Essa Hansen

Caveat: This is not your usual book review; I've included some "behind the scenes" musings for once. If you prefer my usual reviews, this may not be your cup of tea. Okay, caveats out of the way--let's go!

There's a lot of mutual back-scratching (praise my book, and I'll praise your book!) which goes on in publishing, both self and trade. I don't mean this in a derogatory sense, because it comes from a good place: earnest writers genuinely trying to help out other writer buddies.

But I show more mention it here because I think, if I don't, my review will look suspect. By way of explanation, I'm one of Essa's critique partners, and under normal circumstances I would fully expect anyone reading this review to roll their eyes and say, "Of COURSE you think it's good!"

The thing is, it's actually the other way around.

NOPHEK GLOSS won me over on its own merits, all while being massively at a disadvantage.

Let me explain further--let's rewind three years. I was still 29, and muddling painfully through my first (truly terrible) novel. It was finished, but not very good, and I was struggling to find beta reader swaps for it. Beta reader swaps are where you contact another writer, usually someone you don't know, and agree to critique each other's books. The critique process is important for everyone, because humans learn best through teaching; when you critique others' work, you're teaching yourself to get better, too, as well as benefiting from fresh eyes on your MS.

But the problem with beta swap partners is they're often not very good experiences. Either you're a novice, or the other person is, or you both are, or your critique styles just don't match--hundreds of things that can go wrong, meaning one or both writers abandons the swap. Think about dating online: it's probably a bit like that, but far more annoying and far less rewarding.

My early beta swap experiences were pretty terrible. The books I was swapping for appalled me. I'm sure my book appalled other people, too.

Somehow, I blundered into Essa. We were in lot of the same FB groups: trawling for betas, asking questions, sometimes giving advice; we both wrote "speculative fiction" and aspired to have a literary edge. (Whether we achieve that or not, I leave to readers to decide.) Eventually--to cut a lot of pointless detail short--we ended up swapping books.

The book I swapped for was, of course, Nophek Gloss.

I started reading. This was pretty good! I kept reading, page after page, making my way through the chapters, leaving notes or nitpicks as they struck me, musing on sections, asking questions.

Even after a couple chapters in, I'd already had the realisation that this was the first manuscript I'd ever beta-read which felt like a real book. Like it could actually get picked up and produced by a publisher. The quality of the writing, the micro tension, the descriptions, the ideas, the characters and characterisations; you could just FEEL it.

This book was going to make it.

That very early version of NOPHEK was only 22 chapters long, and much less polished than the novel you are about to embark on (assuming you are reading this review first, that is.) Through the following three years, as we queried agents, swapped more critiques, wrote different books, rewrote old books, and found rep, Essa continued working on NOPHEK to make the novel more refined and eloquent. All the same qualities that early draft had were still present, just expanded and magnified.

In short, I don't rate the book highly because I know its author; I know its author, because I rated the book highly.

And therefore, when I say that my review is unbiased, I am genuinely being truthful.

For the novel itself, I will simply say that NOPHEK GLOSS is--to me--a coming of age (bildungsroman) story which is pitched at adults, rather than teens. It explores the effects of growing up too fast--literally, thanks to technology--in response to trauma, and the psychological cost of suppressing pain or loss in pursuit of our goals.


And yes, there are lots of other cool things too: the bubble universe stuff, the sheer variety of alien culture and life, the creative and playful interaction with biotech, the ship that creates universes, etc etc. But I will leave most of that for readers to discover, if they wish. There are many surprises and I'd feel bad spoiling them in-depth.

I hope that you will find Nophek Gloss as surprising and delightful as I first did, all those years ago.


PS - this is not available for sale yet. I read an ARC of the recent version, in addition to earlier versions.

PPS - For those interested in rep, the MC is written as ace-spec, and one of the supporting characters is neurodivergent (#ownvoices ND.) Some very good trans and nb rep throughout, too. show less

I read this book slowly because I wanted to make it last. It is another incredible work of storytelling. Caiden is an excellent character, even though there were definitely moments I wanted to shake him. I absolutely loved his found family, and mourned his losses with him. Seriously, the speed at which the author made me love some of these characters was astounding.

Essa does a brilliant job of drawing the reader into Caiden’s world and then rapidly expanding it as his understanding show more expands, so the reader gets to feel Caiden’s awe and disorientation (without it being overwhelming). The aliens are really alien and so cool, and yet at the core they’re just people, as it should be. Shades of grey are everywhere throughout this book, and Caiden wrestles with morality as much as he wrestles with his (justified) anger. Every secondary character felt fully realized and fleshed out, and they stepped right off the page with their own traumas and their own goals, and I loved them. Well, except one. He can still rot, even if he feels like a whole person. Even many of the tertiary, background characters felt fully realized, despite seeing them for a short time, and I love the way they add a layer of history to the crew.

The universe felt vast and the factions felt real, with good people crossing paths with Caiden along with really-not-nice-at-all people. But even the antagonists are fleshed out and multi-dimensional, with factions within factions (sometimes within factions!), and I loved the peeks into the wider politics of the universe. And what a universe it is—vast and multi-layered, with universe bubbles touching universe bubbles, each with varying physics and other conditions, and that was just so cool. The tech was super cool, too, and the gloss leads to some Spice-like economic-political shenanigans.

In addition to all this, Essa manages to wrestle big questions with thoughtfulness and I really appreciated that. Caiden’s quest for revenge and how much he risks for it, the questions of how responsible he is for things that happen that he can’t prevent, and the way he slowly learns to look beyond monsters to see if the heart of the monster is really a monster or not. Just masterfully done, I thought. A ton of action is packed into this book, yet it begins and ends rather slowly and thoughtfully, counter-pointing the gripping, hectic pace of some of the chapters in the middle.

So in short, if you enjoy sci-fi with alien aliens, multi-layered societies, three dimensional characters, emotional intensity, and questions of morality, you need to read this book.

And then we can all want our own pet nopheks together.

For those interested, the main character is ace-spectrum, and there's fantastic trans, nonbinary, and #OwnVoices neurodivergent representation in this book too. (En is the best supporting friend ever.) show less

Nophek Gloss begins with a gritty description of interstellar slavery and piracy that leaves our hero, young Caiden, an orphaned captive on an alien ship. Like Treasure Island’s Jim Hawkins, Caiden works his way into the ship’s crew and discovers uncomfortable truths about himself and his companions. Unfortunately, Essa Hansen cannot resist to Harry-Potterize the kid, making him literally mature beyond his years and endowed with unique powers. The first half is adventurous space opera; show more the second half is almost pure fantasy. 3.5 stars. show less

Much more than a coming of age book (and a very different one at that), Nophek Gloss is an emotional and vivid story about self-worth, overcoming trauma, and finding meaning in an overwhelmingly vast universe.

“Strength can rise from any wreckage.”

There’s so much I want to say about this novel, but I also don’t want to give anything away. Not discussing the plot makes reviewing and recommending a book a little tricky, so I guess I’ll say if you were to put a Becky Chambers novel in show more a cage and poke it with the pointy end of a stick until it got REALLY pissed off, you might have a vague idea of what to expect from Nophek Gloss. Essa Hansen writes with the epic scope of space opera’s greats, but with the vibrance and diversity that we’ve seen more of in recent years.

“Own what you hate, and polish the rest of you until that hated part is outshined completely.”

It was such a thrill to discover Hansen’s inventive sci-fi creations alongside Caiden who, due to his captive upbringing, has never even seen the night sky. While this may sound like an obvious storytelling device, it is integral to the plot, and in my opinion, works exceptionally well.

While Nophek Gloss features fascinating technology and unique alien species, its focus is not so much on futuristic realism and technical explanations, but more on the unfettered wonder and potential of an ever-expanding multiverse, both the good and the bad. show less