He wanted to warn these children that time was not their friend; that though today might seem special, there would be a tomorrow, and a day after that; that the best-case scenario of a well-spent life was the slow and steady unravelling of the heart’s knot.
The Vanished Birds is primarily a novel about time and place in a universe worthy of any modern space opera. The story takes place in a future where advanced technology has allowed humanity to explore and settle other planets, but this progress has also led to the rise of powerful corporations that control and profit from these ventures. Throughout the book, the characters must deal with the effects of this capitalist exploitation, whether it’s the harsh working conditions or corporate intrigue. In this way, the book raises important questions about the consequences of unchecked capitalism and the ways it can alienate and exploit individuals.
The beginning of the novel itself consists of a sort of novella (which as I found out after writing most of this review was originally published as a short story before being incorporated into the larger novel) that sets up the universe, where we follow a farmer named Kaeda, who grew up in the backwater planet of Umbai-V. The story describes Kaeda’s life develop from when he was a child all the way until he is an old man, punctuated by the staccato of an offworld cargo ship arriving every 15 years to collect the harvest and carrying the story’s protagonist, Captain Nia Imani.
Towards the end of the novella we see the inciting incident of the story as we are introduced to a young boy who seems to have fallen out of the sky into Umbai-V. He is taken care of by Kaeda until Nia arrives on her next rotation and takes him when her ship departs one last time.
From here on the novel takes us through many different points of view - and thereby through many examples of how time and place affect us and our own decisions. For a time we follow Nia and the boy, as they travel through Pocket Space, a fold in the universe in which subjective time is much slower than the “objective” time of the universe at large. We meet Fumiko Nakajima, a genius who helped develop humanity’s expansion into the universe thousands of years ago, and who is somehow still alive.
We meet the crew of Nia’s ship, as well as various characters who exist in a specific time and then disappear as Nia and the boy continue to make their travels through Pocket Space at the behest of Nakajima, who believes the boy - with the chosen name of Ahro by this point - will be pivotal in further galactic travel and colonisation.
As the book continues to develop it is difficult to miss the attention that Jimenez gave to world building. While Nia’s crew jumps in and out of Pocket Space there is always a sense that the universe continues on, that each jump is truly lost time for the people on board the ship, despite of how long their subjective natural lives may be. Jimenez couples this with deep emotional arcs for each character, who each expose very human and very real fears and hopes.
While reading the book it constantly felt that the question at the heart of the story was always “How does one manage the time we have?” This sentiment is obviously explored through each jump through Pocket Space as the universe in which the ship was has moved on decades with every travel. All of the characters in the story show that they grieve in some way for lost loves, lost opportunities, lost moments.
Perhaps the only character in the book that we don’t get to understand entirely is time itself. Time is a constant presence in the book, and the characters must find ways to adapt to its passage and the changes it brings. For some, this means trying to hold onto the past and the memories of loved ones, while for others it means finding new ways to connect with the present and move forward. Overall, the book raises important questions about how we deal with loss and the passage of time, and encourages us to consider our own relationship with these themes.
In real life, people come and go all the time, and our relationships with them can change and evolve over time. Some people may play a significant role in our lives for a while, and then fade into the background as our lives and circumstances change. This can be a natural part of life, and it’s something that many people experience at some point. By depicting this in The Vanished Birds, Jimenez seems to be trying to capture this aspect of life and explore how characters deal with the changing nature of their relationships.