James Nicoll Reviews

Without Question or Pause

The Stardust Grail

By Yume Kitasei

12 Jul, 2024

**Doing the WFC's Homework**

5 comments

Yume Kitasei’s 2024 The Stardust Grail is a stand-alone space opera.

Maya Hoshimoto was an alien artifact retrieval expert (thief); she gave it up, she thought, to re-enter academia. At the advanced age of thirty-one, she finds herself at a standstill. Where once Maya was a junior scholar failing to reach her potential, then a thief, now she is a not very successful comparative cultures graduate student in the “death spiral” phase of her research career.

Maya may think she has left her old life behind her. Her old life seeks her out in Princeton, New Jersey.

But first, alien galactopolitics.

In Your Head

The Deep Sky

By Yume Kitasei

29 Sep, 2023

**Doing the WFC's Homework**

3 comments

Yume Kitasei’s 2023 The Deep Sky is a stand-alone science fiction novel.

More than a decade into the Phoenix’s journey to another star, Asuka and Kat suit up to examine a mysterious object on the ship’s hull. What should have been a routine exo-vehicular excursion ends in disaster. A bomb detonates. Kat is killed instantly. Inside the ship, Captain McMahon and Communications Specialist Winnie are killed as well. The ship itself is knocked off course.

Asuka survives. Perhaps she can solve the mystery of who planted the bomb.… If only there were not so many suspects. If only Asuka were not the least qualified person in the crew.