- I do not know how to properly review THE VANISHED BIRDS, a book that burrowed deep into my heart right from the opening pages.
- Yes, it is an inventive adventure across time and space, but it's also a tender exploration of trauma and of found family.
- Also, it doesn't say it in the synopsis, but queerness is quite embedded in this story, and in such a loving way. 

Large pacing and tone shifts, which made it difficult to connect with the characters. The story starts out fairly hopeful, but gets really dark. I enjoyed the subtle world building and that the homosexual and asexual representations was seamlessly integrated into the story.

I went through quite a phase of not giving books 5 stars because I suspected I wasn't going to want to re-read them, but for The Vanished Birds that seems a little unfair - it's definitely true that I'm unlikely to return to this book but I can't help but recognise the quality of the writing involved and give it the rating it deserves.

It's based on a number of stories woven together, starting off on a planet being exploited for one of its resources, visited every 15 years by a ship to take away the shipments of a purple seed it produces. We start with the measuring of those visits through the lifetime of one of that planet's people, visits which are mere months apart from the point of view of the ship's pilot. That planet is also the place where one of our other characters first appears, as a child appearing from nowhere, taken on board the ship as a favour to a dying friend.

The other main story line involves a woman who was instrumental in the creation of much of the technologies on which everyone relies, relentlessly reliving a failed love affair through the bodies of multiple individuals who are paid to change their appearance, and who believes that abilities like the child's are the next step forward on a technological basis. In the end, she pays the captain to keep the child and bring him up, suspecting he has this ability even though nobody has ever seen it.

The Vanished Birds is very much a story about found family, both one that falls apart early on as they can't cope with the strangeness of the child in their midst, and another one which forms despite the fact they've been thrown together solely for the purpose of keeping that child safe while also monitoring his abilities. The author is also not scared of killing off characters but it doesn't feel gratuitous, just part and parcel of everything going on within a realistic story line. Matters come to a head, abilities are uncovered but there's also a resolution, which is not that usual a thing in a genre full of trilogies and series. As a first novel too, it's pretty impressive, so I can't wait to see what this author does next.

Well, wow, this book was amazing. Totally not what I was expecting, somehow, but still totally great. It's a much heavier and dystopian book than I expected based on a few reviews I saw. It's essentially a book about a future where the galaxy is ruled by a capitalist corporation, which sucks into itself entire worlds and treats the people as commodities/acquisitions as much as any natural resources present. So, kind of giving me those Jupiter Ascending vibes, except darker. This is a story about people who are used by the corporation in different ways and it's all pretty horrible, except the part where people manage to eke out a little time and joy for themselves.

This book is also about found family, but a found family, part of which is somewhat reluctant, essentially forced together at first. That was an interesting dynamic and the progression of them getting closer was very well done, I think.

The pacing of this book is interesting. At first, it seems to jump a lot in time and between different POVs, but it doesn't feel disjointed, perhaps because the tone feels consistent and also the pieces start coming together pretty quickly. There was but one thing that kind of left me bothered/confused which I think might be a plot hole:

Vaila's sabotage of the ship. Like, it was pretty obvious that she knew that it was Umbai and not Fumiko who sent them the coordinates for the rendezvous. But how did she know? Did they contact her? How did that pass by Nia and the others? Her motivation is also unclear. Was her loyalties always divided despite how much she loved Fumiko? Why would she sabotage the mission just before finally being reunited with Fumiko? Did Umbai contact her and tell her that Fumiko was dead? Or exiled? But if the latter, why would she not enlist her found family to look for Fumiko?

Lastly, this book is wonderfully queer. Admittedly, the characters go through quite a lot of suffering and some of the characters are very morally grey or outright immoral if you really get down to it, but that's the time of book this is. There is no ethical consumption under capitalism, as they say. It's still nice to see (some of) the characters persevere and carve out happiness for themselves any way they can.