What do you think?
Rate this book
From Voyages Unreturning
From Voyages Unreturning tells the tale of a woman who sought escape from her own life. Skimming through time and space at light-speed, she comes to realize that she’s left everything that she loved behind. She forges a bond with a living ship, and together, they dare to dream that life can be more than perpetual loss.…
92 pages, Kindle Edition
Published April 1, 2023
1 person want to read
About the author
Deborah L. Davitt
83 books35 followersDeborah L. Davitt was born at an Army hospital in Washington state, but spent the first twenty-two years of her life in Reno, Nevada.
She graduated first in her class from the University of Nevada, Reno, in 1997, and took her BA in English Literature with a strong focus on medieval and Renaissance literature. In 1999, she received an MA in English from Penn State.
Since then, she has taught composition, rhetoric, and technical writing, and created technical documentation on topics ranging from nuclear submarines to NASA’s return to flight to computer hardware and software.
Her poetry has garnered her Pushcart and Rhysling nominations, and has appeared in over twenty journals; her short fiction has earned a finalist showing for the Jim Baen Adventure Fantasy Award (2018) and has appeared in InterGalactic Medicine Show, Compelling Science Fiction, Galaxy’s Edge, and Pseudopod.
Her critically-acclaimed Edda-Earth novels are available through Amazon. She's also known for the well-received, 3.5 million word fanfic called Spirit of Redemption that exposed her to a global audience.
In 2019, her first full-length poetry collection, The Gates of Never, will be available from Finishing Line Press.
She currently lives in Houston, Texas, with her husband and son.
She graduated first in her class from the University of Nevada, Reno, in 1997, and took her BA in English Literature with a strong focus on medieval and Renaissance literature. In 1999, she received an MA in English from Penn State.
Since then, she has taught composition, rhetoric, and technical writing, and created technical documentation on topics ranging from nuclear submarines to NASA’s return to flight to computer hardware and software.
Her poetry has garnered her Pushcart and Rhysling nominations, and has appeared in over twenty journals; her short fiction has earned a finalist showing for the Jim Baen Adventure Fantasy Award (2018) and has appeared in InterGalactic Medicine Show, Compelling Science Fiction, Galaxy’s Edge, and Pseudopod.
Her critically-acclaimed Edda-Earth novels are available through Amazon. She's also known for the well-received, 3.5 million word fanfic called Spirit of Redemption that exposed her to a global audience.
In 2019, her first full-length poetry collection, The Gates of Never, will be available from Finishing Line Press.
She currently lives in Houston, Texas, with her husband and son.
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 of 1 review
September 28, 2024
I've reviewed a bunch of books in Aqueduct Press's rapidly expanding 'Conversation Pieces' series and I've generally had a blast with them. However, thus far, that's meant prose, whether collected short stories, like Sofia Rhei's 'Everything is Made of Letters', or a novella, like LaToya Jordan's 'To the Woman in the Pink Hat'. This is a book of poetry, as is Holly Lyn Walrath's 'Numinous Stones', a book I'll review next month, but this one tells a loose single story through its various poems.
It's a story about a journey taken by one unnamed woman and it's a heck of a journey. Initially, it's pretty vague, so each poem just appears to play with the theme of travel, from its many angles. A few in, though, it gradually becomes clear that we're following a single traveller as she leaves her life behind to journey into the vast reaches of space. Even then, the poems tell different moments on that journey, but eventually it finds a narrative flow and we start to realise the big picture.
These poems are told in different style, mostly free-flowing but with the occasional sense of order thrown in, either to make a point or for the writing challenge of different forms. I've always found poetry to be about connection because, even though it's told with words, it's closer to physical art than prose. We can each walk through a gallery of poems and find a different one that just speaks to us, with little correlation to quality. Some of us may have poor taste but none of us are wrong. I found this set of poems very easy to like and only a handful left me dry, so I'd call it a success.
Because there's a narrative flow, I'll talk through them in order. Finding Yourself is a great way to start, because it's a poem about discovery that could be read as an external journey, a brave trip out into the depths of space, or an internal one, a journey of self-discovery. That works, because in this instance, it's both. The Joy of the Journey is one of the poems that did little for me, though it does feel ebullient, as if our narrator might have doubted her choice as she set off but quickly put that to rest and only looked forward. I felt that this is a poem to be heard, in the voice of its poet, rather than presented on a page. In Cryosleep backs up that ebullience with our traveller waiting in hibernation to get somewhere but dreams about being there already.
Black Hole World is my sort of poem because it's clever and not just through the pristine choice of vocabulary we might expect from a poet. It's a four stanza pantoum, one of those writing exercises that poets love to torture themselves with. Each of those stanzas passes two of its four lines down to the next, which repeats in turn until the fourth stanza cycles back into the first. It's not easy to write a pantoum without it seeming like gibberish. Davitt does an admirable job, even if she isn't quite as strict to the form as she could have been.
No Going Back tackles travel in more than one sense and taps into a truth that travel is inherently going to change you. It could be argued that that's precisely why we should do it, but it's not quite that simple when we're dealing with relativistic speeds. Even if our traveller could go home, she'd find that everyone she knew is long dead because so much time had passed for them, even if it had not for her. And so she settles down to enjoy the wonders that this journey will bring her.
There's wonder in The Eye of God, a wonder only possible in the broadest canvas of the cosmos. It reminded me of Roy Batty's death speech. "I've seen things you people wouldn't believe." Davitt uses the word herself in Wolf 1061c, though to highlight that the wonder the traveller finds isn't a wonder she was looking for. The Garden of the Galaxy is and it's longer to reflect that fact. In TOI 700, our traveller has become part of a tour group, but she slips away and attempts to connect to an unfathomable past. It speaks to an alien world, but this is an archaelogist's poem. Falling from Heaven continues the search for wonder but in that tourist mindset where it means nothing. This is wonder. Now let's move on. There are three more wonders due before lunch. Grab a pamphlet.
Fortunately, our traveller finds her way out of that. Our Home looks at time again, but it's an aside of a poem, an echo of No Going Back. A Hollow Shell is a looser pantoum, still impressive but not up to Black Hole World's standard. After these, she finds her reason for travelling again. Inner Space ditches the tour group, highlighting that she's the only passenger left. Everyone else has reached their destination and she's the only one who doesn't have one. She's still looking and she starts to find in The Seat of Thought, as she finds her way to the nerve centre of the ship.
Dream and Memory is another clever poem. It fits the progression, as our traveller merges with a sentient ship. It's accordingly told in two voices, each of which can be read and understood entirely on its own, but it becomes something more when the two are read together. It's like Tim Minchin's Cont, but without the deliberate obfuscation for effect.
Hope and Despair begins the final arc, arriving at a spacefaring civilisation only to find it gone, an empty shell of what it was. And Yet Perhaps Not isn't another pantoum, even though it does seem to be initially. It's just a set of three line stanzas with alternating choruses that eventually merge. What an interesting structure! Alone/Home separates traveller from ship but not completely and we've reached the weakest point of the book for me. Not Quite the Crouching Leviathan is only the second poem to do nothing for me and Confessions Unvoiced feels like a placeholder. I get what it's doing but it feels like it should be more.
Destination: Past is much more like it. It feels like wonder restored, the thrill of the chase, as our traveller, connected in a new way to the ship and its knowledge, works to figure out what cause is behind the empty stations in Hope and Despair. Whispering Truths into the Void is an interlude, a moment of soliloquy before making a decision. Like a Guillemot returns to the structure of Dream and Memory and Expiation suggests that the decision is made, though I'm not sure I follow this, as my personal theory of time travel differs from Davitt's.
Leaving the Past Behind is a good poem but it's somewhat surprising to suddenly find a piece that follows such a traditional structure. It seems odd at this point and a reliance on what's been done rather than what could be, which I presume is precisely why. Microcosms feels like a single thought that comes after a decision but before that decision manifests a new reality. And that's what The Crux of the Matter is. And that's emphatically what The Joys of Journeys Shared is. And that's an excellent way to finish, highlighting the real value of a journey.
This is a rather ambitious effort on the part of Deborah Davitt, but then she's knocked out a string of novels and three and a half million words of 'Mass Effect' fan fiction that, from what I read, has a much more ambitious scope than the franchise it pays homage to. Ambition seems to be a drive that prompts her writing and I can't fault that. There are twenty-eight poems here but only three of them failed to connect with me on some level. That's a heck of a hit ratio, especially given that most of these run to a mere two pages of free-form poetry with frequent line breaks. I might not take the journey that this traveller did, but I'm happy to have enjoyed it vicariously through her.
Originally posted at the Nameless Zine in May 2023:
https://www.thenamelesszine.org/Books...
Index of all my Nameless Zine reviews:
https://books.apocalypselaterempire.com/
It's a story about a journey taken by one unnamed woman and it's a heck of a journey. Initially, it's pretty vague, so each poem just appears to play with the theme of travel, from its many angles. A few in, though, it gradually becomes clear that we're following a single traveller as she leaves her life behind to journey into the vast reaches of space. Even then, the poems tell different moments on that journey, but eventually it finds a narrative flow and we start to realise the big picture.
These poems are told in different style, mostly free-flowing but with the occasional sense of order thrown in, either to make a point or for the writing challenge of different forms. I've always found poetry to be about connection because, even though it's told with words, it's closer to physical art than prose. We can each walk through a gallery of poems and find a different one that just speaks to us, with little correlation to quality. Some of us may have poor taste but none of us are wrong. I found this set of poems very easy to like and only a handful left me dry, so I'd call it a success.
Because there's a narrative flow, I'll talk through them in order. Finding Yourself is a great way to start, because it's a poem about discovery that could be read as an external journey, a brave trip out into the depths of space, or an internal one, a journey of self-discovery. That works, because in this instance, it's both. The Joy of the Journey is one of the poems that did little for me, though it does feel ebullient, as if our narrator might have doubted her choice as she set off but quickly put that to rest and only looked forward. I felt that this is a poem to be heard, in the voice of its poet, rather than presented on a page. In Cryosleep backs up that ebullience with our traveller waiting in hibernation to get somewhere but dreams about being there already.
Black Hole World is my sort of poem because it's clever and not just through the pristine choice of vocabulary we might expect from a poet. It's a four stanza pantoum, one of those writing exercises that poets love to torture themselves with. Each of those stanzas passes two of its four lines down to the next, which repeats in turn until the fourth stanza cycles back into the first. It's not easy to write a pantoum without it seeming like gibberish. Davitt does an admirable job, even if she isn't quite as strict to the form as she could have been.
No Going Back tackles travel in more than one sense and taps into a truth that travel is inherently going to change you. It could be argued that that's precisely why we should do it, but it's not quite that simple when we're dealing with relativistic speeds. Even if our traveller could go home, she'd find that everyone she knew is long dead because so much time had passed for them, even if it had not for her. And so she settles down to enjoy the wonders that this journey will bring her.
There's wonder in The Eye of God, a wonder only possible in the broadest canvas of the cosmos. It reminded me of Roy Batty's death speech. "I've seen things you people wouldn't believe." Davitt uses the word herself in Wolf 1061c, though to highlight that the wonder the traveller finds isn't a wonder she was looking for. The Garden of the Galaxy is and it's longer to reflect that fact. In TOI 700, our traveller has become part of a tour group, but she slips away and attempts to connect to an unfathomable past. It speaks to an alien world, but this is an archaelogist's poem. Falling from Heaven continues the search for wonder but in that tourist mindset where it means nothing. This is wonder. Now let's move on. There are three more wonders due before lunch. Grab a pamphlet.
Fortunately, our traveller finds her way out of that. Our Home looks at time again, but it's an aside of a poem, an echo of No Going Back. A Hollow Shell is a looser pantoum, still impressive but not up to Black Hole World's standard. After these, she finds her reason for travelling again. Inner Space ditches the tour group, highlighting that she's the only passenger left. Everyone else has reached their destination and she's the only one who doesn't have one. She's still looking and she starts to find in The Seat of Thought, as she finds her way to the nerve centre of the ship.
Dream and Memory is another clever poem. It fits the progression, as our traveller merges with a sentient ship. It's accordingly told in two voices, each of which can be read and understood entirely on its own, but it becomes something more when the two are read together. It's like Tim Minchin's Cont, but without the deliberate obfuscation for effect.
Hope and Despair begins the final arc, arriving at a spacefaring civilisation only to find it gone, an empty shell of what it was. And Yet Perhaps Not isn't another pantoum, even though it does seem to be initially. It's just a set of three line stanzas with alternating choruses that eventually merge. What an interesting structure! Alone/Home separates traveller from ship but not completely and we've reached the weakest point of the book for me. Not Quite the Crouching Leviathan is only the second poem to do nothing for me and Confessions Unvoiced feels like a placeholder. I get what it's doing but it feels like it should be more.
Destination: Past is much more like it. It feels like wonder restored, the thrill of the chase, as our traveller, connected in a new way to the ship and its knowledge, works to figure out what cause is behind the empty stations in Hope and Despair. Whispering Truths into the Void is an interlude, a moment of soliloquy before making a decision. Like a Guillemot returns to the structure of Dream and Memory and Expiation suggests that the decision is made, though I'm not sure I follow this, as my personal theory of time travel differs from Davitt's.
Leaving the Past Behind is a good poem but it's somewhat surprising to suddenly find a piece that follows such a traditional structure. It seems odd at this point and a reliance on what's been done rather than what could be, which I presume is precisely why. Microcosms feels like a single thought that comes after a decision but before that decision manifests a new reality. And that's what The Crux of the Matter is. And that's emphatically what The Joys of Journeys Shared is. And that's an excellent way to finish, highlighting the real value of a journey.
This is a rather ambitious effort on the part of Deborah Davitt, but then she's knocked out a string of novels and three and a half million words of 'Mass Effect' fan fiction that, from what I read, has a much more ambitious scope than the franchise it pays homage to. Ambition seems to be a drive that prompts her writing and I can't fault that. There are twenty-eight poems here but only three of them failed to connect with me on some level. That's a heck of a hit ratio, especially given that most of these run to a mere two pages of free-form poetry with frequent line breaks. I might not take the journey that this traveller did, but I'm happy to have enjoyed it vicariously through her.
Originally posted at the Nameless Zine in May 2023:
https://www.thenamelesszine.org/Books...
Index of all my Nameless Zine reviews:
https://books.apocalypselaterempire.com/
Displaying 1 of 1 review