A History of What Comes Next (Take Them to the Stars 1)
Mi’a Freed, a 19-year-old sent on a rocketry assignment by her mother to Nazi Germany, has a keen mathematical sense and preternaturally quick reflexes. These are family heirlooms as much as her necklace. Her all-female family line calls itself the Kibsu, mother-daughter pairs going back 99 generations, or three millennia, who follow strict rules to protect themselves and their mission. Said mission comes to its zenith in the early postwar period: take humanity to space before it perishes. Mi’a, of course, wants what most young sci-fi/fantasy protagonists want, a normal life. Unlike most, however, she has a mother who is a fully developed character, and their relationship is a core theme.
Mi’a’s saving grace, to the plot and her own development, is that she also genuinely wants to do rocket science. Interspersed between technical details and spy-like gory exploits are entre-acts narrating moments in the grand history of the Kibsu, as the line of women endure and pass on their knowledge. This structure balances and fills out the terse but cinematic mid-20th-century plot line, giving this thriller an uncommon depth. The rocket-science detail may bore those who came for the history, but it likely draws in readers who aren’t self-professed historical fiction lovers.
The Kibsu’s rules prescribe fleeing over fighting and leaving no trace over gaining infamy, so the history ranges over a wide swath of Eurasia, and then with Mia and her mother, crosses the Atlantic to the wartime U.S.
The first in the Take Them to the Stars series, Sylvain Neuvel’s A History of What Comes Next is a fascinating multi-genre novel which both flatters and subverts the mid-20th century’s sense of itself. Major content warnings for graphic violence and torture, homophobia, and description of conversion therapy, among others.
