Skyward Inn

First off, I have to give this book props on account of it being set in my home county of Devon (even if it is *spit* North Devon).  The story and setting have  clear antecedents in classic SF. The post technological rural lifestyle is reminiscent of the sort of thing that happens in the home stretch of John Wyndham novels, and it has other British doom guys like John Christopher and Richard Cowper in its DNA. Probably the biggest single influence is Ursula LeGuin, whose fingerprints are all over the human / alien contact and coexistence posited here.
It’s no retro exercise though - it’s quite easy to read it as a Brexit parable, and the final quarter goes on and outwards into deeply strange territory that recalls Jeff Vandermeer and a certain cult classic horror movie. Neither is it just the sum of the influences cited - Whiteley has her own ideas, and expresses them in some lovely prose, as well as crafting characters whose relationships, frustrations and temptations all ring true. It’s quiet, thoughtful and very very good.

I was sent an advanced reading copy via the Publisher though all thoughts are my own.

This was such a fascinating, weird, sad and a touch hopeful book. Not sure if I have the words adequate enough to describe this book but if you enjoy books that are weird, revolve around relations with people from another planet and a bit of traveling then this may be your kind of book.

Looking forward to what Aliya might write in the future and hopefully there will be a continuation of this world though it does end in a way that leaves a lot unanswered but open to interpretation so the potential to be a standalone is certainly there!

Trigger warnings: death, some violence, bodies fusing together

This review is also on http://www.dnruttan.com

Please Note: I received “Skyward Inn” as an advance review copy from Netgalley for an honest review.

“Skyward Inn” by Aliya Whitely has quickly risen to the top of my personal list of my most anticipated books of this year. It releases on March 16, 2021 from Solaris, an imprint of Simon and Schuster.

The story is set in a post-apocalyptic Devon, England, where the Western Protectorate, a Libertarian wet dream in which subsistence-based agriculture is the primary means of industry and technology is shunned, has set up shop and abandoned the coalition of world powers. In this bucolic countryside of small town togetherness, gossip and community council meetings, human Jem and Qitan Isley run an inn called the Skyward Inn. They rise to a moderate business success based on a mysterious alcoholic beverage that Isley has brought with him from his home world, which they call The Brew. The name of this eponymous drink is not really in all capitals in the book; it just becomes important to the story.

Jem and Isley are veterans of interplanetary war, each full of regrets and unrequited longing. Isley is the penultimate outsider, the “alien,” and all the prejudices that come with that identity; but here, Jem is an outsider, too. She left home, abandoned her son Fosse to her brother Dom, and her son now wants nothing to do with her. The point of view alternates between Jem in a first person perspective to that of Fosse, who also has trouble seeing himself as part of this world. Add in all your colorful characters of small town rural life.

But this peaceful, beautiful place is not all it seems. Elsewhere in this world, a mysterious disease rages, and it threatens the apparent safety of the Protectorate every day. But the disease is not what it seems. Just as the brew is not what it seems, and so on. Everyone is hiding something. The fragile veneer of utopia, if you’re the correct type of person, will soon splinter.

Jem copes by drinking the brew with seemingly magical properties; fighting with her brother, who is a leader in the Protectorate who is something of an ideological purist; and counting her regrets. Fosse copes by escaping to an abandoned farm. One day, he discovers the farm is not abandoned after all – and that is when everything changes. And one day, Isley’s Qitan friend Won comes to visit, and Won has a problem; and everything changes for Jem, and for the town.

This is a beautiful, weird, surreal piece of fiction with a deep sense of interiority of character and graceful, gentle prose. It is a story of found family, melancholy, community, and identity. Most of all it is a story of what it means to belong, and what it means to remain apart, and the ties that bind us to the families we wish we had. Jem yearns to belong, to have been a better mother, to have been with Isley, to feel a part of the town, and she mourns the decisions that have kept her alone. But she comes to realize that perhaps her very independence is what will save her. The lush, steady prose, the thoughtful focus on these three characters – Dom, Fosse and Jem – was very well done.

I did have some quibbles, though. I like my science fiction to be science-based, although I am willing to suspend belief for good space opera. This however, did not have much science in it. I can’t reveal too much about the mysterious disease without giving spoilers; it did make sense in the end, where the author was going, but the mechanics of the disease were decidedly magical for literary effect, and I found it confusing until the very end as to how it all exactly worked. It all wrapped up in a weird, bizarro, dark, tidy way in the end, though, which I loved in all its weirdness, regardless of my initial hesitation. I would call it a space fantasy more than science fiction. I also wanted more dimension to Isley’s character, and I didn’t really understand the biology of how the Qitans functioned. But when I saw it as fantasy instead, I appreciated it more.

I thought I knew where this was going – the small bucolic town and a cult, right? But it was a nice upending of the trope of colonialist Earth invading helpless alien cultures, and that is all I will say about that.

Bottom line: This is a weird, wonderful story of a world that is not so unlike our own, a story about finding yourself when the whole world wants to find you first; a story about what it means to be part of something that is bigger than yourself, and the sacrifices that we make for the higher good. I enjoyed this book immensely. Thank you to the publisher for the advance copy.

Skyward Inn, as a science fiction novel, seems ordinary at first. Off-worlders and Earthers living together in a post-apocalyptic idyllic low-technology-by-choice agrarian society. What it becomes is a surreal horrorshow, or is it a beautiful evolution into the unity of life? A parallel novel that tracks the story of a mother and son, separated early  in life by choice and circumstance. The novel poses questions about identity, peace, aggression, colonialism, community, conformity, individualism, and choice. The brew, brought to Earth by the Qitans and available at Skyward Inn, makes the inn a place of collaboration, competition, and community. But what exactly is it? And what does it have to do with the strange "liquid earth" in the graveyard and the magic trick of the squatters on the neighboring farm?

I should have been clued in by the psychedelic cover and the Jeff Vandermeer comparison in the blurb, but I still wasn’t quite prepared for what this book had in store for me. 

It starts off almost like a space western. The story takes place in a post-apocalyptic area of England called the Western Protectorate that shuns technology and has reverted back to an agricultural society. Everything feels natural, down-to-earth. However, the story begins to slowly creep into a delirious, Lovecraftian descent of body and cosmic horror that continued to haunt me even after I finished the final pages.  

Ultimately, Skyward Inn is a profound and beautifully grotesque tale about loneliness and our innate desire to belong—truly a sci-fi classic in the making.

Aliya Whiteley is one of my favorite authors. Her imagination and her writing style are gorgeous and unique. I read Skyward Inn last month and thinking back now to write the review, so many of the scenes remain vivid in my mind. The feelings the book evoked come flooding back in. Whiteley has a way of drawing you into her work and taking you on delightfully wild rides. Skyward Inn is likely to be like nothing you’ve read. I can’t write much detail without giving away the parts of the book that I loved and those that surprised me. Suffice it to say, my review could never express how amazingly inventive, ethereal, and evocative this book is. It’s so unique even for a work of speculative fiction. 

Thank you to Aliya Whiteley, Rebellion Solaris, and #NetGallery for an eARC of #SkywardInn in return for an honest review. Review will be shared on NetGallery, Instagram, Goodreads, and Facebook.

When a gateway opens in space to a planet called Qita, the local inhabitants’ peaceful acquiescence of human occupation averts a war. But are their intentions really peaceful? And what happens when avaricious expansionism is faced with a force even more powerful and inexorable.

Back on earth, the Skyward Inn, run by Jem and Isley, is a gathering place within the cloistered community of the Western Protectorate, where the locals come to drink Qitan brew and share stories. But a strange sickness has begun to afflict the humans of the Protectorate, and when a stranger arrives at Skyward Inn, the harmony of Jem and Isley’s partnership is broken.

Highly recommended for fans of Jeff VanderMeer’s 'Southern Reach' trilogy, this is a surreal and thought-provoking exploration of colonialism, assimilation and identity, that is simultaneously horrifying and comforting. 'Skyward Inn' is a brilliantly unnerving blend of sinister and sincere and it will be haunting my thoughts for a while!

A surreal, speculative story unlike anything I've read before. We follow a woman and her son in a post-apocalyptic world where humans have peace with an alien planet and the aliens that reside there, the Qitans. Our main characters live in a place in what was a rural part of Great Britain called the Protectorate that has shunned all of the technology that this world lives off of and instead chooses the embrace the traditional ways of life. Our main character works at the Skyward Inn, where a Qitan serves this addictive brew from Qita.

What I liked: The writing absolutely blew me away. Whiteley weaves commentary on humanity, community, and belonging so perfectly into the story of these two. Even as someone who has never used the highlight function on my Kindle, I had to pause to just absorb her words, and yes, I broke out the highlighter. Even though the setting could not be more foreign, I felt so seen in Whiteley's observations on human nature. I have never been able to put into words the idea that as you grow up, you discover that all of your feelings and struggles and ideas are not unique. You're just repeating the past and yet still rejecting the wisdom of those who have already experienced it. Skyward Inn put that into words for me, while exploring even further into aspects of human nature and belonging in communities. I think several reads would be required to fully take in the brilliance of this work.

"How do you tell someone that the thing they think is special is nothing but humanity being its usual self?"

What I didn't like: I don't like to read synopses, so I didn't, but this left me so confused for the first quarter of the book that I had to just go back and read the synopsis to understand where we were and what was going on. The surreal style of writing not only contributed to the confusion, but also led to me feel detached from the story at times. Both of these could arguably be positives for this type of speculative fiction, but I felt they were worth mentioning.

"Part of him, the boy of him, would always be in that moment of the worst thing he would ever do, feeling it, screaming to make a better decision."

Overall: 4.25/5 
I highly recommend this to anyone who enjoys experimental sci-fi and beautiful, intelligent writing.

Thank you to NetGalley for providing a review copy in exchange for an honest review.


*

Honestly it's a relief to have a quick flick through some other reviews to see that other people have struggled to rate and absorb this book. It was NOT what I was expecting at all, which doesn't mean I didn't enjoy it, but I can honestly say I have never read anything like it which makes reviewing it a challenge. I thought I was going to read a bit of a space opera romp set in an inn on some far away planet where humans thought they were in control but were actually being manipulated into thinking so. And in a way part of that assumption that is true, but but's also absolutely not what happens here. 

So what did I read? We are at some point in the future and humanity has discovered a wormhole that takes them to another planet. Not everyone is happy with this high tech future and so some live in the Protectorate, a rural, broadly trading economy in the South West of England. Here Jem runs the titular inn with her partner. Trade is good because they serve Jarrowbrew, a drink common to Qita, the planet at the other end of the wormhole, a planet Earth has visited and occupied with a colonial mindset. Jem, unusually for an inhabitant of the Protectorate, has spent time on Qita. It's where she met Isley, who is one of the few Qitans on earth and especially in the Protectorate where the alien race are regarded with suspicion and hostility. 

I can't really say any more because part of what makes this book so special is its absolute unpredictability.  What I can say is it's thoughtful, unusual and beautifully written and definitely worth reading.

Ooh,  Aliya you press my buttons. That's a compliment by the way. I saw this on NetGalley and jumped because I had such a visceral reaction to The Beauty a couple years ago. At first glance, this appeared to be a tame literary sci-fi story and I wished for the weird I expected...

Then I GOT it. Won't pretend I understood perfectly all the themes of individuality vs connectedness here -- frankly I'm never great at digging into New Weird. But I very much enjoyed letting this story wash over me. About halfway through we started going from literary sf to light body horror cloaked in New Weird and I was THERE for it! All the SF aspects got significantly more interesting too. I tore through the second half and really even the first bit of character building was nicely captivating.

This isn't the sort of spec fic I'd recommend to everyone. It is definitely one I'd recommend to anyone that likes to be shaken up and experience something a bit different now and again. This definitely will appeal more to mainstream audiences than The Beauty but still has the signature New Weird feel for readers familiar with the brand. And in either case, it's a hard to put down novel. I'm more excited than ever to delve into Whiteley's blacklist.

In the aftermath of an interplanetary war that appears to have been resolved peacefully, Jem, a human woman, and Isley, a Qitan from the planet attacked by humankind, run the Skyward Inn, a social hub for the local community. Serving the mysterious and renowned "brew" provided by Isley, the Skyward is situated in the Protectorate - actually a part of Devon which appears to have broken away from the UK to form a kind of cooperative paradise, with many of the trappings we might imagine of that setting, including boring meetings and people going without certain things.

Despite the bucolic setting, it's clear from the outset that not all is well. Isley the Qitan knows to stay out of people's way, and Jem is also shunned apart when she isn't playing the friendly barmaid role at the Skyward.

Meanwhile, Fosse, Jem's son, is kicking against the constraints of the Protectorate - and when he discovers a family squatting in an empty farm, they offer him the potential for escape.

But what is the strange spell that comes over Jem when she drinks Isley's brew? Why has a Qitan known to Isley appeared in the Skyward's cellar, and what is their relationship? Rumours of a new plague spreading outside the Protectorate only heighten the sense of paranoia and growing horror - especially when unsettling things start happening at home, too.

This is a short, compelling novel with evocative, absorbing prose. Whiteley slowly builds the growing sense of a world that is not what we believe - see for example her description of Fosse's panic attack early on: "...panic had set in and the wheezing started soon after, just like it used to when he had been small and scared all the time, with his mother gone away. It was not just the land that hated him then - the air itself had turned against him."

The novel raises questions about colonialism, personal autonomy, connection and violence, without necessarily posing definite answers (my favourite kind of questions) - although the ending sounds out a vital note of hope.

Thank you to Rebellion Publishing for allowing me to read an advance copy of Skyward Inn. This is the first longer piece of fiction I've read by Aliya Whiteley, and I will be seeking out more of her work now. It's also the first time since I was a child that I finished a story and turned immediately back to the beginning - finding it even more absorbing and interesting the second time through. I really, really recommend it if you like strong, evocative prose and thoughtful writing alongside compelling characters and fascinating world-building.

The gist: Skyward Inn is a beautiful, unsettling, dreamlike book. It’s a fusion of ideas surrounding love, family, coexistence and colonisation. It’s modern science fiction that sits well with the traditional classics of the genre.
It’s a quiet book, a sense of unease and uncertainty bringing tension to the slow reveal of the past and the potential future. Whiteley gradually builds a picture of what’s happening in a future Devon and the wider planet(s), slowly filling in the gaps and the changes so the picture builds for you as much as it does for the characters.
And although it’s quiet, it also has scenes prepared to horrify and disturb. There’s violence and body horror, and a sense of danger that may or may not be manifested. And, ultimately, the question of whether in fact some of these things are horrific at all. Whitely uses alien contact and coexistence to place humanity under a magnifying glass and see what it does.
Whiteley’s writing is thoughtful with every word placed carefully, and Skyward Inn is a joy to fall in to.
Favourite line: Alone is not a place I can go to, but the place that’s left behind after everyone else has gone.
Read if: You want beautiful, thoughtful science fiction.
Read with: Your favourite brew.
Get it: Skyward Inn by Aliya Whiteley
ARC gratefully received from Rebellion, Solaris, and Netgalley

Review to be posted on release date at www.thedustlounge.com