It is always impressive to read a book by an author where an audaciously out-there premise is not only brilliantly and fulsomely executed, but infused too with a kind of reality-affecting humanity that makes the novel come vividly alive.

Holding those two elements in tenson is never easy with a tip one way or the other, especially towards the more outlandish aspects of the story, almost nullifying the effectiveness of its narrative companion, but Al Hess, who previously dazzled with World Running Down, manages it with moving aplomb in Key Lime Sky where a pie-eating blogger who’s both non-binary and autistic, is the only person standing between a psychically invasive alien and the end of life as we know it.

Denver Bryant will be the first person to tell you that he – Denver is relaxed about the use of pronouns which are handled with sensitivity and thoughtfulness throughout – is the most unlikeliest of heroes.

While he’s lived in the town of Muddy Gap, Wyoming for a decade, he’s never really been accepted by the vast majority of the townspeople who refer to him, he feels, disparagingly as Professor Pie – his blog and his excursions to taste pies across the country are well known thanks to one (declining) income-generating viral post – and who treat him as some sort of oddity and freak.

In some ways, that doesn’t bother Denver who is happiest at home with his weighted blanket, his fish and his passion for pies, but in other ways, how could it not as he wonders why no one takes the time to understand that because of his autism, he’s not as able to read social situations as neurotypical people routinely do and thus, makes what are perceived as rude and confrontationally honest statements.

Denver’s heart is in the right place, and while he often doesn’t know how to express that, the fact is that he wants to connect and know people and for people to understand that what he says, rather badly, is said out of a genuine desire to help people.

The only person who seems to actually get him is handsome bi bartender Ezra who, after a somewhat messy and wires-crossed meet-cute outside of the town’s post office, connects with Denver in some fairly profound and increasingly romantic ways, just in time to investigate a burst of destructively bright light in the night sky that only they, and some people out of Muddy Gap at the time, recall seeing happen.

That unmissable light show presages an alien incursion which begins to make people act very strangely in a strangely altered landscape of vividly-coloured sand and shell-shaped crab eggs before they begin disappearing in ways that unnerve everyone and defy any sort of ready explanation.

So, there you have the fantastically out-there premise laid out in all its oddly enthralling glory.

The key to the appeal and success of Key Lime Sky is that Hess not only delivers expansively and with some impressively detailed world-building on the idea of an alien slipping onto earth and altering the very nature and form of reality itself, but that he invests it with the sort of relational intimacy and found-family connectivity that turns a race to save the world into something that also immensely and wonderfully moving.

That’s quite a feat to pull off when so much is happening from the town disappearing into itself as the landscape reorients itself in something not that far from an Escher print-meets-Alice in Wonderland to people falling into folds in reality, but Hess does it masterfully and consistently well in an apocalyptic tale in which, if Denver, Ezra and their other new friends, Trevor and transgender woman Taisha can stop Muddy Gap from being consumed, then the world disappeared altogether.

In a novel that is gloriously and welcomingly queer with people who see and accept and, crucially, love others just as they are – one of the loveliest aspects of the story, beside Denver and Ezra’s love story is the connection that unexpectedly and beautifully forms between Trevor and Taisha – we are not only treated to the bigness of an alien invasion but to the affecting smallness (though it’s not really small at all for the people involved) of people meeting, getting to know and bonding to one another in very unusual circumstances.

It’s a wonderful ride and at no point does Key Lime Sky falter and lose that tension between the epic and intimate with the connection particularly between Denver and Ezra bringing so much affecting humanity to a story that might otherwise have just been all kinds of alien invasive weirdness.

The centre of the narrative always in Key Lime Sky is Denver, who may not get social cues and who may often prefer to read books than engage with humanity because it’s just too damn difficult, but who is smart and intuitive enough to know what needs to be done to end the threat of all threats to not only his pie-loving life but that of people close, and not so close to him, none of whom deserve to be wiped from the face of existence.

While the townspeople may not love Denver, you will because he is honest and thoughtful and kind and determined, making him exactly the kind of protagonist you want in a story like this, someone who softens the edges of the skillfully-executed action and brings it all together in a way that really impacts you.

One thing Key Lime Sky will do is make you very hungry for dessert so make sure you have some on hand, but what it also non-calorically does is take you into a world which is being awfully transformed by an alien invasion but which fights to save itself in the form of Denver Bryant, powered by the tenacious belief that life and connection and queerness and humanity all matter and are worth fighting for with everything you have in your arsenal.

Because who doesn’t want to live, and love to eat pie another day?

Okay, where do I start? This book wasn´t bad... but wasn´t good either. It was quite a struggle to finish and I believe the main problem for that was the characters.
Denver felt like an autistic Karen right from the beginning (I´m not going to enter the discussion about the autistic aspect here; if it´s well portrayed or not. For me it felt a bit flat, having read about other autistic characters in other books that felt more natural. But who knows. Might be my perception). The Karen trait, though, that is unmistakable not only in Denver, but in most characters of this plot.
They are all witty to find flaws in everyone else and think they got the right to act as they do. There´s not much personality in anyone besides that. The only character I liked a bit was Ezra, but I don´t thing it was worth the reading just for that.
The book drags quite a bit in the beginning and the resolution of the alien invasion felt like someone´s fever dream (more fantasy than sci-fi). Plus I didn´t understand how come Denver decided the solution for the alien invasion was X and it turned out it was randomly right.
The good thing about this novel? The romance. That was sweet and I liked it (although it features one of my most hated troupes: the feared making out then regret it 5 minutes later). But well, if you forget that, it´s not a bad read.
Just, can anybody explain to me why EVERYONE is horrible to Denver until the end, when xe saves the day and then all the villagers randomly decide they liked xem all along?

I had a really hard time getting into this book and finally ended up DNFing it. It just wasn't for me, but I'm sure others might find somethign to love about it. Thanks so much to NetGalley and the publisher for the ARC.

I absolutely love this book -- I liked the first book I read by Hess, World Running Down, but this one feels like Hess has taken a big leap forward in writing, in character development, in pacing, and in worldbuilding. Stellar work here!

Key Lime Sky is a sci-fi adult mystery with lots of queer characters! I read this as an ARC, but it was already released on August 13! My rating is a 3,5 but NetGalley unfortunately doesn't allow half points🛸🥧

Denver Bryant (any pronouns, but prefers xe/xem) is a not so successful pie critic who seems to be the only witness of a UFO explosion above Muddy Gap, Wyoming. Ever since this explosion, stuff went downhill. Residents are acting strange and disappearing, while orange sand and hail-like rocks are appearing out of thin air. No one believes Denver, except for the readers of xyr blog, and Ezra. A bartender who just like Denver, is seen as ‘the town eccentric’ in Muddy Gap. They feel something extraterrestrial is going on and decide to find the source and save their town before it’s too late.

This story was so weird, but in a good way. I think. I don’t read many sci-fi stories, so in the beginning I wasn’t sure if I liked it. But the story, and Denver grew on me. I especially enjoyed the mystery aspect of the book! The alien story and the abandoned, almost apocalyptic suburban town creeped me out. The setting was so eerie and unsettling, the author did a really good job on this.

There were many aspects I enjoyed. The connection between Denver and Ezra was so sweet (though I do NOT like miscommunications and I did not understand where these came from. It was frustrating). However Ezra tries to understand and support Denver, for example with meltdowns. Denver is autistic and I think the way xyr meltdowns and sensory issues were written was great, they were handled with care. I also appreciated the focus on loneliness, feeling isolated like you’re not part of society and being misunderstood. Xe struggles with social interaction and at times this did lean a bit too much into being stereotyped. But nevertheless for me personally I think it has good and genuine autism rep.

All in all the story was fun, well written and unique (although I don’t have a lot of sci-fi reference material). While the book is about evil aliens, it’s quite a heartwarming and cozy story. And of course the cover art is fantastic and actually describes the vibes so well!

I got this as an arc on Netgalley and it has since come out. Oh my God I loved this book and the MC. Xe was so relatable in many ways. Beautiful autistic and queer rep, and the story itself was very intense and kept me invested.

Sadly I couldn't get into this book. I tried reading on multiple occasions and I couldn't warm to the writing style.

Between the title Key Lime Sky and the event that sets everything in motion, I couldn’t help but think of Orange Colored Sky. Thanks to NetGalley and Angry Robot for my eARC.

Al Hess sets this story in a not too distant future world with better tech and a surprising amount of diversity for a small town in Wyoming. This book is very queer (and a lil spicy) as well as repping neurodivergence. Denver, our awkward hero, has ASD.

Whatever you expect from a story about extraterrestrials, Hess saw your expectations and went sideways. Anytime you think you know what’s going to happen, it does anything else. That made this very entertaining.

A fun, queer romp to save the world and find your (chosen) family.

It is so hard to really classify Key Lime Sky. But the closest I can come is Cozy Queer Alien Invasion. I truly enjoyed this book, almost all of the characters were loveable (or at the very least memorable) in their own ways. I felt such a kinship to Denver, in whom I felt Al Hess perfectly captured both the external and internal world of someone who is autistic and dealing with anxiety. I loved the fluidity of Denver's identity and how well Hess captured how fluid most of us actually are - Hess truly brought these characters to life and gave them so much depth that I felt like I knew them. Denver's experiences with being overwhelmed in crowded places, with people, and loud sounds was in some ways comforting for me, and in particular the related internal dialogue and self-awareness. I need more protagonists like Denver, and more reminders that people often like us more than we actually realize (especially when we're full of anxiety) it's just that sometimes they don't know how to show it (or say it), particularly in a way that works for messily-wired brains.

Key Lime Sky is a truly unique book full of found family, queer love, courage, and self-discovery. I loved how unique the story was, and in particular the nods to science and science fiction and the unique take on alien invasion and what that could look like. I really appreciated the lean into some typical X-Files-esque tropes but them completely turned on their head. This book is for anyone who loves aliens, science fiction, queer stories and representation, found family, and those that wonder, what could happen at the end of this world (or at least at the end of your small town).

Thank you to Angry Robot, Al Hess, and NetGalley for an advanced reader copy of this book. I have been looking forward to it since I first spotted the announcement and it totally lived up to my expectations (and hopes).

3.5 Stars

SciFi - Human Romance
All of the Rep
#MiddleLifeRomance

OHEMMGEE I wish this was dual POV. I’m desperate to know more about Ezra and know what he’s thinking.

I’m finding the abruptness of Denver (Xe/Xem) 100% suits but I don’t 100% understand Ezra’s (He/Him). He WILD swings between calm/empathetic and breaking down. Perhaps there is a deeper reason for this, if it was explained I missed it.

These two had TERRIBLE communication, it almost felt like no sentence between them gets to finish. They only hear half of what the other person is saying, the other half of what is actually going on between them, interpersonally, is just made up fluff in their heads.

Over all the this novel is exciting and filled with turns I didn’t really see coming. The varied representation and clear use of pronouns was seamlessly woven into the book and never felt like they were shoehorned in.

Denver Bryant, a pie enthusiast and struggling blogger, witnesses a UFO explosion over xir town, Muddy Gap, and finds xirself alone in investigating the strange, escalating phenomena. As Denver’s online popularity soars, xe teams up with bartender Ezra to uncover the truth, battling extraterrestrial threats and a town that won’t let them leave, all while navigating a budding romance and the quest to save their world.

This is a book that’s difficult to describe. Combine the physics of a dream with an alien invasion and a queer romance, and you kind of have an idea of what this book is like. I really enjoyed this. It’s angsty in all the best ways, with a plot that really kept me guessing and a very sweet romance. The characters are all fantastic. (I adore Taisha and Trevor and Trevor’s “chicken overlords” theory.) And just as a somewhat angsty sci-fi, world-bending plot with a romantic subplot, I thought this was a lot of fun.

⭐ Rating: 4.5/5 stars
🗓 Publish date: Aug 13, 2024
🌈 Representation: autistic and non-binary author and MC, trans woman SC, queer SCs

CW/TW:
Sexual content, Death, Violence, Abandonment, Fatphobia, Toxic relationship, Panic attack, Ableism


Key Lime Sky is a small-town sci-fi with a diverse cast of characters and engaging mystery.

I think my fave part was how eerie it was, like I genuinely had chills at some points as weird things kept happening. I'm not one for horror, generally, but I do love when sci-fi can elicit this reaction in me.

I also enjoyed the autistic and queer rep, the way the mystery unfolded, and the explorations of how humans face difficult (possibly world-ending) situations.

And yeah, of course the pie 🤤

A big thank you to Angry Robot for the ARC in exchange for an honest review!

KEY LIME SKY is weird little gem of a book! Featuring pies, a lovely little small town, an alien invasion, delightful main characters, and a hint of romance to balance everything all out. This was one of those books I didn’t want to end, but alas it did. ⁣
⁣
I adored the main character Denver and their passion for pies. I too love pie with the fervor that Denver does. I also loved the representation in this book. Denver is nonbinary, autistic, and just such a fun and lovable human. Their relationship with Ezra was also a highlight for me. My favorite aspect though had to be the invasion itself and how nobody in the town, save Denver and Ezra, remember it. There’s so much mystery surrounding the aliens and the crash, and it really added such a fun layer of intrigue to the overall story. ⁣
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This book is perfect for sci-fi lovers who like things on the offbeat and cozy side. I loved this unique and fun tale and I’ll be certain to pick up anything else with this author’s name on it. Read this one if you enjoy:⁣
⁣
👽Alien invasions ⁣
👽Autistic main character⁣
👽Nonbinary/lgbtqia+/queer characters⁣
👽Cozy science fiction⁣
👽A bit of romance ⁣
👽Small towns⁣
👽Pie! So much pie!

A quirky mixture of sci-fi and comedy in this futuristic UFO crashing; alien take-over novel.

Denver our main character is non binary, queer, and autistic and I think it's really clever to be able to write a character that authentically plays this so well. Denver suffers from noise exposure being painful and carries earplugs, feels like xhe always messes up social interactions and will only eat pie. Yet when a UFO crashes into their town, Denver pulls into their own and manages to come up with lots of theories about what's happening, along with the towns only other survivors.

This was a bit of a light hearted comedic Sci fi which was amusing to read. There were a fair few sexual scenes in the book which didn't bother me but might others as it isn't a romance novel per sey.

A interesting delve out of my normal reading habits.

Oh my god this was so much fun. queer cozy sci-fi with a whole lot of heart. I loved this story a lot and I hope my review will convince more people to check it out.

Thank you Netgalley, the author, and Angry Robot for this ARC copy in exchange for my honest review

I have no idea why, but I trudged through his book. It took me more than 3 weeks to read, a far cry from my average 2-3 days. The weird thing was it’s a concept so up my alley, and the neurodivergent non-binary queer rep was great.
But for some reason, I never actively enjoyed reading this.
I think the best things about this story all lead back to its uniqueness. First: the characters. A MC that uses neopronouns and has a great nickname and special interest in pie, a plus-size Hispanic LI, and a variety of side characters that were all interesting in their own ways. Second: the plot concept. I’ve never read anything like it before and I probably never will again.
The writing also wasn’t bad, and I enjoyed Denver’s internal monologue much of the time.
However, the entire thing dragged for me. It took me days to get through the first couple of chapters, and then I just never got into the story. The romance was alright, but I struggled to see how they were compatible outside of an apocalyptic context. And the stakes of the story were just not there for me. The ending also seemed surreal and was entirely unsatisfying. I also was pretty unsatisfied by the development of characters’ relationships during or the depth of history before the novel. As a character reader, this certainly didn’t help.
I think you need more suspension of disbelief to read this book than you do to watch theater in an empty blackbox. And the overall absurdity didn’t work for me.

Trigger warnings for Key Lime Sky include: language (profanity); brief violence, anxiety, autistic meltdowns & ableism; parental drug addiction, verbal abuse, sexual scenes and elements; hospitalization, alcohol use, racism, police, and jail time and brief fatphobia.
☆
☆
Something I rarely do is annotate or make notes as I'm reading, or highlight quotes in the ebook or e-ARC, but with this one I almost didn't have a choice. There were so many different relatable moments and quotes that I just felt I needed to make a note of.
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• "My backpack slid off my shoulder and hit the floor. I hunched against the sensory hell."
• "I don't have enough bandwidth for this shit."
• "I guess they can't cause problems there. Only spy on your bags of peas."
~
I love the autism representation in here, and the way that autistic meltdowns are handled, both in terms of the way the way they're written and also the way the characters respond to the situation.
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• "I don't crave that kind of sublime ignorance, but I often wondered what it was like for neurotypical people to just ... exist, without the skin-itching anxiety of crowds and phone calls and you weren't going to get a conversation right because everyone had the manual for social navigation but you."
~
This particular quote hit me like a train. I've said the exact same thing to people before when talking about my experiences in school and never feeling like I was getting social interactions right. It does feel like I was absent on the day that the manual for existing as a human and understanding social etiquette was handed out.
~
This was truly the most bizarre book I've ever read, and I definitely agree that it deserves it's place in the science fiction genre.
•
Thank you to Angry Robot and NetGalley for sending me an ARC copy of this book.

3.5 stars rounded up to 4.

I've already read & enjoyed some works by Al Hess and so I was quite excited to check out their newest work. He really has a knack for speculative works with a sweet romance and transgender autistic MCs and this one is no exception.
As someone who enjoys horror, I have to say that one of my favorite parts was the gore-y beginning. If you are squeamish and feel put off by it though I can assure you it doesn't play a very huge role in the story, so please don't let it put you off. Soon after we are thrown back in time to the beginning of this story as Denver, our blunt autistic MC does xir job: testing pie in diners and writing a review on it. On xir way home xe spots a strange thing in the sky. Once xe gets home though xe sees that xir eye lenses have failed to record anything of note and nobody else in town has seen anything unusual. In fact it soon becomes obvious that people in town think of Denver as a bit of an oddball. We are soon told that xe is very blunt and can often rub people the wrong way with xir intense honesty. As xir blog (which is one of xir main sources of income, as xe can't work regular jobs due to xir disability) suddenly starts taking of xe begins to investigate this alien invasion. Soon people disappear or become violent and the creepy alien invasion begins!
I quite enjoyed the way the internet eye lenses are used and while I can imagine how useful something like that could be, I can also imagine how annoying it would be to have notifications appear right in your eyes, always. Yikes.
The story features a relatively small cast of main characters, including Denver, the love interest Ezra, a neighbor that was abducted (whose name I've forgotten) and a few survivors, Taisha, Molly and her brothers. The brothers aren't really given any character traits and I can't even remember if they ever talk? And while I liked Denver, Ezra, Taisha (and the neighbor), I really disliked Molly. Molly is an asshole from the beginning and returns regularly to act like an even bigger bitch throughout the book. While characters can certainly be evil, it felt a bit over the top and ridiculous to me how Incredibly evil she was. From being a generic asshole post office worker, to an unhinged prepper that wants to prolong the apocalypse forever, kidnaps other characters, fools them repeatedly as well as being fatphobic and ableist, it felt a bit too much. While I'm sure prepper types like that would exist in the real world, I kept hoping for something interesting to happen to her character and it only does all the way at the end, which was a bit too late for me to care.
Another thing I would have enjoyed more if characters had grieved for all the people that disappeared in town. While it makes sense that they didn't break down immediately as they aren't really close to anyone in town (especially Denver, whose character arc includes xem figuring out that xe does have connections with people in town even though xe does not really awknowledge them), I wish a major character of the cast had shown some type of grief and devastation about the people that disappeared (in fact that only one I can remember awknowledging being sad about the disappearance is Taisha, who is sad about a friend who disappeared, but Taisha does not get that much screentime). I think it would have made the ending feel more impactful for me.
In general I quite enjoyed the ending!
Regarding the representation of autism, I found it okay that Denver has a lot of stereotypical autismTM traits, but I would have found it interesting if another autistic character existed in the story that has other traits to further the representation. And finally, this is a bit nitpicky, but it is something I notice in a lot of diverse apocalypse stories, but this one also fails to awknowledge who is excluded from most apocalypses, this being physically disabled people. And since the story features some people who experienced severe cognitive impairment (due to alien-weirdness) I also wish that the specific ableism against people with cognitive impairment had been addressed directly instead of through ableism directed towards the alien-impaired people instead of the people with actual cognitive impairments that have to exist in a town that size!
Despite my issues with the story (and again, some of them are nitpicky, I admit that) I enjoyed this short fun romp through an interesting alien invasion that changes life in a small town.

TWs for ableism (particularly towards autistic people and people with lowered cognitive function), malicious nicknaming (and refusing to change it even after being called on it), fatphobia, outing somebody as having been to prison, abusive ex partner, gore, imprisonment and gaslighting by government agencies

Key Lime Sky, or, what happens to your small town when a(n?) alien(s?) comes to play and little by little, everything is not as it seems. Here we have Denver Bryant, an autistic non-binary pie-critic blogger who always feels the town's ostracization target-- so when that gets worse, it seems to make sense in his/her/their/xyr head (pronouns: any so I will be switching throughout review FYI!) but that also means running into Hot Guy who not only listens to these strange happenings, but believes...

In the beginning I found Denver pretty insufferable actually-- mostly because we're introduced to him as a Critic and it seemed from the early pages that Critiquing for the Clicks was going to be what her personality was going to be like? But no, it is The Autism, and we get to know the depths and family traumas and how being by default so very clear and defining in their opinions has meant to their life up to this point.

Let me preface the rest of my review in that this is my third Al Hess book and I've quite liked World Running Down and Yours Celestially! I liked them quite a bit better than I liked Key Lime Sky.

This is a speculative fiction mystery but it's not quite obvious right away-- the world is almost exactly like ours but the two main characters (if not others; it's not mentioned for others anyway) have contacts that can snap pictures and stream video and that you can type through, but this is introduced kind of offhandedly and it took me a moment to realize that 'not our world but one with some boosts'. But very nearly exactly our world except the contacts? I think it may have worked better if it would have gone a bit harder into the sci-fi aspects of tech or prefaced the contacts tech a bit better too.

The other thing that was jarring to me was, this is set in small town Wyoming, a fictional town four miles wide. Yet we have a cast of characters that are ethnically (great!) and sexually (okay neat!) diverse, anod not only that, but sometimes the cishet characters will just say things like, for the example of a cishet dude who said variations on "no homo" no less than three times "Trans women are women" (true but it was sort of like a stark contrast to the previous "no homos" -- I actually quite liked this character when he got fleshed out more but that did take me out of the moment for a bit), government spooks automatically asking for pronouns and honorifics (this is what actually led me to realize this was speculative fiction... but it was done a bit better I think in Yours Celestially). This isn't bad! But I think I'm too old and skittish to accept easily without prior thought like "oh, small town, Great Plains region, Very Diverse, got it" because otherwise I go in very worried about when somebody's going to be racist or whatever-phobic and I'm on edge ... so when that doesn't happen that's GREAT but I also already experienced The Worry.

The mystery itself goes along at a somewhat fast pace, until it doesn't and drags at times, and every theory that is put forth is not only accepted by the crew but also turns out to be true-- I guess you can't really go chasing red herrings and being proven wrong in a standard length novel but it was surprising nearly every time Denver was like "I think--" and it was EXACTLY right, and the sort of come together at the end you really only see at the end of RuPaul's Drag Race's yearly Rusical.

ONE FINAL COMPLAINT but as much as I've loved Hess's books he does tend to be very heavy handed with certain things (in this case neurodivergence) and I relate to this because personally I tend to over-repeat things sometimes worried a listener or reader won't understand where I'm coming from. We know Denver is autistic. We would know it from context clues especially as Denver is very "classically all the more well-known autism tics and habits), but we also know it because it's repeated outright often, and then things are explained very straightforwardly. I think I had read that the author had his own diagnosis only a few years ago if that, so it may be just an explosion of the joy of finally having a diagnosis and throwing it all into the character, but I think also that we as readers can be trusted to pick up on the copious amounts of context here and not having a playbook explanation written out of "a meltdown, or, how to deal with it" re: Denver to Ezra. Or maybe some people need to be hit on the head so they understand But this happened a bit with Valentine in World Running Down too, how being trans was a huge chunk of his personality, and honestly there IS a lot more to Denver than neurodivergence, and I think editing out some of the overexplaining could have left more room for story.

Loved the Zelda reference (I had forgotten about that honestly!) and puzzle, loved the fish names, loved Ezra a lot actually, loved the description of the environment, both the love to the Great Plains and the added environments from alien terraforming attempts, loved the visceral descriptions of alien biology and loved the absolutely adoring descriptions of the pies. The author has some recipes on his Instagram too! Also, he painted the cover, which really stands out -- it's beautiful! Loved trauma-bonding (tm), and lots of little things. GREAT title play.

I did expect to like this book a lot more than I did, but there are enough parts to it I did enjoy, and I'll keep coming back for more Al Hess works even if I'd have to rank this one #3 of 3 of the ones I've read so far.

Thank you so much to Angry Robot, whose first venture into my awareness was another Al Hess book (and I think my first NetGalley approval last year when I started here??) and NetGalley for the eARC in exchange for review!

Thank you to NetGalley and Angry Robot for a copy of Key Lime Sky in exchange for an honest review.

What Works

I love it when a book does marginalized representation well, and Al Hess’s Key Lime Sky accomplishes just that. Denver reads as autistic even before xe — the pronoun Denver most prefers according to xyr narration — mentions it. And not in a Big Bang Theory Sheldon Cooper or an Atypical Sam way (though I know some autistic people relate to those characters). Denver isn’t an autistic character. Xe is a character who is autistic— big difference.

Denver’s autism does affect xyr life, especially when the people around xem start treating Denver like Chicken Little. But it’s more than that; it’s like a little sprinkle of cinnamon sugar that blankets everything xe faces. That’s pretty accurate. I love that Denver is obsessed with pie. It’s such a unique fixation, and that xyr pie blog serves a plot function later in the novel beyond being a personality “quirk” is excellent writing.

On the note of identity, Key Lime Sky‘s queer rep, in general, is rockin’. Denver’s queer identity functions very similarly to how xyr autism does; it sometimes “affects” the plot, but it’s mainly just another facet of xyr identity. It’s not unimportant, but it’s not a badge. Same for the other queer characters.

But Al Hess’s book is mainly a sci-fi novel and a quirky one at that. Think crab-like aliens, space-time folds, terraforming, contact-lens cameras and government coverups. It’s fun and terrifying all at once, and I could not guess where things were going. Love it.

What Doesn’t Work

Key Lime Sky is somewhere between 50 and 100 pages too long. Events are repetitive, and though the book mostly caught my attention, my eyes glazed over at times (“Haven’t we already been here”?). In adventure stories, which this was, pace is critical. The plot should move forward, even in the breaks. Even if the characters are going in circles, the readers should not be.

Some of the sci-fi science went over my head. Granted, I am not a science person, but outside of work, I read a fair amount of fantasy and sci-fi. Denver catches onto things so fast without really bothering to explain what is happening too well — until the end of the book. And even then, the explanation is still a little murky. Sure, we won’t always know all the answers in life, but the explanations left me a little unsatisfied.

Should You Read It?

On the balance, I think Key Lime Sky is worth reading. If you’re willing to skim over some parts and keep going, you’ll get a lot out of the novel. Even though the sci-fi elements confused me a bit, I was intrigued enough to find them cool. I think most sci-fi fans will, too. So will those who enjoy a good description of pie.

Key Lime Sky releases on August 13, 2024. Pick up a copy at your local indie bookstore or library. 📚🥧👽