From WBEZ Chicago, I'm Greta Johnson, and this is The Nerd at Book Club.

It's just like a regular book club, except you don't have to talk if you don't want to.

It is the month of October in the year 2021, somehow.

And our selection this month is Rika Aoki's Light from Uncommon Stars.

It's a sci-fi novel about violin prodigies and interstellar spaceships disguised as

donut shops among many other things.

Today's guest is Rika Aoki.

She is here for a spoiler-free chat about the book, Rika.

Welcome to Nerd at.

Thank you so much.

I'm really glad to be here.

And thanks everybody for listening.

Oh, my gosh.

So happy to have you.

I thought this was just such a beautiful and heartfelt novel.

And I have a lot of questions, so this is great.

I want to start with talking about the characters.

I don't think it gives too much a way to say we kind of have three main characters.

We have Katrina, who's a trans runaway.

We've got Shizuka, who's a violin teacher, who made a deal with the devil.

And then we have Lon, who's an interstellar refugee.

I mean, in a lot of ways, at first glance, you would think those are three different books.

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