by Yume Kitasei (2026)
(Not a review, just some notes to help me remember the things I've read. But written this way because it's the Internet, and some people will stumble across this page.)
This was a random audiobook that I downloaded from the library because it was science fiction and it was short. I wasn't really fair to this book, as I downloaded it three different times, with other books in between, before I finished. I won't rate it, but I think, had I listened to it continuously over three or four weeks, I still wouldn't have a really high opinion of it. Also, I finished this last month, and then forgot about it. It should've been, probably, five or six entries ago.
I listen to audio books when I'm walking. However, the month of February had few walks in it because of the terrible weather and the snow.
The book starts as a sci-fi whodunit, an explosion on a ship on a one-way mission to start a new colony, which in itself was fine. But it blends in a second timeline of the women training to get picked for the mission, which was less satisfying to me. It was a way to get some information about the characters, but the competition is fierce so characters who didn't make it are included, which adds drama, but doesn't do much to solve the explosion.
Stealing from Google AI: The story is a science fiction thriller about a mission to colonize a new planet to save humanity from Earth's environmental collapse, focusing on a crew of young women who must uncover a saboteur after a lethal explosion occurs on their ship, The Phoenix. It's told from the perspective of the last-minute recruit Asuka. It blends a "whodunit" mystery with coming-of-age themes, exploring identity, belonging, and the relationships between the crew members as they navigate high-stakes survival and their own personal histories.
Me again: So the Earth is doomed, and we need colony ships. The first ship has 80 women on board and will take 20 years to get there. They live aboard the ship for 20 years -- no hypersleep. The women will also be artificially impregnated along the way so that humanity can start quickly. I was a little confused about this at first, but some of the children will be born and start to grow up on the spaceship.
The bombing forces they to solve the mystery before they can continue. Was the explosion an accident? Was it sabotage? Was it preplanned or is the saboteur on the ship? They come to believe that the saboteur is among them and need to figure it out and fix all the damage before it's too late to get back on course, or they'll live out the rest of their lives in space until the air scrubbers eventually stop working (many years from now). The children that will be born will have no future.
And, of course, there's the possibility of returning to Earth 20 years after launch, achieving nothing.
After a while, the backstories in the year before the launch bored me. Asuka, the protagonist (and narrator), is an unlikely candiate, but as events turn, she ends up being included, not through a Hero's Journey, but more through politics and bad luck for other people. It actually undermines your faith in the character to fix the problem. The resolution to the bombing was okay.
I'm not going to rate it on Good Reads because I don't know if it deserves 4 stars, but I don't want to give it 3 stars because of the way I listened to it. Maybe the Earth stories might've interested me more. I don't know.
I have no plans to read the book after listening to it.
If you stumbled across my page via the Internet, please check out my short book series, Burke Lore Briefs. A fantastical foursome of flash fiction and short stories.
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