I liked this book a lot, but I do wish that I had read it before The Spear Cuts Through Water since that book refined a lot of the interesting touches in this one and took them farther, with more confidence. I liked the characters and the overall plot, but the big time skips made a lot of it feel sort of distant and I found the third section a bit silly.

I always think about the friends that I made in my adult life when I think about found family. Surprisingly enough, I don't read about found family often but it will always have a special place in my heart because it's truly a gift to be able to grow a family outside of the one that courses through your veins. I believe that's why The Vanished Birds by Simon Jiminez struck a chord with me like no other. 

I was going into this story thinking it was going to be your normal science fiction read. There would be some action, some strife, some evil, and some triumphs. However, that seems rudimentary compared to what I read in this book. 

This story follows Nia Imani, a captain in Allied Space, who is just going through the motions of life. Until she meets a young boy with a broken past. Unbeknownst to her, this boy will be the start of her life. A life that would be filled with loss, pain, love, and hope. However, this story doesn't start with her nor does it just focus on her. There are so many characters sewn into her and the boy's story that they all become somewhat of an amalgamation of each other. You even get to know these characters on an individual level that packs such a potent punch, that you start to feel as though you're in the story with them. You begin to feel their every emotion as though it's your own. Jimenez unfolded such a powerful story about family and loss within these characters that I'd be doing this book a disservice if I rated it anything other than 5 stars. He put purpose behind every word in this book. 

"It felt like a funeral." - William Shatner describing his voyage to space in the Guardian. I read the article today and couldn't help being reminded of this book.

This was an excellent and incredibly depressing read. I recommend reading it with caution due to just how very sad it is - it's definitely worth it but you'll want to be ready for some self-care afterwards. Do not expect a happy ending unless you like being very sad.


More in-depth:
The world-building is excellent: it's such a well thought-out future setting and the details of it are so elegantly incorporated it never feels like too much or too little. The writing was so good it was almost poetic at times, it was quite beautiful and poignant. The characters are grey and interesting. You get to see how they impact each other and the book has an excellent way of zooming out through the first few chapters, expanding the world before it settles on a more continuous story. It is a very bleak story and world, quite dystopian in a way that would feel cyberpunk if it were more focused on the digital world. Some mild spoilers for the tone of the ending/story overall:

I felt as though what hope there was for the characters was relentlessly crushed after being built up. To be fair, I think that this tone is set up well in the first chapter. But it is common for stories to pick up after tragedy and I would argue this one does not really pick up by the end in tone and the dystopian society is only more dystopian by the end.

If I had to say the story has a theme woven throughout I would have to say it is about cruelty and exploitation of humans through colonialization and capitalism. There is plenty more going on in the very well written characters, how they are shaped by their traumas in good and bad ways and being able to see how they grow based on how they react to their circumstances.