I will start simply with the fact that I loved this book, it was a joy to read and evoked so many emotions as I read page after page. Cecile delivers a really heartfelt narrative which at it's heart is character driven. For me that's where the light is in this book, which is it's characters and their relationships. Seeing how these relationships were shaped, blossomed and how they were tested really kept me hooked. I also really enjoyed the interspersed Commanders logs which I thought kept the pace really well and gave time for the book to breathe. As well as keeping us both on earth and in space. All In all I'd highly recommend this book, especially for lovers of books of late such as Orbital and the Bee sting. Focusing in on character dynamics and the drama of this whilst questioning space and why certain people seem fixated on the stars. 5 stars no questions.

Having adored Cecile Pin's debut Wandering Souls, I was surprised and delighted to be sent an advance copy of this follow-up. It's even better than its predecessor and confirms her status as one of my favourite authors working today. Celestial Lights tells the story of Ollie, an astronaut on a decade-long mission to Jupiter's moon Europa. It intersperses his mission logs with reminiscences on his life as he ponders what led him to leave behind his wife, child and family to embark on a dangerous and isolating journey through the cosmos. While there's plenty of sci-fi goodness, the novel's beating heart is the genius way in which Pin captures our personalities and relationships. I don't tend to be interested in family stories or romances, but I was gripped by this side of Celestial Lights just as much as the spacefaring, if not even more so. The tale of Ollie and Philly's childhood, how they drifted apart before being reunited and finally falling for each other, is one of the most compelling and realistic depictions of love I've ever encountered. It also makes Ollie's inevitable departure even more tragically moving. Each of the minor characters is also expertly drawn (Shane being my favourite) and they all add something to the story as well as being a joy to spend time with. The novel's deeper themes are also wonderfully developed, ranging from the ethics of space exploration to the role of chance in our lives and the dichotomy between what you are and what you do with yourself and which is more important in shaping you as an individual. This is all delivered in Pin's spare but masterful writing style; she distils each line of description or dialogue down to its bare essence and ensures the reader connects with every character on an almost spiritual level. After the astoundingly accomplished debut that was Wandering Souls, it's such a joy to see Cecile Pin delivering another brilliant work. Celestial Lights stands as a humane and immersive masterpiece. Pin may have only written two books so far but given the consistently high standard of her oeuvre I can only eagerly await many more. She's a unique talent and joins the fabled ranks of authors whose every word I will obsess over.

I loved Cecile Pin’s debut, Wandering Souls, so was more than happy to receive an advance proof copy of Celestial Lights. It’s both the story of Oliver’s single-minded journey from a small English village to become a leading astronaut, but also a beautifully atmospheric mission into the lonely depths of space to one of Jupiter’s moons. Along the way, the nature of ambition, of self-belief and parenthood are explored. Ollie is not always a likeable character, but he is always unashamedly himself. This is literary ‘space fiction’ for all those who say they “don’t like books about space” and believe me when I say that the gorgeously sweeping descriptions will make you feel you are looking back at the Earth as it drops away beneath you. When Oliver returned from a mission I could almost feel the pull of our gravity, and the sense of being earthbound again. Comparisons have to be drawn with Orbital, but this is a book with much more of a personal tone, and the central story will keep you gripped. So far one of my favourite reads of the year.

It's funny how some 300 odd page book you can take a month or so to read & others you smash through in a 24 hour period. Celestial Lights was such a read, I smashed through it, I couldn't put it down the writing was so compelling I needed to know how the life of a young shy boy who loved the stars and spent a summer looking for bugs with a girl panned out. I felt it a quiet & observant read, Ollie knows himself quite well and has a hidden drive that compels him along to find something that he is certain he is striving for. As the story changes to extracts from his log in space aboard Talos I wondered if Oliver would get back from the space voyage that had taken him so far from Earth for so long. Was that little boy still in there? Or did he never change at all? Was this always meant to happen? This an absorbing collision of ambition, some people are able to make to realize their dreams & reach full potential, and the personal sacrifice it costs at the damage to those around them. With echoes of Booker Prize Winner Orbital and Luiza Sauma's Everything You Ever Wanted, this is a powerful piece of writing that I hope will be up for a few book prizes and picked for bookclubs. Thank you publishers & author Cecile Pin for my early copy