Light Years from Home

by Mike Chen

Every family has issues. Most can’t blame them on extraterrestrials.

Evie Shao and her sister, Kass, aren’t on speaking terms. Fifteen years ago on a family camping trip, their father and brother vanished. Their dad turned up days later, dehydrated and confused—and convinced he'd been abducted by aliens. Their brother, Jakob, remained missing. The women dealt with it very differently. Kass, suspecting her college-dropout twin simply ran off, became the rock of the family. Evie traded academics to pursue alien conspiracy theories, always looking for Jakob.

When Evie's UFO network uncovers a new event, she goes to investigate. And discovers Jakob is back. He's different—older, stranger, and talking of an intergalactic war—but the tensions between the siblings haven't changed at all. If the family is going to come together to help Jakob, then Kass and Evie are going to have to fix their issues, and fast. Because the FBI is after Jakob, and if their brother is telling the truth, possibly an entire space armada, too.

The perfect combination of action, imagination and heart, Light Years from Home is a touching drama about a challenge as difficult as saving the galaxy: making peace with your family…and yourself.

• ISBN10: 0778311732
• ISBN13: 9780778311737
• Publish Date: 25 January 2022
• Publish Status: Out of Stock
• Imprint: Mira Books
• Edition: Original ed.
• Format: Hardcover
• Pages: 352
• Language: English

Reviews

[Quirky Cat]

I have learned that I cannot resist speculative fiction/science fiction by this point. Thus, I couldn't turn down the opportunity to read and review Light Years From Home by Mike Chen.

Evie Shao's family has never been perfect. For example, she and her sister were never best friends – they don't even talk. The events of their past make their relationship all the more complicated. First, their father and brother vanished into the night. While their father returned days later, their brother did not.

Fifteen years later, Evie's brother Jakob is finally back...but he's different, and he won't stop talking about an intergalactic war. Evie and her family must finally figure out how to work together to protect Jakob.

I loved the most about Light Years From Home because of how human it felt, despite the later dealings with aliens. Evie and the relationship (or lack thereof) she has with her family is something that I'm sure will resonate with many readers.

Much of the story is focused on these twisted and crumbling relationships and feelings. It's oddly beautiful watching Evie and the rest work their way through it all. It isn't an easy process, to be sure, but having a strong motivation to deal with it helps.

Okay, I say it's beautiful, but I mean beautifully human. The whole thing is an actual mess if we're going to be brutally honest here. Their relationship gets quite toxic at times, which may make readers uncomfortable. But again, that's human nature in a nutshell.

I really enjoyed the way Mike Chen used Light Years From Home and a science fiction backdrop as a way of exploring human nature and relationships. I'm looking forward to seeing more from this author.

Thanks to MIRA and #NetGalley for making this book available for review. All opinions expressed are my own.

Read more reviews over at Quirky Cat's Fat Stacks

[Jeff Sexton]

Space Opera Scifi For The Women's Fiction Crowd. This is one of those books where you go into it expecting a lot of scifi... something. Drama, action, maybe comedy, whatever. Instead you get scifi as setup for more women's fiction type family drama. Which is actually an interesting spin, but which will leave both crowds a bit perplexed. Overall though, Chen actually serves both crowds quite well, with enough of an off-screen hint of a backstory that he could come back to this world and give it the full-on Richard Phillips' Rho Agenda-style trilogy of trilogies exploring just the stuff he left *off* the page in this book - and yet what he *does* put on the page is truly solid women's fiction where brother and father's disappearances set in motion chains of events that mother nor either daughter could have ever dreamed of. Most of the actual tale here is more about the two sisters and how their lives have changed since that moment 15 years ago - and how they can move forward. The climax, with the FBI hot on the siblings' tails as they race toward brother's ultimate redemption, is as taught as anything in scifi and is reminescent of both X-Files (the author's stated inspiration) and even ET: The Extra Terrestrial. Truly an excellent tale strongly told, and very much recommended.