Light From Uncommon Stars has great descriptions of food and music - deep discussions about ingredients and technique and how the artist ultimately adds the final magic. That's also how the story is told. Almost every character on the page is a viewpoint character at some point, but the 3 main women definitely shine. The structure of the story is beautiful in and of itself.

Just like themes of food and music are used as different lenses for the same ideas, each of the main women brings with them a distinct literary genre and its expectations. We have the traumatic coming of age story from a contemporary YA. Science fiction is represented by the refugees from an intergalactic war. Fantasy is championed by a deal with the devil that's about to be collected. There's a piece in the middle where the mundane magic of the perfect donut is achieved via the artful application of advanced alien technologies and inspirations from unrelated cuisines. That's the amazing fusion that's repeated over and over in this novel.

Before reading the last pages of the novel I attended a local symphony concert and there were some great harmonies between the music and the story. I definitely paid closer attention to the music than I usually do after so many great descriptions of music in the book.

Right after finishing this, I watched the documentary My Name is Pauli Murray. Dealing with a mixture of gender expression, civil rights and religion, this was the perfect thing to follow such a book.

All of those components made for a very good book, but it's the humor that made it great. I found myself laughing at subtle in-jokes that the author has artfully provided the foundation for one moment and physical comedy the next. Pain and darkness inevitably lead to joy.