SNAPSHOT
Most families experience drama from time to time. But aliens don’t usually play a part in said drama. That is not the case in Mike Chen’s Light Years from Home. The upcoming novel combines space opera vibes with family feelings. Fifteen years ago, Jakob Shao and his father disappeared during a family camping trip. The father returned just a few days later talking about alien abductions, but Jakob remained missing. And Jakob’s two sisters, Kass and Evie, handled Jakob’s disappearance in drastically different ways. But then… Jakob suddenly returns. He’s different and he’s talking about an intergalactic war. You know, very normal things. (synopsis (c) Amy Ratcliffe / Nerdist)
Mick Chen is an author for investing a huge amount of humanity into his work.
His novel, A Beginning at the End, does an upliftingly transformative job of wondering it might be like if the end of the world wasn’t so much the finish of things, though much of what we know about life is changed irrevocably, as another beginning entirely.
He doesn’t so much sugarcoat the apocalypse (because who can even do that?) so much as offer some hope, as so many authors writing about the end of the world are doing these days, that there is a chance things can get better even when it appears they cannot.
A Beginning at the End is such a rich and affectingly thoughtful read that it’s hard to see the author’s upcoming book as anything but the promise of a brilliant read fulfilled.
Yes, it hasn’t even reached us and won’t for about five months or so but he is that good at what he does that there’s every expectation this will be another tremendously satisfying read that will once again take us into the heart of what it means to be a family when so much of what that once meant has been strangely upended.
To get a sense of what Light Years From Home will be like, you can read a sample chapter at Nerdist where we are introduced to the Shao family and get some sense of what life has been like following the events of years before, events which changed the once close knit family unit forever.
Just that one excerpt confirms that the novel, the cover of which is its own kind of magical wonder and emotional portent, is going to be something special.
Light Years From Home releases 25 January, 2022.