If The Stars Are Lit is an interesting sci-fi novella, which marks the long-form debut of Sara K. Ellis, published by Luna Press Publishing. A story that blends together speculative mystery with a magnificent world background, a badass female main character and that invites us to take a look at themes such as memory, AI and what means to be a human, the limit that defines conscience.

After the starship ferrying her to Earth is gutted by an explosion, Joss Carsten is the lone survivor, struggling to reestablish contact with humanity; with her health fading and having painful hallucinations related to her ex-wife, Alice, the onboard system decides to create a gemel (a sentient holographic AI) from Joss' psyche, molded after her memories. Together with the gemel that knows more about herself than she thought, Joss will need to unravel the mystery behind the ship's destruction and confront the ghosts of her past.

Ellis weaves together the present timeline with past flashbacks, allowing us to understand more about Joss Carsten and her previous relationship with Alice; while she shows herself as impervious as possible to the gemel, the task is extremely difficult as literally Non-Alice has access to all of her memories. At the same time, she's navigating the complicated mystery behind the explosion and who was trying to eliminate the whole ship; tension is a constant element in this novella, but it is well tied together with an excellent character work.

The sci-fi setting suits perfectly for the themes that Ellis wants to explore on this piece: not only the impact of memories and how they shape our behaviour, and with the gemels, we can see a thought-provoking theme built around what defines humanity in the verge of real AI. The pacing is relatively slow, with some action scenes here and there, but putting the focus on the characters; the dual timeline contributes to it, but once you establish the characters in your mental scheme, it is a really smooth novella.

If The Stars Are Lit is a great sci-fi novella, a bold debut that shows how to create well-fleshed characters and to use the setting in order to give us reasons to think about certain themes that are relevant nowadays. A great debut by a writer who I hope to continue reading in the future!