In fact, one of my dearest friends had such a board and they live in Iceland. The early days of Internet message boards were the first time ever that trans people could speak freely yet relatively anonymously with people like them around the world. Thank you for asking this question because it lets me talk about another tradition. In the novel, you’ve brought many cultural traditions into play-where did you start from in the soul-selling elements? What did you borrow from earlier tales, and what did you invent whole cloth? But there is a long tradition of musicians trading souls for greatness, brought into American folklore via blues musicians, who may have drawn on tales of Papa Legba rather than the European devil-bargaining stories. Ahead of the novel’s September 28th release, Den of Geek had the chance to pick Aoki’s brain about how this novel came together, and insights into her inspiration…ĭemon Tremon Philippe and Shizuka’s relationship may bring to mind more of Mephistopheles and Faust than the devil at the crossroads. The result is an incredibly powerful story of hope and redemption, of small voices shouting into dissonance and being heard.

The love and care with which the characters imbue parts of their lives-whether it’s the music they play, the instruments they shape, or the food they create-gains a greater meaning by virtue of that love. There is pain, and yet a sense that better things are to come. But as the story progresses, the themes and characters dovetail together so beautifully that readers will wonder how they ever doubted.Īoki explores what it means to be human, the nature of souls, and the importance of hope and love even in the face of what may seem hopeless, filling the novel with both good humor and acknowledgment of suffering. When readers first encounter Lan and her alien crew, they may wonder how author Ryka Aoki can pull off a story that is at once soul-bargaining-with-demons and refugee-aliens-building-a-stargate. Katrina opens the novel with her flight and her passion for music Shizuka comes in quickly after with her soul-contract deadline and her desire to find one last musician to condemn to hell. Light from Uncommon Stars is the story of how these three women’s lives intersect, and is a novel filled to the brim with music so beautifully described, readers can almost hear it in the narrative. And Lan Tran and her crew are striving to build a stargate-before the Galactic Empire falls to the Endplauge-while selling donuts at Starrgate Donuts in Los Angeles. Young violinist Katrina Nguyen needs to escape her homelife, where her transness is rejected by her family, and to start anew, hopefully making videos with her music. Shizuka Satomi, a violin teacher known as the Queen of Hell, owes one more soul to demons due to an infernal bargain she struck.

Light of uncommon stars