SONGLIGHT by Moira Buffini gets starred Kirkus and PW reviews
Kirkus
Thousands of years after the Light People destroyed Earth, two factions are at war in a racially diverse world: the Brightlings and the Aylish.
Elsa and Rye, residents of Northaven, a pretty coastal town in Brightland, are in love. They also share a dangerous secret as Torches, those with the ability to use songlight, a form of telepathic communication. Torches are labeled unhumans; they’re either lobotomized and made to do the most unpleasant and dangerous jobs or turned into Sirens and forced to hunt others with songlight. As terrible fates loom—Elsa will be married off to a stranger, and Rye will be shipped out to fight with other cadets—the young lovers make plans to run away. But before they can escape, Rye’s abilities are discovered, and he’s outed by Piper, Elsa’s conformist brother. Rye is sentenced to be sent to the Chrysalid House for unhumans. In her anguish, Elsa goes down to the sea: “In songlight, I roar with white, inchoate pain.” This emotional release connects her with Nightingale, a powerful fellow Torch. Meanwhile, patriotic darling Sister Swan, the Flower of Brightland, is harboring a secret with serious political implications. The multiple immersive perspectives and the anticipation this narrative will create in readers make this first installment in a planned trilogy unputdownable. In her debut novel, award-winning playwright Buffini captures the human spirit and all its messy and beautifully complex emotions.
A brilliant character study that examines the effects of war, genocide, and misogyny.
Publishers Weekly
In the oppressive patriarchal theocracy of Brightland, which is at war, officials intend to exterminate unhumans, who have access to powerful telepathic abilities called songlight. Eighteen-year-old Elsa and her secret boyfriend Rye live in coastal moorland village Northaven, constantly fearing being outed as unhuman. Rye’s looming deployment to the war front and Elsa’s impending marriage to a returning veteran complicate matters further. After Rye is jailed by Elsa’s older brother, Elsa makes chance contact through songlight with 17-year-old Kaira, who lives in the capital city of Brightlinghelm. Though the girls find solace in each other’s company, their burgeoning power attracts the attention of human supremacist faction leaders, who seek to escalate the war using forbidden technology and manipulative songlight abilities. In this stunning YA debut, play- and screenwriter Buffini expertly juggles a complex plot via five distinct perspectives. By playing off conflicting internal motivations to explore weighty topics of reproductive freedom, internalized homo- phobia, and state oppression, Buffini crafts a nuanced adventure, all the while dropping tantalizing hints of further conflict and hidden history broiling under the surface of this dystopian trilogy opener. Characters are described as having varying skin tones.
