Master of Starlight by DW Arden
One of the hit-or-miss things about being a podcaster and a critic is that I often get books sent to me by authors I have never heard of before. Sometimes it is clear the publisher didn’t really understand who they were sending an epic fantasy to. Thankfully, that was not the case this time. Stalking Horse Press is the publishing arm of James Reich and he knew exactly what he was doing when sending this book.
Marketed as a novella, Master of Starlight is a beautiful, lyrical love letter to the night sky. You know who is passionate about the night sky - this guy. I mean, there is an actual love story, and some of the best is when the loves are blurred.
I don’t know a thing about DW Arden that I didn’t learn from his website, a reporter a improv sketch comedian. I am not sure any of that plays a role in the short but powerful book. For such a short book, it feels epic and massive in scope at times despite being short in page count. Master of Starlight is the story of Oliver, an astronomer and stoner whose adventures start in the 70s. His love for the stars was only relieved by Vera.
“How much of his life had he spent alone, contemplating the mysteries of the cosmos coated in the stars? Existing somewhere between here and there, floating through life in a liminal space between the theoretical and actual, the imagined and the real, his mind analyzing all horizons, steering between all possible paths, all possible futures, detached from the anchored president of his body, the earth, the soil, and the sand. He had not cared until he met her. He had been content to live out his days as a radical philosopher of the stars, in exile in his heretical beliefs. And then the supernova of her eyes had set off a chain reaction of explosions, implosions, and formations that altered his orbit forever, drawn toward those thousand Suns in her gaze, the light of which seemed to dispel dark matter from the deepest parts of herself.”
The philosophical asides were my favorite parts…
“This place, earth, our goldilocks home in a perfect orbit around the sun -”
“A lucky accident.”
“Does that make it any less amazing? The serendipity of life, the evolution of all the curious little creatures contemplating for competing for survival, the astonishing phenomenon of human consciousness, the rapid genesis of languages, ideas, and civilization.” Vera raised her beer in honor of the stars. “We are witnesses of the miracle. What difference does our judgment of it make? The fact that we even have the cognitive power to question existence that's significant, miraculous, that matters.
What is amazing about this book is despite Oliver traveling around the globe, the novel feels as rooted in the stars above (or below, that distinction is meaningless in space). It is what seems a simple tale, Oliver has a rival in science who he feels prevented a relationship with fellow Astronomer Vera, but a stargazing trip into the wilderness might change everything.
The story did quite match for me the power of lyrical prose describing the night sky. There are plenty of darkly comical moments.
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