I read this novella for the indie novella competition, SFINCS. The following review is my own personal opinion as a judge and does not reflect the views of the team as a whole. Find out more about the competition here and my team, The WIPs, here, and read all my reviews for the competition here!
Of All The Stars by Kris Madigal is a slow, pensive fantasy novella about a snowy town with disappearing magic and the woman who strives to figure out the answer. As Kosma and her snow fox companion, Nipa, attempt to trek to the strange chasm in the woods that is the apparent source of the city’s magic, they somehow gets lost during a teleportation spell and ends up in a distant desert town. There, Kosma is immediately seized and thrown into jail due to her magical abilities. An enigmatic woman, daughter of the guard chief, Avaline decides to free her, however, and accompany Kosma back to her people for her own mysterious reasons, and the story shows their trek through the wilderness, their growing relationship, and the surprising solution to some of the magical questions posed in the beginning.
I really enjoyed the writing in the novella which conveyed natural beauty and Kosma’s emotions and reserved personality very effectively and had a sort of dreamlike feel to it. The setup also grabbed me as I love a magical mystery, and Kosma and Nipa’s pair was very cute and easy to root for. As Kosma, Avaline, and their navigator, Mikael, start their journey, the setup and all the secrets were intriguing: what is Avaline’s ultimate goal? What are her feelings towards magic, really, and why? And what will happen when this powerful woman arrives in Kosma’s city: a conflict or is some kind of collaboration or peace possible? Why did the teleport spell go awry anyway? Even when it became clear that a large portion of the novella will be the exploration of how trust evolves between Kosma and Avaline, these questions stayed in the forefront of my mind, and in the end, I can say I was not entirely unsatisfied with the answers. I also enjoyed the contrast between Kosma and Avaline’s personalities: both quite taciturn and reserved, but with entirely different flavors and hidden qualities. I was looking forward to how they will soften towards each other.
At the same time, perhaps because of the length, perhaps because of the poetic style and because the story placed character and relationships in the center rather than plot, I found myself consistently wanting more. I wanted more specifics about Kosma’s city and a better sense of what it meant that magic was failing and what was at risk. Avaline’s stubborn silence on her goals was enigmatic in a good way first but started to feel a bit too much, alongside with how Kosma wasn’t trying to get information out of her (or Mikael) very hard either. It was understandable, since she was basically at their mercy, but still, at that point of the story I found myself less involved because of everyone’s persistent silence about everything that felt important to me. For a long time I wasn’t even sure where they were going or how Kosma was so sure they were aiming for her city. I also so wished to get to know Mikael more. And with the gradual development of Kosma and Avaline’s relationship, I felt that a stronger sense of purpose and more clarity in the writing would have supported that important emotional journey better. I liked what was there a lot, but I wanted more.
In the end, however, the novella nicely and effectively managed to pull together all the threads of its weave. It’s a satisfying-unsatisfying ending where I would have loved to read more, to see the full extent of the answers and what exactly is to come, but I also understood why we stopped where we stopped, why the promise of the future is more important to gaze upon than that future itself. And while the inner journey of the romantic pairing could have similarly used more time and detailing, I liked that that was what the author decided to spend time on.
Of All The Stars is a touching tale of trust and letting ourselves find home in unusual places, and I’m confident that lovers of emotional writing, nature’s magic, and romantic storylines will find a lot of beauty in this short gem.
Helyna L. Clove 
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