Sobbing but also feel so warm and fuzzy inside.

Homebound is a beautiful and heartfelt, what I can only describe as a masterpiece. I have never read anything like this in my life, and I’m utterly awestruck that it’s a debut. The story begins in 1983, where Becks is left a half-finished video game to code by her uncle, and what she creates is a vessel that will connect four pioneering women in a journey through time and space.

Thank you endlessly to the author, publisher and NetGalley for granting me an eARC of Homebound. This was a truly phenomenal novel and I believe this will thoroughly blow future readers away.

This warmed the cockles of my heart.

I love a novel that spans time and space, but in which all the characters are connected. In this case, by a video game, but also by a sense of love, friendship and common humanity. All good sci-fi and speculative fiction examines what it means to be a human and the importance of the emotional connections we make.

The first strand of the story begins in the 1980s snd is a sweet story of grief and coming out. Rebecca inherits a half-finished computer game which her uncle began, and which she will finish. The most futuristic strand of the novel is set in the 2580s, in a sunken world of water and islands, where captain Yesiko transports three passengers - two teenagers and a robot - in search of a lost astronaut and a long-forgotten story.

The novel was made up of first person and third person narrative, emails and computer game excerpts. All the pieces of the puzzle cleverly interconnect and intersect, coming together beautifully towards the end. The structure of the book was a perfect metaphor for how story, myth and history unite us.

It reminded me of Cloud Cuckoo Land by Anthony Doerr and Sea of Tranquility by Emily St John Mandel - other books which criss-cross backwards and forwards through time.

Overall, this was short and sweet, and I thoroughly enjoyed it.

In Homebound, we follow three main timelines in 1983, 2090-2093, and 2586 (+ a play log of a game in 2093 and a few moment’s from Chaya, the robot’s perspective over time). The 1983 and 2586 timelines are written in first and third person prose while the 2090-2093 timeline is written in a series of emails. I loved each of these narratives and the relatively short chapters kept the pace feeling high (yet gentle as this book as little “action” in) so that I was compelled to pick up and keep reading this book throughout. One of the many reasons that this book so fun to read is the fact that you are always trying to piece together how these narratives fit together. This mystery of sorts is well-balanced as it doesn’t remain very difficult to piece together for long, which prevents you becoming frustrated by any unnecessarily prolonged confusion.

The book is very character-focused, which I love, while still being able to weave in world building of the dystopian future. The world building is done subtly and never felt like it was on-the-nose. This is my favourite way to understand a sci-fi world: gradually being drip fed by the narrative.

One core theme of the book is how we remember those we loved and lost by telling stories. Although the last few pages did lay out this idea a bit more obviously than I felt it needed to, with the more subtle portrayal of this idea which shone throughout the rest of this book being more effective in my opinion, I liked how this theme was presented. Particularly in the story told through the game and Root and Yesiko’s relationship.

Queerness is also a big theme which runs through this book, and the way in which the experience of queer love and the struggles that came with being queer (particularly in the 1980s for both men and women) is beautifully done.

I love books which involve games and look at game making, or any sort of story telling medium for that matter (e.g. also film or books), and enjoyed reading the sections where the game was played. It was very interesting to think about how the game interweaved with the various narratives in the book, whether because the game was written by or played by the characters. The stories that were told directly through the game were also compelling and I felt invested in each of the characters the game character was helping, which is very impressive especially considering how few pages were spent in each scenario.

I often struggle with robot characters, but I really liked Chaya. I think robot characters can just feel like they are thrown into sci-fi books without a clear purpose and thus aren’t done well, but Chaya being a robot was deeply embedded in the plot and how their character worked. It also gave them interesting flaws that helped drive the plot as well as explore the theme of story-telling.

On that point, I loved all of the characters in this book and found them all to be incredibly vivid and compelling whether they were a main perspective character or not. It was also so refreshing to have an older female perspective (Yesiko in 2586) where her age is important for her character, as it would be with anyone, but is not in any way the focus of her character.

This book reminded me a lot of Emily St. John Mandel’s books, particularly ‘The Glass Hotel’ and ‘Sea of Tranquility’ in the structure of the narrative and character/theme-driven sci-fi. I am incredibly excited to see what Portia Elan writes next!

My thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for the eARC.

A multiple time line, split narrative story that ranges from 1983 to six hundred years in the future. In 1983 Becks is a teenager, bereft at the loss of her beloved uncle to a disease nobody wants to talk about and dealt a double blow by the breakdown of her relationship with her best friend. As she attempts to piece her world back together, she discovers a message from her uncle that includes the beginnings of a computer game he urges her to finish in his memory. Spooling forward it is sometimes hard to decode what is real and what is imagined, what is game and what is life, but in the end, what does it matter as long as the story is true to itself? This took me a little while to get into but when it clicked for me and I surrendered to the story, I absolutely loved it. Tender, smart and thoughtful. If you loved Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow and want something that scratches the same itch, this is it.

I loved this book - it was so wonderfully crafted
Spanning centuries, I was invested fully in each time frame and was constantly wanting to know what happened next in each era. All tied together so wonderfully it really is a remarkable book …and to find it’s a debut is even more impressive

Homebound by Portia Elan is a beautifully ambitious book that drifts through time, place and genre with real confidence. It begins in 1983 with Becks, a young woman desperate to escape Cincinnati and grieving the uncle who truly understood her. He leaves behind a half finished computer game for her to complete, a project that becomes far more important than she could ever imagine. What she builds will echo across centuries and shape the futures of a scientist, an astronaut and a sea captain.

The story moves through the neon nostalgia of the eighties, into the 2080s, then hundreds of years beyond, before landing in a far future that feels strangely old world. Despite the scale, it never loses sight of its heart. Each of the four central characters is distinct, vivid and deeply human, and the shifting timelines eventually knit together in a way that feels thoughtful and satisfying.

Although there are moments where the technical detail moves a little beyond reach, the emotional clarity carries you through. It is less a hard sci fi book and more a meditation on connection, creativity, loss and the ways people find each other across impossible distances. There is coding, space travel and a remarkable robot who quietly binds everything together, but the real power lies in its exploration of what home means when everything familiar has fallen away.

The ending leaves a gentle warmth that lingers, and the book as a whole carries a nostalgic, hopeful undercurrent that stays with you.

Read more at The Secret Book Review.

I absolutely loved Homebound, this book nearly made me cry. The story unfolds across three different timelines, stretching from the 1980s to 2090 and beyond. The shifting timelines constantly pull the reader into new perspectives and themes that feel deeply relevant today.

One of the aspects of the novel I really appreciated is its exploration of technology. The use of tech is examined through both human and machine perspectives, raising interesting questions: What is the true purpose of new technology? Should it serve humankind alone, or the entire ecosystem? Should innovation focus on helping humans escape Earth, or on healing the planet and addressing climate change?

I particularly loved the depth of character development throughout the novel Each one of them feels carefully crafted, my favorite being Yesiko and Becks.

The book also dives into the complex relationship between humans and machines, particularly through characters like Chaya the robot. Themes of family, identity, and belonging, love and loss are central: what does family truly mean? and how far would you go to protect the people you love? It’s also a story about finding oneself, and how frighteningly easy it can be to lose that sense of self. Those concepts are shown as subjective, experienced differently by different people, even by non-humans.

I’m sure this book will blow other readers’ minds. I’m really looking forward to publication day, as I will definitely be buying myself a physical copy. After reading Homebound, I can't wait to read other stories wrote by Portia Elan.

My thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for the eARC.

This was a beautiful piece of speculative fiction on loneliness, connection, belonging and what it means to be human. It's set across three different times, the 1980s, the near-ish future and the far future, and each storyline is individually compelling, the characters really drew me in, I was so invested in them so quickly.

To me most of all it's a story about human connection, and the longing we have for it. Despite the wildly different lives of the characters, they were all searching for a sense of belonging, a feeling of community and care that felt poignant and lovely, and reminded me of the value of human connection.

The way technology is woven into this book is fascinating, the video game is beautifully done and was one of the my favourite parts of the book to read, because it really did feel like I was playing along and desperately trying to understand the right thing to do, the right answer to give or the right action to take. And that's so much of what life feels like. But also the way this book interacts with scientific progress, especially regarding AI and the sentient 'Ayes' is so clever and so thought-provoking, it raises questions around what it means to be human and questions around how we view our world and our planet. Is it a finite resource that can be thrown away as we fly off into space leaving it behind, or do we invest in fixing the planet we have? And how much do we really understand about how ecosystems work, how the natural world of our planet works?

It was just a beautiful book to read, and one that raised questions that will sit with me for a long time.

The story seems to begin in 1983, a beloved uncle dies. He and his niece coded together. He leaves the outline for a computer game, Homebound.

In the late 20th century, robots are created in Alaska, with one seemingly particularly gifted.

We meet this robot again the 2500s once the world largely exists of seas and little else.

Are all the stories connected, or are they all part of one computer game? It's mysterious, quirky and gets you thinking. This is a delicious weaving of stories, one I read at speed and loved.