Light Years from Home

By: Mike Chen

Narrated by: Emily Woo Zeller

From the New York Times bestselling author of Star Wars: Brotherhood

A Best Of pick and Most Anticipated Sci Fi and Fantasy novel, as selected by Goodreads • Buzzfeed • BookRiot • The Portalist • IO9 • BookBub • SheReads • BiblioLifestyle • Den of Geek • GeekDad

“A rich backstory… a highly satisfying ending… All the stars for Chen's warmhearted space-travel story.” –Kirkus, starred review

Every family has issues. Most can’t blame them on extraterrestrials.

Evie Shao and her sister, Kass, aren’t on speaking terms. Fifteen years ago on a family camping trip, their father and brother vanished. Their dad turned up days later, dehydrated and confused—and convinced he'd been abducted by aliens. Their brother, Jakob, remained missing. The women dealt with it very differently. Kass, suspecting her college-dropout twin simply ran off, became the rock of the family. Evie traded academics to pursue alien conspiracy theories, always looking for Jakob.

When Evie's UFO network uncovers a new event, she goes to investigate. And discovers Jakob is back. He's different—older, stranger, and talking of an intergalactic war—but the tensions between the siblings haven't changed at all. If the family is going to come together to help Jakob, then Kass and Evie are going to have to fix their issues, and fast. Because the FBI is after Jakob, and if their brother is telling the truth, possibly an entire space armada, too.

The perfect combination of action, imagination and heart, Light Years from Home is a touching drama about a challenge as difficult as saving the galaxy: making peace with your family…and yourself.

"With heart and insight...Chen crosses the stakes and imagination of a space opera with the emotional depth and intricacy of a family drama." —Erika Swyler, bestselling author of Light from Other Stars

Unlikeable dysfunctional people

I found it hard to listen to this book because the characters were so unlikeable. On top of this, the book is filled with irritating clichés: ridiculous sci-fi tropes; b*tch mother creating miserable children; psychobabling therapist curing her dysfunctional family. The narrator wasn’t given much to work with so i can’t entirely blame her for the snooze inducing reading—except for the botched French accent for one secondary character. I usually like books by this author but should have skipped this one.

Sadly, I Couldn’t Put it down!

Now, what will I read? Mike Chen is turning out to be one of my favorite authors! His writing is complex his protagonists are flawed but you root for them anyway and “Light Year's From Home” is no exception.

interpersonal drama

i like science fiction, this was not that.
this was mostly focused on the dysfunctional family dynamic struggle with interwoven elements of sci-fi.
for anyone looking to have a mirror of their screwed up family dynamics to look at, this book might pique your interest, please don’t mistake it for science fiction.

Chen's best yet!

I'm a big fan of Mike Chen's, and this book is probably his best. It starts out as a typical alien abduction plot but then grows into quite the thriller. Did Jacob really get taken? Where was he for 15 years? Was he just on a psychotic, drug-addicted binge?

While he's gone (in space fighting aliens who want to wipe out every sentient race in the galaxy) Jacob's family falls apart. His father dies searching for him. His mother gets dementia. His younger sister quits school, moves across the country, and starts an alien podcast; her way of searching for him. And his twin sister? She has her own boatload of issues trying to keep their mother safe, dealing with a failed marriage, and always wondering where her twin disappeared to.

Absolutely riveting novel about family, mental health, elder care... and aliens.

Family Drama with present day scifi aspects.

Excellent book. I'd recommend to Scifi and Lit fans alike. I spent much of the book unsure if it was just a family drama or something more. Being mostly a genre fiction reader I was very happy with the blend and can recommend it to my Jodi Picoult style loving mother.