. Kitasei and I immediately purchased The Deep Sky after finishing this one. I loved how authentic the characters felt to me, and I loved the pacing. It has just the right dash of speculation, action and I would easily reread this one.

This was really ambitious. I enjoyed the world building a lot, and the way that everyone is constantly just a little selfish, a little flawed, a little awful. The characters felt more real that way. I loved Maya and her random flashes of the future, but I also really loved that despite her deep loyalty to Auncle, she could still recognize & process that the Frenro may have been wrong, that Auncle may have lied to her, and that morality is not black and white. I was hoping for a bit of romance between Wil & Maya but by the end I understood why that didn’t make a ton of sense.

Having said that, I do think this really struggles with pacing, particularly in the middle. Some parts dragged and others were swallowed by a time jump, which lessened the emotional impact & relationship building.

It is fantasy with no romance, and just a smidge of horror in the last 15% or so. For readers of Station Eternity by Mur Lafferty & The Blighted Stars by Megan O’Keefe.

3.5 rounded up to 4

I absolutely adored Kitasei's debut, The Deep Sky. It was the perfect mix of mystery and not-too-distant future sci-fi for me. So I was really anticipating the release this book, but I don't think The Stardust Grail hit quite as hard for me.

I loved the themes that Kitasei explored in this story. Stealing artifacts in order to return them to their home civilizations is the kind of anti-colonial form of protest that I love to see, and then you add space and aliens into the mix?? That concept sold me on this book in a heartbeat. But I think I ended up feeling a little too dumb for this book. I love sci-fi, but I have a hard time with vague world/universe building, and unfortunately I ended up feeling a bit lost while reading this. There are some really interesting alien races that exist in this story, but I never had a super clear idea of what any of them even physically looked like, much less what their cultures looked like. There's a short little glossary at the end that expands on each of the species that was helpful, but as I didn't know that existed until I was finished with the book, I wish Kitasei had found a way to weave those descriptions into the actual narrative.

I also see some people describing the crew in this book as found family, but I didn't really feel that dynamic. Maya and Auncle have a very strong bond, but the other members join in later and somewhat reluctantly, and I never really warmed up to them the way I think I was supposed to. A couple of them had their charming moments, but I don't think enough time was given to develop their friendship with one another.

Which leads me to the pacing of the story. I don't know if I just picked it up at the wrong time or what, but I really struggled with the beginning half of this book. I thought an art thief/heist story would feel a bit more exciting and tension-filled, but even during the action sequences, I didn't feel as engaged as I had hoped to. There are some really huge, universe-altering moments that occur in this book, but I never quite felt the impact of those revelations. The last half definitely picked up the pace, but I almost wish it had been a little longer in order to flesh certain elements out a bit better.

I feel like I'm being harsher than I mean to be, especially considering that I think this is an objectively good book. I just don't think this was particularly my brand of sci-fi. Like I said earlier, I absolutely LOVED The Deep Sky, and this was just so different from that. Which is actually great! I love an author with versatility! I just think that as a result, not all of her works will land as strongly for me. But I know tons of people will love this one and I very much look forward to Yume Kitasei's next release.

Thank you so much to NetGalley and Flatiron Books for the ARC!

The Stardust Grail is a captivating intergalactic anti-colonial heist adventure exploring existential questions on a cosmic scale with tenderness and humour alike.

It truly is what it promises to be: an anti-colonial space heist of intergalactic proportions that’ll grab you from the start and take you on a thrilling adventure. But The Stardust Grail is also so much more than a heist story. It’s funny and strange and tender and existential. In a truly magical feat, Yume Kitasei manages to seamlessly blend the vastness of existential questions with the close and character-focused journey of a lifetime. Fun space tech and alien civilisations meet the realities of colonisation and human greed, and somehow, despite the stakes and the bleakness of the future, Kitasei captures a sense of hope and awe that seeped into my very bones.

The Stardust Grail was one of the most immersive and thrilling reading experiences I had in a long time!

I love a heist story. The scheming and planning, the unexpected turns and high stakes – all of it is a perfect cocktail to have me at the edge of my seat. The Stardust Grail manages to be a heist within a heist within a heist, of sorts. While there are the actual heists (yes, technically there are multiple!), the whole book with its twists and turns feels like a heist on a cosmic scale, keeping the tension high. The stakes are so impossibly high, with the fate of civilisations at stake, and yet Kitasei manages to ground us in the small realities of the unlikely crew around Maya as they navigate these stakes.

I had a fantastic time reading all the heist scenes and waiting for the reveals of Maya’s plans, holding my breath when the characters were faced with new obstacles, and gasping at all the twists and turns. When I tell you that this is an adventure, I mean it! There’s so much fun world building and inventive technology that it’s a true delight to explore the expansive and immersive universe Kitasei has built here.
I loved Maya as our main character, she’s funny and clever and so so human. She makes mistakes, overestimates herself and has a very relatable existential crisis. I loved following her across the universe. One aspect of The Stardust Grail that I haven’t had a chance to mention yet is the role that Maya’s migraine induced dreams play as ominous premonitions throughout the book. This twisted dreamlike quality messing with our sense of time was incredibly well done and added a perpetual sense of dread at the things to come. I love when stories play with timelines and possibilities and this one does it so beautifully!

While The Stardust Grail does provide some specifics of the colonial politics of the various civilisations we meet (though let’s be honest, it is once again humans who love to colonise in particular), its exploration of colonialism are more personal and visceral. It’s ultimately a story about the colonial violence inflicted on people when their culture, history, and knowledge are brutally destroyed and oppressed. There is a visceral sense of grief permeating every thread of this book that I couldn’t help but feel deeply as well in the face of so much loss and destruction.

Despite the heavy themes, The Stardust Grail is a surprisingly hopeful book. Ultimately, this comes down to Kitasei’s ability to balance the elements of a story and not shy away from any aspects of the human condition. Yes, this future world and universe have many of the same issues our world has today. But there is always hope and humour to be found in the experiences of these characters as well.

I think much of this masterful balance in The Stardust Grail comes down to the incredible world building and the immersive sensory quality of Kitasei’s writing. One of the big themes of The Stardust Grail is the question of how much we can truly ever understand each other across cultural boundaries and if there is such a thing as a universal theory of life. Ultimately, there are always miscommunications and aspects that remain unknown and unknowable, no matter how deep a personal connection might reach. This tension between the known and unknowable is one of the driving existential forces in The Stardust Grail.

One of my favourite parts of reading sci-fi is getting to explore different worlds and the author’s speculative visions of corners of our universe. And Yume Kitasei delivers! The universe she has created in The Stardust Grail is vibrant and expansive, filled with so many ideas and places that I wish I could’ve stayed there forever. To me, this sense of expansiveness and the need for me as a reader to want more is the hallmark of a great fictional world! Honestly, I would gladly read a whole series set in this universe, there is so much left to explore!

The fundamental feeling that to me encapsulates my reading experience best is awe. I was in awe of these new planets, their uniqueness and possibilities. I was in awe when faced with the sheer scale of this cosmos. And I was and still am in awe of Yume Kitasei’s craft as a writer, weaving together emotions and plot with an almost musical delicacy.

Yume Kitasei has cemented herself as one of my all-time favourite authors with her imaginative and immersive writing that is so tender and hopeful, while not shying away from the darker aspects of humanity and bleak futures.

The Stardust Grail was such a fun adventure! I loved the characters and the imaginative world Yume Kitasei created to tell this story 💜

Although, I really liked this one, The Deep Sky, her debut novel, is still my favorite of hers and it was among my top reads last year!

4.5 stars

Come for the heist novel stay for the contemplations of existence and morality.

The Stardust Grail was so much more than I expected it to be. In this book, we follow ex-art thief Maya who is essentially hiding in graduate school after a heist goes very, very wrong. Despite efforts to leave her past behind, Maya is roped into “one last mission” that has the potential to save an entire alien race.

The Stardust Grail grabs your attention with the SciFi heist setup but there is so much to discover in this book. There is found family with a really fun and eccentric cast of characters. Characters navigate discussions of identity and morality. The story explores history and who is remembered as the “good” and “bad” guys. Halfway through the story, the book takes an unexpected, weird turn and from that point on I was completely hooked.

Yume Kitasei has quickly become an auto-buy SciFi author for me. I was a big fan of her debut, The Deep Sky, when I read it last year. What I particularly love about both of her books is the way she creates a sense of culture and how culture and identity are central to these far-future SciFi stories. These elements make the stories rich and engaging.

In The Stardust Grail, the sense of rich cultural identity shows itself both in the human beings and in the other life forms in this universe. The story is not just humans and then everyone else are these generic aliens. There’s a really rich sense of diversity and culture among the other space-capable people in this universe. There is this extensive sense of politics, art, history, and conflict between these people. Human beings are such a small part of the history of the universe as a whole. This book really captures the sense of things being so much bigger than one person. But at the same time, the book highlights the impact of individual choice through this line that recurs throughout the book:

You cannot live in the universe without leaving footprints

I would highly recommend the audiobook if you're interested. There are some cool moments where the narrator plays with voices that really add to the reading experience.

4.25⭐️

I enjoyed last summer’s The Deep Sky immensely, so imagine my excitement to receive a copy of Yume Kitasei’s latest work, the Stardust Grail. It did not disappoint.

The Stardust Grail is an action-packed space adventure filled with delightful characters. It came to life much like a movie and kept me on the edge of my seat. There’s great world—building, philosophical and ethical questions, and did I mention action? A fun fast-paced read to enliven your universe this summer.

Katharine Chin did an excellent job narrating the audiobook, giving a unique voice to each character.

Thank you Yume Kitasei, Flatiron Books, and NetGalley for providing this ARC for review consideration. All opinions expressed are my own.

Yume Kitasei's latest sci-fi novel follows Maya, a grad student at Princeton in the future, who rejoins her friend Auncle, a Frenro, in order to chase down the titular Stardust Grail before the human armed forces can get it. The novel took a while to get going for me, and Maya's shifting character and motivations were not really clear. The book also felt like it had a lot packed into it without each thing being given enough time or description. I had a hard time picturing most of the people and places in the book.

The Stardust Grail delivered an engrossing space heist adventure story I entirely devoured in a couple days. I loved pretty much everything about this book - the world building was fantastic and imaginative with super likable characters.

It was very fun to follow Maya, Auncle, Wil and, Medix on their interstellar space heist. The mystery of the grail and the history of Frenro made such an engaging plot that kept me guessing up until the end. Maya was a great MC, adding extra mystery with her visions, her shared history with Auncle was everything sweet I adored. I’m a sucker for wholesome and Auncle was hands down the best thing here, I loved their way of talking and thinking, it was very cute. Even Wil and Medix had heartfelt moments, and I like how the whole band had great chemistry.

All in, this is delightful and action packed, very much on the approachable sci-fi spectrum and I recommend it to fans of adventure and found family stories.

I love a good heist novel, and while this comes down on the "more to say about society" than "fun heist hijinks" side, that's mostly due to its scope, the fact that it's not just an object in the balance, but the fate of multiple species and worlds.

I love the world Kitasei has set up here - I'm not sure how far-future it's meant to be, since a lot of the Earth scenes feel familiar enough to make it feel not /too/ far-future, but the galactic sense of it feels wonderfully developed. It's nice to get a sense of multiple cultures within an alien race, as well as a sense of multiple human cultures continuing even through settling new planets or moons, instead of smashing each species into one example.

I do wish we got to see more of Maya as a thief or get more of a sense of that part of her life before we meet her - the only previous job we get into detail is one that went badly and we get more of the aftermath than a sense of who she is as a planner, how she and Uncle typically went about jobs, how artifacts were repatriated, etc. We know she's the planner in this crew, but the addition of Medix and Wil is a new one, and I wish we got a better sense of Maya and Uncle's heist past.

That said, I love the addition of Medix and Wil, Wil as an excellent foil to Maya's rock-solid faith that she's doing the right thing in the face of an increasingly complex situation with literally alien morals and decisions, and Medix with a wonderful spin on "what does it mean to be human" when there are so many forms of sentient life to model.

"You cannot move throughout the universe without leaving footprints" is definitely a theme here as the heist starts to unravel into something much more wide-reaching and with much more historical repercussions than anyone initially assumed. The impacts of different cultural values and ways of communication get magnified when meeting new species, and the question of "when there is no right decision, how do you choose?" comes up in many different forms, giving the whole book a nice sort of weight in our time even while on a galactic scale.

The Stardust Grail is familiar and fresh at the same time, a new complex take on a classic heist story. I think this is a fun time for readers both new and well-versed in the genre.

I did have a hard time losing myself in the story, perhaps due to it’s breakneck speed. There was never time enough to settle into a scene and I found myself forcing the read. Whether this is my fault or the book’s, I don’t know, but the last 25% picked up for me.

Maya didn’t do much for me as a main character, somehow she fell kind of flat. The true strength of the book is the cast of absolutely delightful side characters. I’m looking forward to the spin-off sequels about Medix and Wil’s adventures. There will be more Medix and Wil in the future, right?

RIGHT??

An absolute delight of a sci-fi novel. Yes, it's a heist book, but it's also a lot more than that in ways that I'm just going to let you figure out as you read because it's such a fun ride to take.

The pacing in this book is great. I'm in the midst of a gnarly reading slump where it feels like I can barely focus on written words for more than 5 minutes at a time, and still this book managed to break through that and had me hooked very fast with the opening chapters and excited to keep going. The highs and lows and the action and the downtime and the discoveries are all just balanced out really well in this story. The core group of characters are fun and varied and feel real and believable (even the one with all the tentacles) and the way we integrate everyone together in the story is, to repeat myself, paced very well.

The action is good, the tension is well timed, there's humor and grief and loss and love and a taste of Found Family and more story than the synopsis preapres you for, which is a GREAT way to do a synopsis rather than revealing far too much in an attempt to hook people in. What can I say? I really enjoyed my time with this book.

Kitasei has a vision of the future in both of her novels now (The Deep Sky set in near future and now The Stardust Grail set in far future) that does so well at striking tones both pessimistic and optimistic, at finding the good in the bleak, and never leaves you too mired in one over the other. And the way she maintains humanity and culture in these stories - and particularly here in The Stardust Grail - is something I really wish we saw more of. So many sci-fi stories - once they escape the bounds of Earth and go interstellar with other planets and aliens and far flung adventures - tend to flatten humanity to one homogenous Human™ culture (often a white, western sense of culture) among the interstellar community, but Kitasei maintains her characters' individuality. Maya may be a spacefaring thief, but she's also a half-Japanese half-American struggling grad student living between two cultures just on the human side, not to mention her otherworldly travels. It's grand in its physical scale and yet still feels grounded and relatable and realistic and human.

I also really appreciate what this story has to say about colonialism and anthrocentrism and again Kitasei strikes a great balance of making the astronomical feel relatable and knowable to the 21st century earth-bound human reading the story.

In case it wasn't clear, I had a great time with this one.

LAST BIT, the audiobook for this one is great! The narrator does a great job with the voices and makes some really cool choices in the style for sections I won't get into here. do recommend if you're an audio reader.

[I read this book as an Advanced Reader Copy in two forms. The Audiobook, through NetGalley, provided by the publisher; and a physical copy, provided by the author.]

What starts as collegiate scifi turns into a museum heist, and finally evolves into space horror. I'm not precisely sure how these things worked so well together, but they really did! The tension kept building, the hits kept coming, and I read that last third of the book whilst holding my breath. If you like emotional scifi with characters of questionable morality and a lot of action, check this one out!

4.5/5 Stars

Thank you Netgalley, the publisher, and Yume for the advanced reader copy of this book!

General Description:
Maya Hoshimoto used to be an intergalactic thief. However, now she's in college, so she's changed her way. However, one object that would take her out of retirement would be the Stardust Grail, an object that her friend Auncle could use to have children and create nodes (the intergalactic airways). When a journal from a famous explorer is found, Maya feels the grail is closer than before. Then, her friend Auncle reappears and Maya knows it's time to officially find the grail. However, the government wants the grail too. Who will get to it first?

All the goods:
- Yume is SUCH a creative. I loved the world that was built and wish I could be as creative.
- Maya is such a great main character. She's quick witted, smart, and leads with her heart which I love.
- There are some twists in this book that had my jaw on the floor.
- I would read more about the side characters and other beings in this book. I was left wanting more stories from the universe but also felt the book tied up with a bow at the end, which is a weird feeling but I was very happy with it.

The loss of a star:
- This is definitely on me as a reader, but due to me needing to essentially see a movie in my head while I'm reading. Some of the places were just very hard to imagine in my mind and it took me out of the book a bit. Maybe if I went to space it'd be easier to imagine...oops.

Overall, Yume does it again with a great sci-fi book. I feel like any sci-fi fan needs to add Yume immediately to their TBR. If you're unsure about sci-fi, I think Yume's books are also accessible enough that they are great books to introduce you to the genre.

I loved this! The Stardust Grail is my second book by Yume Kitasei, and I'm in awe! She's already grown so much as a writer between this book and The Deep Sky (her debut), and I can't wait to continue reading all of her books.

The vibes of The Stardust Grail are very Guardians of the Galaxy/heist quest, but Kitasei also poses meaningful questions around Otherness/what is Alien that I think many readers with immigrant backgrounds will appreciate. As the novel progresses, and the universe expands, Colonialism and Genocide also come up as prevalent themes to engage with. It's clear she has no concrete answers nor moral stances to these questions and themes, which I feel is all the more realistic.

Finally, I just really enjoy the casual worldbuilding -- the novel is set in some far away version of Earth that has become a fully engaged participant in multiple parts of space. Kitasei's projection of how America would operate in this scenario just feels so spot on, and I loved that our main character, Maya, is emblematic of the Asian American experience in so many ways.

I recommend this for anyone looking for a fun space adventure, found family, and existential questions about migration/otherness! I can't wait for more folks to read this.