SciFi/Fantasy Book Review: Yours Celestially by Al Hess

 

Yours Celestially is one of the six finalists in this year's Self Published Science Fiction Competition (SPSFC4), of which I am a Judge. The story takes place in an interesting future world, in which a company (Renascenz) has invented technology that allows those who use it to die, have their minds uploaded to an online server called "Limbo" and then seemingly be resurrected into a new body of their choosing. But during the delay period while someone is in Limbo, they interact with an AI called "Metatron" who tries to counsel them through their traumas before they resurrect. Using this setup, the story focuses upon two characters: Metatron, as they fall in love with one of the souls who are in Limbo and struggle with this new feeling, and Sasha, a resurrected person who is finding his new life even harder because he is seemingly getting hit with all of Metatron's pining and feelings for Rodrigo.

It's a setup that seems potentially really interesting and I wanted to like Yours Celestially a lot more than I did. But honestly, I struggled to keep going through this one and might've DNFed it if it wasn't a finalist for the SPSFC4 Crown. Specifically, I had problems really caring about Sasha, one of our two main protagonists, as his setting and the characters' he interacts with are only explained to a limited extent, to the point where I didn't really get why he cared about certain people or why those people cared about him (specifically his roommate Ivan). The romance with Sasha at its heart also really had a rough start, and while it gets better, it really isn't great. The Metatron chapters are better because it's a lot easier to care for them, but even there there's one character who's abusive in the middle of it which makes some of those chapters hard to read, and really felt like a betrayal of a book whose author seems to call it "hopepunk" in the foreward. Overall, I just have a hard time recommending this one, for reasons I'll expound further in the book.

TRIGGER WARNING: There is an abusive character in the book who reacts with rage and violence while in a virtual world and acted with real violence outside of it. Reading parts with that character can be rough, although the book kind of handles it well, even if I didn't like it. Also, one of the two main characters is recovering from a drug addiction.
Plot Summary:  

The company Renascenz has invented a truly amazing technology: technology that once implanted allows a person who dies to have their mind uploaded to a heavenly digital realm called Limbo. There, the deceased receives counseling from a wonderful AI known as Metatron, before the deceased is resurrected into a new body, which is grown to look as the person truly wishes (as long as that's still human). But naturally such new technology runs into complaints from certain types, and a lawsuit filed by a religious organization after a trans person comes back in a body that more truly fits who they are results in the resurrections being paused, and all those remaining in Limbo having to wait just a bit longer until the lawsuit is resolved.

This results in an unforeseen consequence: As Metatron comes to see and counsel these "souls" for a longer time, they begin to fall in love with one of them: Rodrigo, an autistic man killed in a car accident. Metatron did not think they could even fall in love and has no idea what to do with the situation...especially since Rodrigo will leave them if the lawsuit is resolved and their soul is resurrected. Meanwhile, in another unforeseen consequence, Metatron's feelings begin to bleed out of Limbo and into the minds of those who have already been resurrected. And for one of them, Sasha, these feelings and pinings become unbearable and debilitating. And so Sasha, struggling already with his new life, hatches a plan: join the Renascenz company and find a way to communicate with Metatron, to help Metatron with these feelings for all their sakes. But in trying this, Sasha will soon discover that his second life, and what he finds amongst the employees of Renascenz, may have more worth than he believed....

Yours Celestially is a book that begins with an author's note noting that the author had once had 7 self published books in a series that he unpublished in 2022 (due to not feeling their craft was good enough anymore) and that this book, Yours Celestially, was kind of a "very gay and trippy hopepunk" take on one of those older books. I'd never heard of or read those 7 now gone books, but the author's note suggested this would be somewhat of a hopeful character based novel, ala Becky Chambers' work. It's a tone that I don't think unfortunately the actual book quite hits - yes we got a hopeful ending, but there's an awful lot of trauma and one character whose abusive behavior is so extreme at times such that it didn't really fit what I was looking for in so-called hopepunk novels.

That aside, there are parts of Yours Celestially that did work for me. The struggles of Metatron the AI to come to terms with and deal with their love for Rodrigo and the fear of how any such love should wind up ephemeral due to Rodrigo being resurrected are all written very well, and it's very very easy to care for both Metatron and Rodrigo. The overall setting is sometimes a bit shallow, but it's well put together for that as a potential future - queer friendly for the most part and yet homophobic orgs still exist to do things like sue Renascenz for their good natured actions (another reason I hesitate with the hopepunk label) and the people Sasha encounters working at Renascenz are all generally good people.

Still, large parts of it didn't work for me, most notably the other main character in Sasha. We're dropped right into Sasha's post-resurrection life, and while we get some flashbacks to explain certain things, the book just sort of assumes we'll like Sasha and figure out his character and relationships on our own with very little writing. And there just wasn't enough there for this to work - for example, Sasha's motivations and shame throughout often have to do with his housemate Ivan (and Ivan's boyfriend), but we never learn anything about how Sasha met Ivan, how they came to live together, etc. We also learn very little about his relationship with his ex-wife before that broken down (that we learn about), etc. Sasha's story is one of realizing one's own worth to people and that he has to learn to accept help and love where he finds it without necessarily being so down on himself and cynical, but I couldn't find it within myself to care about Sasha in the first place, which made it all feel rote. This isn't helped by Sasha's own romance arc starting really rough, before it gets better in the middle. And then besides Sasha, there was again that abusive character I mentioned above, whose actions made it really hard to want to continue reading whenever he popped up. That last bit isn't necessarily the fault of the book - abusive characters are supposed to be rough to read - but when the main character doesn't draw me in enough to get me to want to get through it, then it becomes a problem.

Overall, I can see how others in SPSFC judging liked Yours Celestially enough to make it a finalist - it's got an interesting concept and is genuinely cute at times, and ends on a nice hopeful note. But my struggles with the main protagonist made it so I couldn't connect with it and I would've DNFed it myself if it wasn't a finalist.