The Deep Sky

A Novel

By: Yume Kitasei

Narrated by: Sarah Skaer

Length: 12 hrs and 15 mins

Publisher's summary

Long-listed, Washington Post Best Books of the Year, 2023

Long-listed, Kirkus Reviews Best Books of the Year, 2023

“Sarah Skaer uses her considerable vocal skill to make each crewmember instantly recognizable. Asuka is strongly characterized by her insecurity and self-doubt, though listeners will likely have more faith in her.”—Library Journal

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

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

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

As the mystery unfolds on the ship, poignant flashbacks reveal how Asuka came to be picked for the mission. Despite struggling through training back on Earth, she was chosen to represent Japan, a country she only partly knows as a half-Japanese girl raised in America. But estranged from her mother back home, The Phoenix is all she has left.

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

A Macmillan Audio production from Flatiron Books.

©2022 Yume Kitasei (P)2022 Macmillan Audio

Critic reviews

ONE OF THE MOST ANTICIPATED BOOKS OF THE YEAR: Goodreads, BookRiot, SheReads, Fantasy Book Cafe, Debutiful, Novel Suspects, Portalist, International Business Times UK, FanFi Addict, Overdrive

"Cerebral SF, tackling both humanity wide problems and the smaller but ever-present conflicts closer to home."—Kirkus Reviews (starred)

"The Deep Sky is a beautiful tightly-wound mystery. It is both an intimate character portrait and a thriller. The space geek in me loves the way the voyage feels like a completely plausible extension of our current billionaire-fueled space race."—Mary Robinette Kowal, winner of the Hugo, Nebula, and Locus Awards

"There are so many things to love about Yume Kitasei's debut, but I especially adored how real every moment felt: the politics of boarding school and our future world; the lapsed friendships and estranged parents; the guilt of surviving, of being chosen. In The Deep Sky, Kitasei puts us under the microscope not in judgment but with a fair and caring eye; she looks for the best in us."—C. L. Clark, author of The Unbroken

Excellent debut

Thrilling debut novel. I listened to it in one go because I couldn’t put it down.

a cool dystopian sci-fi murder mystery with not much mystery.

First, the performance: its decent, however I found the lack of inflection across the characters made it difficult to tell who was speaking early on. the characters present a diverse multicultural cast and while don't expect a narrator to have a mastery over a dozen different accents, an attempt would have been nice.

the story: it does boil down to an Agatha Christie/knives out who done it. and while the writing is good, and the interpersonal relationships with the characters is compelling, the murder mystery was not. there was very little tension in it for me and I feel the story could have mostly done away with it. the story beats that the mystery drives are good, but the conclusion of it feels like it's missing something. all told, a very entertaining novel that those who are invested in character drama will love. if you're here for a satisfying murder mystery, maybe skip this one.

Sci Fi with Emotional Intelligence

This is a genre bending adventure. Part coming of age story, part mystery, part dystopian fantasy, and of course- outer space odyssey. What a brilliant first novel! Beautifully performed. Highly recommended if you are looking for Sci Fi that has as much insight into humanity as tech.

Great story. Really bad narration.

I loved the story- great author and I can’t wait to read more from them. However for this audio version, the narration/editing was very poor. The mispronunciation of multiple words throughout was so distracting.

odd mispronunciation

Overall the book was very well read, but there were some very distracting strange pronunciation of words throughout.

Fantastic story with stellar characters

This is basically a whodunnit in space, but the characters were so well-written that I didn’t want anyone to be guilty, but also didn’t want the narrator to fail. What a great story. I laughed and cried and felt all the feels.

Summary

Mystery conclusion too compact, all in penultimate chapter, and abstract, bird characteristics, really? And the evangelizing on caring for earth a bit too trite. The story flowed well enough.

Gripping!

A wonderful story and great performance. I loved the multifaceted diversity and reflection of all of the characters. I really look forward to the next book by this author.

Really fun - couldn’t stop listening

Fun and well-paced story! plot continues to shift and take new turns throughout. Even when I was able to anticipate some parts of the mystery, other elements continued to surprise me, and furthermore, the narrative appeal didn’t depend only on the mystery/suspense; the main character’s development arc and family relationships, particularly with her mother, were compelling and poignant. Despite needing to wake up early, I stayed up late in the night continuing to listen as I wanted to know what happened next.

I enjoyed the author’s creative use of Augmented Reality in the world that was created - made me think about some aspects of AR and AI in new ways.

Occasionally I struggled to keep track of the minor characters and remember who was who (I think largely a function of listening to the book instead of reading it in print ) but I found the narrators performance satisfying and enjoyable. Definitely recommend!

Too many flashback scenes

There was a lot to enjoy about this book, and while I normally appreciate a good flashback scene, this book simply had too many. Every time I got excited about the main action, there would be another flashback scene bringing it to a grinding halt.