“One day, I will ask what it is he hears, when he hears the notes of music: the infernal, or the celestial. Judging by what I hear now—the flute song through my open door—it is most likely something in between. A fiery heaven all its own.”
A distant future, where Earth is long gone. The descendants of Earthlings inhabit spaceships resembling long vanished birds that once populated the planet. An immense array of worlds full of life to discover and resources for soulless corporations to exploit. A young boy that falls from the sky and who is destined for greatness, but not yet ready to change the future. A space crew that has lost its purpose and sense of belonging after years of travelling through space, free from the constrains of time. All of these tied together by the haunting music created by the boy’s flute.
Simon Jimenez’s debut novel offers a thoughtful glimpse into a distant future, where humanity has not bothered to try and fix the ravage of pollution, greed, and carelessness towards our environment. However, not only is The Vanished Birds a cautionary tale about the rather ominous future that awaits if we don’t change our current situation, environmentally speaking, but also an exploration of how our conception of humanity will also evolve…for the worse. In a world driven by capitalism, where the passing of time is not an issue anymore and new planets are conquered by the hour, things are not looking that good for individuals anymore.
Some of the human consequences of this evolution are groundbreaking, such as parents considering their children as their property, genetically modifying the babies for them to be perfect…or making them extremely ugly on purpose, just for the aesthetic effect of it. Others are occurrences that have been repeated through history time and time again: using people for one’s own benefit as if they were expendable objects or colonising entire planets to build hotel complexes or to exploit their unique resources.
All of these poignant issues are what the main characters of The Vanished Birds have to go through, while also trying to grasp stable connections both with other people and amongst each other—not an easy feat when the ongoing expansion of space territories simultaneously increases the feeling of loneliness rooted in human hearts. Interestingly, the first two sections of the novel are divided into chapters where a different character acts as the focalizer of the narration. Thus, most could be read as an individual short story. However, as the story develops, all of these fragments are linked by the three most prominent characters: the captain of the spaceship, Nia Imani, the mysterious young boy who initially communicates through music, Ahro, and the engineer who creates the stations where the population of Earth lives once the planet dies, Fumiko Nakajima.
For the most part, all of the characters that revolve around the three people at the core of the novel are beautifully complex and special in their own way. Each and every person has their own voice, no matter their ethnicity, race, gender, sexual orientation, or background. All of them are equally important and carefully listened to, and hence, each character’s story becomes undoubtedly discernible from the others, mostly through the way they express their thoughts and shape their reality through words. As a result, The Vanished Birds becomes a rich exploration of the diversity of humankind and how it can bloom even in the most unfavourable of future prospects. Sadly, said colourfulness is not extended to the last section of the novel and some parts of the second. Nia and Ahro begin a new journey with a different crew, who, unfortunately, blurs together. Most of the characters are less polished and harder to differentiate —with the exception of Sartoris Moth.
Coincidentally with this change of definition in the personality of the characters, the plot also takes a slight downturn. Divided into three sections that are harshly differentiated, the plot structure is the main flaw of this otherwise flawless debut novel. As previously mentioned, the first section of The Vanished Birds reads like a collection of short stories, each utterly interesting and unique. The first chapter narrates the life of Kaeda, the man who takes the mysterious child —and driving force of the novel— under his wing. The first chapter is the most-easy-to-detach from the set, most likely due to the fact that it was initially a short story on its own. From then on, the rest present one of the main characters: Nia, Ahro, and Fumiko, and, nonetheless, all of these individual fragments are so masterfully intertwined that Jimenez’s technique works beautifully.
The second part of the novel is a bit of a mixture, even if it maintains the changes in focalisation, all chapters are more closely interconnected and follow the same timeline, unlike the first set of chapters. Finally, the last section is completely unified and follows a single plotline. Of the three sections, the final one is the weakest, as it appears to lack the most original features of the other two. For the most part, it drags on too much, but at the same time, the ending feels rushed and out of control. Unfortunately, these different structures make the story seem a bit disjointed. Had Simon Jimenez continued with the short story composite structure, the novel would, from start to finish, match the uniqueness of its contents.
Despite these small flaws concerning the plot, the highlight of The Vanished Birds is, hands down, its prose. Simon Jimenez makes use of the most gorgeous lyricism and metaphorical images. Making use of an exquisitely languid pace, Jimenez pays special attention to the creation of mental images, through descriptions of interstellar landscapes and feelings. Subsequently, the strong contrast of the beauty of the prose and the “ugliness” of the very harsh topics the author delves in, creates an astounding assortment of balanced layers of meaning and intention.
In conclusion, The Vanished Birds is a truly remarkable debut novel, where Simon Jimenez offers a stunningly lyric approach to science fiction and a sharp form of criticism of the damaging path humankind is following towards the future, as regards nature and our environment. Heavily influenced by Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s prose and the whimsicality of David Mitchell’s Cloud Atlas, Simon Jimenez is an author readers should definitely keep an eye on.
The Vanished Birds is available from Amazon, Book Depository, and other good book retailers.
Will you be picking up The Vanished Birds? Tell us in the comments below!
Synopsis | Goodreads
A mysterious child lands in the care of a solitary woman, changing both of their lives forever in this captivating debut of connection across space and time.
“This is when your life begins.”
Nia Imani is a woman out of place and outside of time. Decades of travel through the stars are condensed into mere months for her, though the years continue to march steadily onward for everyone she has ever known. Her friends and lovers have aged past her; all she has left is work. Alone and adrift, she lives only for the next paycheck, until the day she meets a mysterious boy, fallen from the sky.
A boy, broken by his past.
The scarred child does not speak, his only form of communication the beautiful and haunting music he plays on an old wooden flute. Captured by his songs and their strange, immediate connection, Nia decides to take the boy in. And over years of starlit travel, these two outsiders discover in each other the things they lack. For him, a home, a place of love and safety. For her, an anchor to the world outside of herself.
For both of them, a family.
But Nia is not the only one who wants the boy. The past hungers for him, and when it catches up, it threatens to tear this makeshift family apart.
