My letter “M” pick for the A to Z Book Challenge was MOON SOUL by Nathaniel Luscombe, a book that was utterly unexpected and wholly wonderful.

This book is described as “cozy sci-fi,” which it is. But that’s also selling this story short by a mile. The opening chapters paint a hopeless, helpless picture of August, a girl who is half human and half Spyren, the indigenous race inhabiting a desert moon. As a child of two worlds, August carries the ability of her people to read memories captured in the sand, a service she provides to the human residents of The Spire, a tall, glass-enclosed city where she has lived since both of her parents abandoned her. The work she provides is bleeding her dry both emotionally and literally to the point that she decides to quit her job.

What happens next is a wonderful journey of exploration as she becomes a gardener, rappelling off the sides of the Spire to tend the hanging gardens. In the open air, with her hands in the soil, she finds a sense of peace, and even better, friends (and more) for the first time in her life. All seems to be running smoothly until the day August’s Spyren mother arrives unexpectedly on her doorstep.

I won’t divulge every detail of this richly built world or the masterful, yet gently revealed layers of the plot, but I will say that this novella reads like a five-hundred page novel for all the subtext under the words. Nathaniel Luscombe takes those words and paints with them in a way that echoes inside you, and you hear certain phrases calling back to you even after you’ve closed the book. He reminds me very much of Ray Bradbury in style, and Bradbury is one of my favorite writers for just that reason. As a daughter with an often strained relationship with my late mother, I particularly relate to the feeling of living in a different world from someone you so desperately want to love without reservation. I was in tears through some of this. And the feeling of floating lost as life moves around you will certainly resonate with a lot of people.

This book was an easy five stars, and I know this will become a treasured re-read many times over.