The Vanished Birds

Starred review from September 2, 2019
In a profound look at humankind’s spacefaring future, Jimenez’s debut tells of both anguish and love as the result of heart-wrenching decisions. A century from now, aerospace engineer Fumiko believes humans should leave the climate-ravaged Earth, and regretfully chooses her career designing space stations over her lover, Dana, who would rather advocate for trying to save the planet. But Dana’s efforts fail, and Earth is abandoned. Fumiko extends her life through periods of suspended animation as humans colonize the galaxy. Nearly 1,000 years later, Ahro, a boy who doesn’t speak, crash-lands on a distant farming world. Spaceship captain Nia agrees to take Ahro back to Pelican, a station Fumiko designed. As they travel through “pocket space,” where a few months pass for them while years go by in normal space, they grow close and Nia becomes protective of Ahro. When Fumiko learns Ahro has powers that could speed up space travel—abilities sought by Fumiko’s employer, the megacorporation Umbai, which is looking for more efficient ways to pillage planets—she offers Nia the opportunity to keep the boy hidden, which Nia accepts, leading to ripples of choices and consequences. This is a mostly progressive future, but classism, unchecked capitalism, and resource exhaustion loom large. This extraordinary science fiction epic, which delves deep into the perils of failing to learn from one’s mistakes, is perfect for fans of big ideas and intimate reflections.

October 1, 2019

DEBUT In the Fifth Village during Shipment Day, dubha seeds are collected by offworlders. Kaeda is one of the harvesters, and upon meeting Nia Imani, one of the offworlders, he falls in love. Their affair is complicated by Pocket Space, where eight months pass in Nia's world, while 15 years go by in Kaeda's. Just before one of the scheduled collections, the elderly Kaeda finds a mute, undernourished boy who isn't of his planet. Nia agrees to transport the boy back to the authorities. Meanwhile, Fumiko Nakajima, a scientist/engineer, succeeds in designing inhabitable space stations for Earth's residents. Fumiko is also obsessed with solving Pocket Space, and believes the key to resolving it lies within the boy Nia found. As the paths of Nia and the boy intersect with Fumiko's, the story takes on a tone and depth that recalls an N.K. Jemison novel, with a flute playing a crucial role. VERDICT The boy is reminiscent of Amy Bellafonte from Justin Cronin's The Passage, yet the journey itself evokes Bryce Courtenay's The Power of One, creating crossover appeal for readers who enjoy a bit of emotional attachment with their time travel.--Tina Panik, Avon Free P.L., CT

Copyright 2019 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

Starred review from November 1, 2019
In this gorgeous debut novel, love becomes a force that can shatter space and time. We first see Nia Imani through the eyes of someone she is always leaving behind: Kaeda, a boy growing up on a backwater planet visited once every 15 years by offworlders who come to collect its harvests. Nia is the captain of a faster-than-light ship that travels through Pocket Space. While Kaeda lives a decade and a half, Nia spends just a few months traveling between various resource-producing worlds like his, shipping goods for the powerful Umbai Company. It's not until a mysterious boy falls out of the sky on Kaeda's planet that Nia begins to form a connection she's not willing to walk away from. The boy doesn't talk, but he's drawn to music, particularly a traditional workers' song from Kaeda's world: Take my day, but give me the night. Kaeda teaches the boy to play the flute, and the music speaks to Nia. But there's something else about the boy, something that draws the attention of Fumiko Nakajima, the woman who designed the massive space stations that anchor this corporate-controlled empire. Something dangerous. Something that could change the universe. Spanning a thousand years, this sweeping novel takes the reader from the drowned cities of Old Earth to the vast reaches of Umbai corporate space but always anchors itself in human connection. Even characters whose lives are glimpsed only in passing, as waypoints along Nia's time-skipping journeys, are fully realized and achingly alive on the page. This powerful, suspenseful story asks us to consider what we'd sacrifice for progress--or for the ones we love. The best of what science fiction can be: a thought-provoking, heart-rending story about the choices that define our lives.

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Starred review from November 1, 2019
Jiminez's debut depicts a future dominated by vast corporations that, in the wake of Earth's destruction, claim space stations, people, and even whole planets as proprietary resources. Ships travel through Pocket Space, a dimension that allows for vast amounts of distance to be covered but increases the already dramatic effects of relativity so that travelers experience the passing of months instead of years. The overall narrative centers on Captain Nia Imani and her connection to a boy who falls out of the sky on the corporate-resource world of Umbai V. The boy's mysterious origins and possible relevance to the future of space travel draw the attention of the thousand-year-old scientist Fumiko Nakajima as she tries to study the boy's potential while hiding her work from her ruthless Umbai backers. As Nia and a select crew journey across the fringes of corporate space, the competing desires of the captain, her adopted boy, a vast and hungry corporate machine, and an ancient woman who can't even remember the things she has lost will all come to a head. A lyrical and moving narrative of space travel, found families, and lost loves set against an evocative space-opera background.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2019, American Library Association.)