The Celestial Seas

A spacefaring teenage ship captain travels the cosmos seeking vengeance in Chan’s exhilarating Moby-Dick-inspired debut. Eighteen-year-old Ishara Ming’s primary job as captain of the whaler Dorado is to hunt sentient, self-sustaining spacecraft called MOBIS and deliver them to a collector for payment. Her personal goal is to exact revenge on the Ballena, the legendary MOBIS that killed her previous crew and left her with a metal arm and fractured memory. Only Ishara and her faithful new crew believe the Ballena exists, though first mate Quinn’s attempts to track it have so far been unsuccessful. While docked at a waystation, Ishara encounters 20-year-old mechanic Augustus, who claims he’s found a way to track the Ballena, and welcomes him aboard the Dorado, certain that she’s close to completing her mission. But as she finds herself foundering amid feelings for Quinn, an inexplicable pull toward Augustus, and the Ballena’s own mysteries, Ishara must choose between pursuing the creature that destroyed her life, or her life itself. Readers will be swept up by this enthralling and emotional interstellar adventure that capitalizes on the complexity and gut-wrenching atmosphere of the inspiration material, set here against the backdrop of a uniquely built world rendered in Ishara’s steadfast first-person POV. Characters are described with various skin tones. Ages 12–up. Agent: Karly Dizon and Laurie McLean, Fuse Literary. (Mar.)