Because she travels in the 'pocket' between this world and her own, she experiences only 8 months for every 15 years. One of the workers, Kaeda, is drawn to Nia, the ship's captain. It begins on a planet where every 15 years, a spaceship arrives to collect the harvest of seeds grown on this planet. The Vanished Birds spans a millennium and is set on many worlds in many galaxies.

How the hell is this a debut novel? This is something a long time writer with years of writing experience would have written. Wow, what an amazing ride I think this might end up being my favourite book of 2020, or at the very least my favourite science fiction! It was incredible. The past hungers for him, and when it catches up, it threatens to tear this makeshift family apart. For her, an anchor to the world outside of herself.īut Nia is not the only one who wants the boy. For him, a home, a place of love and safety. And over years of starlit travel, these two outsiders discover in each other the things they lack. Captured by his songs and their strange, immediate connection, Nia decides to take the boy in.

The scarred child does not speak, his only form of communication the beautiful and haunting music he plays on an old wooden flute. Alone and adrift, she lives only for the next paycheck, until the day she meets a mysterious boy, fallen from the sky. Her friends and lovers have aged past her all she has left is work. 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. Nia Imani is a woman out of place and outside of time. A mysterious child lands in the care of a solitary woman, changing both of their lives forever in this captivating debut of connection across space and time.

The vanished birds review