The Vanished Birds
April 12, 2020 2:05 PM - by Jimenez, Simon - Subscribe
Nia Imani is a woman out of place and outside of time. Decades of travel through the stars are condensed into mere months for her, though the years continue to march steadily onward for everyone she has ever known. Her friends and lovers have aged past her; all she has left is work. Alone and adrift, she lives only for the next paycheck, until the day she meets a mysterious boy, fallen from the sky.
Just finished this after a recent recommendation. Was an interesting mix of space opera plus intimate tale. Both very large and small in scope.
I don't know if I fully got the connection to the boy's homeworld (purple fruit planet). Why was he taken away in the Silent Ship and were they anything other than an invention to create the trauma that drove him to discover his powers? Was it a more deliberate attempt to create/train Jaunters?
I presume everybody is already dead or dying at the end?
Was part of the space opera resolution the destruction of the Umbai empire? I don't see it recovering fast enough from the loss of FT to fend off rivals.
What particular neurodivergence does Fumiko have?
It was particularly callous towards murder. I didn't completely by Fumiko's punishment as she was too great an asset for Umbai to throw away like that. And she's too smart to leave alone. Did Umbai just forget that her particular genius created/discovered the things that made Umbai what it was ov er the last 1000 years?
Overall, I liked it though it was a long book for the story.
posted by jclarkin at 7:14 AM on July 8, 2023
I don't know if I fully got the connection to the boy's homeworld (purple fruit planet). Why was he taken away in the Silent Ship and were they anything other than an invention to create the trauma that drove him to discover his powers? Was it a more deliberate attempt to create/train Jaunters?
I presume everybody is already dead or dying at the end?
Was part of the space opera resolution the destruction of the Umbai empire? I don't see it recovering fast enough from the loss of FT to fend off rivals.
What particular neurodivergence does Fumiko have?
It was particularly callous towards murder. I didn't completely by Fumiko's punishment as she was too great an asset for Umbai to throw away like that. And she's too smart to leave alone. Did Umbai just forget that her particular genius created/discovered the things that made Umbai what it was ov er the last 1000 years?
Overall, I liked it though it was a long book for the story.
posted by jclarkin at 7:14 AM on July 8, 2023
You are not logged in, either login or create an account to post comments
posted by Chrysostom at 2:05 PM on April 12, 2020