Simon Jimenez is criminally underrated and I’m annoyed about it!

The Vanished Birds, Simon Jimenez’s debut novel, is set many centuries from now, when humanity has established life on various planets and on different bases, traveling the stars. Many planet-bound people simply provide resources for the rest of the universe, companies buying and selling what they need. One on such resource planet, Umbai V, a small village is disrupted when a young boy crash-lands in an escape pod. He seems to be mute, and his sole means of communication ends up being music he plays on a wooden flute. The next time a transport vessel arrives, the villagers send the boy off with the captain, Nia Imani, who promises she will keep him safe. Over time, Nia and this child (now called Ahro) bond and grow to love each other as mother and son. However, there are forces greater than them at play in the universe, and powerful entities want to find Ahro for their own gain. Nia isn’t sure why at first, but is determined to keep him safe, no matter the cost to herself.

I’d like to thank Regan (PeruseProject on YouTube) for putting this writer on my radar. She’ll never see this review, but that’s okay. I just wanted to give her a shoutout, because she’s a great book reviewer (and someone I have really similar reading taste to).

Also, regarding my photo of the book, I wish I had a wooden flute, but my metal one from high school band will have to do.

Anyway, if literary science fiction sounds like something you might like, I am begging you to read this book!

This novel is 390 pages long, but it feels like it contains enough to fill twice that page length. I don’t mean that it’s dense or tedious to read, merely that there’s so much (character development, subplots, the main plot, worldbuilding, backstories, and so on) crammed into this story. Nary a word wasted. How does he do it?! Jimenez is BRILLIANT. Even the first chapter covers so much ground—setting up the premise, background, and a couple of important characters—yet also feels like its own self-contained epic. I felt like I’d lived an entire life within the first chapter alone, and completing the entire book felt as if I’d been on a veritable odyssey across generations. And in a way, I did, especially considering how important the passage of time is in this story.

Due to… astrophysics, I guess?… time passes quickly for ships like Nia’s making high-speed treks across the galaxy. However, years can pass planet-side. Further, the pasts of individual characters also play a major role in the story. Therefore, it makes sense that this narrative would be occupied by the concept of time, and how the past can affect the present can affect the future. Several characters, such as Fumiko, are very focused on the future, yet are haunted by events of the past. And every backstory feels relevant, neatly interwoven into this tapestry.

There’s also a wonderful commentary on the modern age, and capitalism, and how we as a society are pushed to constantly go faster, to be more productive, to seek higher and higher achievements. I loved this theme, and especially the ways it affected Nia and Ahro. This is, to me, exactly what great science fiction should do: tackle and comment on our current world. Ken Liu recently wrote an essay (here) about sci-fi, and I agree with him; as a genre, it cannot predict the future. Sci-fi may look forward, but it’s about the present. And that’s what The Vanished Birds is about, in a way.

I mean, it’s about a whole lot more than just our hyper-capitalist hellscape of a society, but still.

Also, just… Jimenez’s writing style is incredible. It can be poetic, yet it feels so palpable. The settings, the characters, everything feels fully realized. And the characters are great. Nia is a fantastic protagonist, strong and capable and driven by unrelenting love. Ahro is also amazing, the driving force behind the main story with a compelling life too. And Fumiko, a significant side character (though it feels wrong to relegate such an important figure to a “side character” role) has a fascinating tale of her own. I can’t really go into details about any of this without delving into major spoilers, but just know it’s all really well interwoven and gripping.

Sorry, I feel like this review has been all over the place, but I think I could go on and on about every element of this book, and I didn’t have an outline for this review. I’m just sort of word-vomiting my love for this book, and there are probably a half-dozen aspects I didn’t even touch on. My mind is just a whirlwind of exclamation points about this story, so we’re lucky if this was even slightly coherent.

Basically, The Vanished Birds is a masterful piece of writing. Its themes, characters, and storyline are all stellar. I am astonished that this is Jimenez’s debut novel, because WHAT. He must be some kind of genius, because this is a fantastically written work. It’s not easy, by any means, except for maybe that it’s easy to be impressed by it. The story is contemplative yet tense, character-driven yet plot-forward, utterly beautiful yet completely devastating.

Simon Jimenez, if you never publish another novel, I’ll still count you as one of the greats. However, if you are writing something else, please know that I’ve already preordered it in my mind.