I recently had this craving for a particular type of science fiction. Two elements were crucial to my desired reading matter: an exciting adventure and a vision of space that felt new. That should’ve been simple enough, but I had… stipulations. I wanted the adventure to include weird, good characters and operate within a political sensibility I could get behind (no sneaky fascism, thank you Heinlein et. al, we have enough of that in real life). I also wanted an expansive sense of non-human life and an unusual solution to the problem of within-a-human-lifetime travel through the vastness of space.
Enter The Stardust Grail—a blessed object indeed, the answer to my literary prayers.
For a novel that contains a rip-roaring plot and a universe I’d happily spend a series in, Yume Kitasei’s second book starts quietly. We meet Maya, a doctoral student in comparative cultures at Princeton. While Maya is more interested in recording New Jersey’s ice cream flavors (milk from real Earth cows!) than writing papers, she does happen to be extremely good at identifying alien artifacts—better than any of her supervisors. This talent is the result of Maya’s secret past as an incredibly successful art thief, repatriating objects alongside her best friend Auncle, a tentacled water-dwelling Frenro. There is one artifact Maya and Auncle never found, however: the stardust grail, which many scholars believe is only a myth. The horrific consequences of that failed search are in fact why Maya is on Earth at all, having given up her life in space for one that offers security and a law-abiding future.
Yet while oh-so-respectably working at Princeton’s Dr. Frank R. Humbert Alien Artifact Collection and Rare Book Archives one day, Maya discovers a new clue to the location of the artifact that she gave up on over a year ago. Then Auncle xyrself appears in orbit around Earth, drawn there by xyr connection to Maya’s recent dreams, which have revolved around the grail. Maya resists the pull to return to her old life until she is cornered by Dr. García, an expert in foreign space and an emissary of the military force known as the Coalition of the Nations of Earth. Something is collapsing the ‘nodes’ between star systems that allow for far-flung space travel, cutting human settlements off from the universe—and soon, possibly isolating Earth itself. Dr. García knows far too much about Maya’s past and demands that she find and steal the one remaining stardust grail, which he believes is a machine that can create new nodes. Given that CNE waged war against Maya’s home planet of PeaceLove when she was a child, Maya is not convinced, despite García’s threats of blackmail.
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The Stardust Grail
But reader, she takes the job. Not for CNE, but for Auncle, who can only achieve xyr lifelong dream of having children through merging with a stardust grail. Maya steals the explorer’s diary that contains the new clue, crosses her fingers that finding the stardust grail will be a big enough discovery to maintain her academic standing, and blasts off to join Auncle on xyr ship.
From this Indiana Jones-esque foundation (a reference Kitasei very much intended), many more elements contribute to a thrilling romp beyond the galaxy. There’s the new crew Auncle hired without consulting Maya: a rogue robot named Medix and a former CNE officer. There’s the satisfying web of hints left behind by Earth’s greatest explorer, Dr. Huang, hinting at a mythic Encyclopedium all the way across the barren and untraversable stretch of space known as the Dead Sea. And there’s the Belzoar, an insect-adjacent people who really, really don’t like Maya and Auncle—for good reason, it turns out.
Perhaps this reveals that it does take a while for the book to get to what I might call The Action: a museum heist, a space battle, a dangerous exploration of a long-ago civilization’s sanctum. Yet this slower start is earned, both by Kitasei’s mesmerizing world-building and Maya’s spooky visions of potential futures, an ability she has thanks to being Infected by a Frenro epidemic when she was young. The opening’s academic setting is also critical to framing Maya’s struggles, both ethical and personal. I powerfully relate to the ways Maya’s anti-colonial principles clash with her desire to be part of a well-resourced system, and I couldn’t look away from Maya’s loyalty to Auncle in the face of a threat to all humanity.
This mutual dedication between Maya and Auncle is the beating heart of The Stardust Grail. I would’ve settled for the book being a straightforward adventure tale, given the un-put-downable second half and Kitasei’s expertly paced revelations about the nature of her universe. Yet the emotional core that is Maya and Auncle’s relationship elevates the novel into a story I already look forward to revisiting. Through this pair, Kitasei explores the idea of emotional intimacy with a non-human intelligence and asks what an individual’s connection to a brilliant hive mind might mean for free will. She offers no easy answers to the terrible quandary of what we owe to our species versus what we owe to the people (human or otherwise) that we love. I do admit I wish I’d seen more of Maya and Auncle when things were good, as there is substantial tension between them throughout the narrative. Even so, I never questioned their importance to each other. There’s so much more to say about Kitasei’s rich world and luminous story, but the most important thing to know is that this Grail is certainly worth fighting Nazis for. While I encourage everyone to do that anyway, luckily the only temple you must find in pursuit of this fantastic novel is your local library or bookstore.
The Stardust Grail is published by Flatiron Books.
Read an excerpt.
