★★★★☆ Here we do not build worlds, we discover them

A Wilderness of Stars

Shea Ernshaw

On the first page of A Wilderness of Stars, Vega (our first-person narrator) writes:

I count the constellations, naming them in my mind -- a ritual that Mom insists I repeat night after night so I won't forget -- and it calms me, the pattern of unaltered stars, their position always right where they should be... Beyond the row of blue spruce trees on the far side of the summer garden, above the valley wall, I trace Clovis and Andromeda with my fingertip. I find Orion, the hunter from Greek mythology, and Rigel, a bright blue-white supergiant shimmering near the horizon. Each one tells a story.

Indeed they do. Andromeda and Orion are real constellations, and Rigel is a real star, and it really is a blue-white supergiant. These are constellations and stars visible from Earth. That is the first hint we are given about where A Wilderness of Stars takes place and who the characters are. Indeed, Shea Ernshaw's approach to world-building was what first caught my attention. We don't know where we are. There are people and deserts and horses and mules (thus presumably also donkeys), but right from the start there are hints that we are not on 2022 Earth as we know it. Is it a fantasy world, or a postapocalyptic Earth, a different planet, or a parallel world? There is mystery here. Ernshaw doesn't build a world, she discovers one, and you discover it with her. It drew me in.

The story begins (as the publisher's blurb tells us) with the death of Vega's mother. Vega's mother dies of a mysterious wasting disease that is killing everyone on Vega's world. Vega's mother is a secret scholar called the Astronomer, and with her death, that title falls to Vega. Vega sees a sign in the sky that means she must leave her safe home. A dangerous journey follows. I'll avoid specifics, but know that Ernshaw is not a safe author. No one gets plot armor -- bad things can happen even to the characters you know and love. Eventually Vega's journey comes to an end. The mystery of what Vega's world is is revealed.

That was all very satisfying. I like the first half of the book and the ending most. I was not quite so thrilled with the late middle. To not give too much away, I will say only that there's a certain plot element that usually shows up in young adult novels, and it showed up in this one as well, to, I thought, the detriment of the story. Yes, there is a teen romance. Being a person whose intellectual development arrested at the age of seven, I still eschew The Mushy Stuff. IMHO the book would have been much more powerful if the romance had been replaced with a friendship.

The final sentence is "Our story is not done yet." There will presumably be a sequel. I certainly intend to read it.

Thanks to NetGalley and Simon and Schuster Canada for an Advance Reader's Copy of A Wilderness of Stars in exchange for an honest review. Book to be released 29-Nov-2022.

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