A Song for a New Day

by Sarah Pinsker

An unnervingly prescient, Nebula-award-winning novel explores life in a world permanently locked down in the aftermath of a pandemic.

Before: Luce Cannon is on the road. Success is finally within her grasp: her songs are getting airtime; the venues she's playing are getting larger. But mass shootings, bombings and now a strange contagion are closing America down around her.

The gig Luce plays tonight will turn out to be the last-ever rock show as the world's stadiums, arenas and concert halls go dark for good.

After: Rosemary is too young to remember the Before. She grew up, went to school and works in the virtual world of Hoodspace. Only a few weeks ago she was a customer service rep for Superwally, the corporate monolith of automated warehouses and drone deliveries that services almost every consumer need, but now she's about to do something she's never done before... she's going to take to the road, in the real world.

Working for StageHoloLive, which controls what is left of the music industry, her job is to find new talent, search out the illegal backroom jams and bring musicians into the Hoodspace hologaphic limelight they deserve.

But when Rosemary sees how the world could actually be, that won't be enough.

Genres: Science Fiction, Fiction, Dystopia, Music, Speculative Fiction, LGBT, Audiobook

384 pages, Paperback

First published September 10, 2019

Reviews

[Nilufer Ozmekik · Rating 4 out of 5]

Power of music could never be defeated, silenced, destroyed even at the apocalyptic world threatened by full of terrorist attacks that prevent people gather at the outside to share their joy, spirit, excitement, fun, entertainment, laughs at the open concert arenas.

There are so many amazing quotes emphasizes the importance of music in modern people’s lives as listed below:

“Where words leave off, music begins”

“Music, once admitted to the soul, becomes a sort of the spirit and never dies.”

“So where words fail, music speaks…”

It is the universal language of mankind which fills the cup of silence. It is also language of the spirit which opens the secret of life bringing peace, abolishing strife…

And let’s get back to our story-line:

Luce is a gifted musician who is determined enough fight against the odds because she doesn’t have any intention to surrender without a fight. Her music can be silenced! People need tunes to express their joy, sadness, depression, loneliness, emotional turmoil and they need band artists’ performances to gather all those emotions and pour down with the lyrics and rhythm to feed their souls and feel alive again!

Terrorist attacks created a brand new, terrifying world full of scared people who locked at their own places, couldn’t be brave enough to take a step to the outer world because of contagious deadly virus’ presence.

NO MUSIC, NO PUBLIC, NO HUMAN CONNECTION. Poor future people turned themselves the reluctant prisoners and worst fact about their lives is even the prisoners can listen music and gather together the prison back yard!!!

So they designed a new cyberspace to prevent the madness of people who were trapped inside their heads. This is HOODSPACE helps you connect with the virtual reality by wearing a hoodie!

So Luce resumes performing at the illegal concerts and her path with Rosemary crosses. Rosemary accepted the job as music talent, obliged to bring the music back to the virtual reality and she needs cooperation of Luce.

No need to tell more, you need to read the rest of the story to learn what happened with those characters and did they win the fight against restrictions of listening to the music freely and having a proper, real human contact.

Plot is intriguing, terrifying (especially for me because music is the second best thing feeding my soul and my body at the same time. Number choice is always Chardonnay but yes maybe I should write some alternative sci-fi, horror about the people who were suffering lack of booze in the future world and becoming insane!) and characters especially badass, gifted, tough, fighter Luce is my favorite.

So luckily this time I didn’t use my hands for my fantasy of struggling or slapping one of those villain characters. I used them to applause the writer’s creative thinking and the virtual music notes she inserted inside my head!

So I really enjoyed this book dystopian, controversial, original, unique work by giving my supportive, entertaining and somewhat chilling FOUR FULL STARS!
Let’s finish this with the words of one of my favorite guitarists at the universe:

“Music is a language that doesn’t speak in particular words. It speaks in emotions, and if it’s in the bones, it’s in the bones.” ― Keith Richards

Special thanks to NetGalley and Berkley for sharing this amazing work of talented author Sarah Pinsker in exchange my honest review.

[Nataliya · Rating 4 out of 5]

“How did they stand it? Shoulder to shoulder, front to back with total strangers, with their heat and their odors. No clue if any of them had some new superbug, if a single sneeze might endanger the entire room. No clue if someone had a knife or a gun or a vendetta. If even one person panicked, the whole room would try to squeeze up that tiny staircase. People would be crushed. There were laws against this, laws to prevent gatherings like this one.”

It is a pre-pandemic Nebula-winning book, written when the deadly contagion easily spread not only by the sick but also by the (often careless) asymptomatic people was still something that seemed set for literary dystopia rather than the reality of this neverending year. It was the long-ago last year when, while cocooned in the security of non-pandemic it seemed easy to speculate about how brave and rebellious one can be, chafing against the repressive and overreaching government laws, standing up against fear and feeling courageous in defending *your* world.

Now, with our present-day pandemic worse than the one imagined by Pinsker since it can be spread by seemingly healthy people, many of whom choose to disregard other people’s right not to die in favor of their rights to carry on as usual, this book is an uneasy read, at least for me. This caused me to put it aside a few times to regroup and not let my perceptions of the pandemic-riddled present cloud my impressions of a really good pre-pandemic story.
—————

“We all felt our world slipping away, in cascades and cataracts, the promises of temporary change becoming less and less temporary. Didn’t we feel so much safer? Weren’t safe and healthy worth more to us than large weddings and overcrowded schools? Hadn’t the pox been spread by people working and attending school when they should have stayed home? Never mind that they didn’t stay home because they couldn’t afford to.”

This world (or at least the US, I was not quite clear on that) - a version of ours in the near future - in quick succession goes through a series of terrorist attacks followed by a deadly pox epidemic, killing and scarring millions. What followed was obvious - the exodus of those with the means to do so from the crowded cities, working from home, online education, anti-congregation laws, plexiglass dividers in restaurants and on public transport. No masks though, not for pox - but apparently the same fear or crowds and being sneezed or coughed on.

With already consumer-oriented economy, the drive for social isolation further exacerbated the situation, with your viable options for employment narrowing down to mostly working for big-box corporations in distribution centers and customer service - Superwally in this book, with the company line a no-nonsense “You are valued but replaceable” - and entertainment allowed and consumed virtually, through Hoodies (VR gadgets) allowing for virtual work communications, monetary transactions and really most kinds of interactions with the wider world.

“As I got closer, I saw that what I’d assumed were starlings or sparrows were in fact drones, rising in a stream, a flock, a cloud, to head to points unknown. Self-driving trucks, drone delivery. No jobs for the humans, other than consumption, which was itself a full-time occupation.”

In the world where congregation is restricted and big-box entertainment companies rule it all, the music world has changed as well. The shows are tightly staged and sold as a virtual reality experiences through StageHoloLive- see the band, avoid the contagion and crowds, who needs live experience anyway, right?
———
This may be the time to mention that Sarah Pinsker is also an indie musician. She does not need to imagine the energy and thrill of live shows, I presume. She *knows*.
———

This novel gives us the perspectives of two women. Luce Cannon (hah!) is a musician who just started to make it big when the terrorism/epidemic put the end to the legal live music scene. She chafes against the regulations and not only continues to perform in the underground live music scene but runs an illegal live music venue from her basement. Rosemary Laws is a young woman who grew up under the new congregation laws, raised by parents who had fled the crowded city for the space and seclusion on a remote farm. She has never been outside her community except virtually, works for the retail giant Superwally in customer service, and can barely remember the time when crowds were normal and not terrifying. And then Rosemary unexpectedly lands a job as a talent scout for StageHoloLive, tasked with finding promising underground live bands (or “acts” in the corporate speak) by infiltrating the illegal venues and signing them up, taking them out of live music obscurity into the shiny regulated and profitable virtual world. And so Luce and Rosemary’s life trajectories intersect and collide, and maybe something new can be born out of all that.

“I’d rather play in my living room for six people than be a moneymaker for a company that deliberately ends scenes like ours or tells us we need to work on our sex appeal. They don’t understand that music isn’t just the notes we play. It’s the room and the band and the crowd. I’m not interested in faking any of that.”

From what I see, this world, although divided into Before and After, has mostly got over the disasters. It doesn’t seem that there is continuing terrorist activity, and it seems that the epidemic is mostly over, and despite big-box-corporatization of everything there seem to be strides in the better direction with more social safety nets. It does seem that the driving force behind the continuing restrictions is fear, and it’s logical that there is backlash against that fear. And I had to remind myself that, even when my brain was outraged at people breaking the quarantinish rules — I had to remind myself that unlike our world, this world seems to have gotten over the actual threat and is fueled more by fear and habit rather than the tangible dangers. Once I managed to rearrange my thinking this way, realize that it’s not about anti-social distance and quarantine but against fear persisting long after threats are gone, this book stopped being uneasily disturbing and became enjoyable, and I was able to see in it what I would have seen had I read it back in the more innocent 2019.

Sarah Pinsker is a good writer, that’s clear. I enjoyed her short story collection Sooner or Later Everything Falls Into the Sea (it has a Nebula-winning novelette Our Lady of the Open Road set in the same world, with Luce on the road doing her illegal touring), and this one confirmed my impression of her writing skills as solid. And her love and appreciation and need for music shines through so strongly that it’s hard to not get swept up in that love, even when for me music does not carry nearly as much emotional value. I can live without live concerts; my dystopia involves lack of books, obviously. But she succeeds in conveying her love of music so strongly and so well that I was swept up in it, that I was in the crowded makeshift venues feeling the emotions and the exhilaration of the crowds (but mentally wearing a mask - new habits die hard).

Pinsker’s characters are done very well, too. Especially Rosemary, despite her naïveté and internalized ways of thinking shaped by the “safer” world that she knows (Luce, a rebel musician, seems easier to empathize with than Rosemary, so the way Rosemary’s character is done is a praise for Pinsker). It’s certainly a character-driven book, with the inner struggles and growth of the main duo providing all the meat of the story. It’s quiet (despite the loud concerts described) and meditative and very much in the same vein as Pinsker’s short fiction, which to me is a plus.

“You’re being stubborn. You want to burn it down, but you’re not interested in saving the people inside before you light the match? Take us with you! Tell us where to go.”
———
“You’ve given up on ninety-nine percent of the people out there, Luce. You’re playing to the people who know to come find you. You would’ve missed me entirely. Or I would have missed you.”

So really it’s a good, intelligent, quietly passionate novel about music and human connections that argues not against the (imaginary) pandemic restrictions but against the fear that years later, even with the threat removed, still governs lives. It wasn’t my favorite Nebula nominee (that went to Arkady Martine’s A Memory Called Empire), but still quite good.

3.5 - 4 stars.

———————
An interesting pandemic-time interview with Sarah Pinsker: https://nysmusic.com/2020/07/24/inter...
——————
My Hugo and Nebula Awards Reading Project 2020: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...

[emma · Rating 3 out of 5]

As a result of who I am as a person, I feel physically, spiritually, emotionally, and legally obligated to read multiple books at a time.

There are several reasons for this. My fairly limited attention span and related tendency to get bored. My devastating need to read an ever-growing number of books until the one thing I truly love becomes just another source of anxiety. My inability to be alone with my thoughts.

And yes, I'm very fun at parties.

There are a lot of upsides to this, including the creation of an activity I spend most of my days doing wherein I alternate between reading 2-3 books in 50 page chunks until I finish all of them.

But there are also a couple downsides. Namely, in this case, that some books just pale in comparison to others.

I read a lot of this book alternating with an addictive perfect funny scary story that ended up one of my surprise favorites of the year.

So then I ended up mostly just reading that one.

And then it was very hard to pick this back up.

This is not a bad book. I don't really love books about music because...music is something you hear, so it rarely translates. But the characters were real and the dystopian-adjacent future was compelling.

It just fell flat, comparatively.

Bottom line: I did not set this up for success!

---------------
pre-review

disappointment disaster avoided.

...disappointmentsaster?

review to come / 3.5 stars

---------------
tbr review

obsessed with when books say things like "for fans of station eleven" because i'm addicted to disappointment

---------------

reading all books with LGBTQ+ rep for pride this month!

book 1: the gravity of us
book 2: the great american whatever
book 3: wild beauty
book 4: the affair of the mysterious letter
book 5: how we fight for our lives
book 6: blue lily, lily blue
book 7: the times i knew i was gay
book 8: conventionally yours
book 9: the hollow inside
book 10: nimona
book 11: dark and deepest red
book 12: the house in the cerulean sea
book 13: the raven king
book 14: violet ghosts
book 15: as far as you'll take me
book 16: bad feminist
book 17: a song for a new day

[Charlie Anders · Rating 5 out of 5]

I was lucky enough to read an early copy of A Song for a New Day a while ago, and it's stuck with me. This vision of a world without live music (and without real community) feels extra relevant in an era where we're all glued to our screens and social media is all about driving "engagement" rather than creating real connection with each other. Pinsker's characters feel real and grounded, and the stories of being a touring musician and a talent scout for a VR concert company are full of really well-observed details. Sarah Pinsker has written a wonderful epic about music, community, and rediscovering the things that make us human.

[Dennis · Rating 3 out of 5]

***Winner of the 2019 Nebula Award for Best Novel***

Reality has caught up with this 2019 science-fiction novel.

In the near future the United States are going into lockdown mode after several bombings and the spreading of a virus has lead to a huge number of deaths. Anti-congregation laws are established, schools and businesses are closed, and the people are encouraged to stay at home and avoid contact with others.

From two different POVs we see how people are trying to cope with the new normal. One is that of a musician named Luce Cannon (ha!), who, after years of trying, had finally managed to get her big break, shortly before disaster struck. Now she has to find a way to carry on with her profession (and passion) to make music and perform, in a world where concerts are outlawed, big gatherings are illegal, and the whole business of making music has basically moved into VR and into the underground. The second POV is that of Rosemary Laws, who was still very young when the world changed, and can barely remember the before. While Luce is resolutely pursuing a life that somewhat resembles the one she once knew, Rosemary never really grew used to human contact. But she also longes for something more, and tentatively makes steps towards a life that does not only consist of online interactions.

It was weird reading this book at a time like this. What should have been science-fiction, and was indeed science-fiction when this was released only eight months ago, now just felt very familiar and almost a little mundane. There is some slightly advanced tech in play here, as most people are living in Hoodspace, which means a huge part of life takes place in virtual reality. But it doesn’t take a lot of imagination to actually picture this happening not very far from now. There’s also a dystopian angle to the whole thing, as two companies have hugely benefited from people retreating into the virtual world, and they very much would like to preserve that state. But neither the tech nor the dystopian theme gets explored all that much. Furthermore, what exactly has been behind the bombings and the virus is not a relevant point to the tale either. The story also is very much limited to the US. I didn’t really get a clear picture of how other parts of the world were affected by it all.

Ultimately this is about two very different people, with very different backgrounds, trying to get to terms with the new "world" they find themselves in. And while the music part is intriguing and both main characters are likeable, the story did not manage to evoke some deeper feelings in me.

The combination of two main characters working in the music business, which makes the act of making music a huge part of this novel, and a science-fiction turn on how said business, and also life in general, might work in a more digitally oriented world, should have been right up my alley. But maybe the timing just wasn’t right for this one.

3 stars.

_________________

2019 Nebula Award Finalists

Best Novel
• Marque of Caine by Charles E. Gannon
• The Ten Thousand Doors of January by Alix E. Harrow
• A Memory Called Empire by Arkady Martine
• Gods of Jade and Shadow by Silvia Moreno-Garcia
• Gideon the Ninth by Tamsyn Muir
• A Song for a New Day by Sarah Pinsker

Best Novella
• Anxiety Is the Dizziness of Freedom by Ted Chiang ( Exhalation)
• The Haunting of Tram Car 015 by P. Djèlí Clark
• This Is How You Lose the Time War by Amal El-Mohtar & Max Gladstone
• Her Silhouette, Drawn in Water by Vylar Kaftan
• The Deep by Rivers Solomon, with Daveed Diggs, William Hutson & Jonathan Snipes
• Catfish Lullaby by A.C. Wise

Best Novelette
• A Strange Uncertain Light by G.V. Anderson ( The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, July/August 2019)
• For He Can Creep by Siobhan Carroll
• His Footsteps, Through Darkness and Light by Mimi Mondal
• The Blur in the Corner of Your Eye by Sarah Pinsker ( Uncanny Magazine Issue 29: July/August 2019)
• Carpe Glitter by Cat Rambo
• The Archronology of Love by Caroline M. Yoachim (Lightspeed Magazine, April 2019)

Best Short Story
• Give the Family My Love by A.T. Greenblatt (Clarkesworld Magazine, Issue 149, February 2019)
• The Dead, In Their Uncontrollable Power by Karen Osborne (Uncanny Magazine Issue 27: March/April 2019)
• And Now His Lordship Is Laughing by Shiv Ramdas (Strange Horizons 9 September 2019)
• Ten Excerpts from an Annotated Bibliography on the Cannibal Women of Ratnabar Island by Nibedita Sen (Nightmare Magazine, Issue 80)
• A Catalog of Storms by Fran Wilde (Uncanny Magazine, Issue 26, January-February 2019)
• How the Trick Is Done by A.C. Wise (Uncanny Magazine Issue 29: July/August 2019)

Andre Norton Nebula Award for Middle Grade and Young Adult Fiction
• Sal and Gabi Break the Universe by Carlos Hernandez
• Catfishing on CatNet by Naomi Kritzer
• Dragon Pearl by Yoon Ha Lee
• Peasprout Chen: Battle of Champions by Henry Lien
• Cog by Greg van Eekhout
• Riverland by Fran Wilde

[Jennifer ~ TarHeelReader · Rating 4 out of 5]

A sci fi dystopian novel featuring music? ⭐️ ⭐️ ⭐️ ⭐️

I loved this fascinating and original premise. A Song for a New Day, no surprise with that title, features music. Luce Cannon is at the top of her game when large public gatherings are allowed during the “Before” because everyone artist knows concerts help sell music.

But now it’s the After, and viral outbreaks, as well as mass shootings and terror attacks, have caused the government to ban concerts.

That doesn’t stop Luce, though. She performs concerts to small audiences trying to evade the law.

Rosemary Laws is a recluse, working in customer service but not really having contact with people. She discovers a way to bring concerts back to everyone using virtual reality. But what she’s doing is still illegal.

Dystopian fans, you are going to want to read this book! Vividly real, exciting, and filled with true-to-life, genuine characters, I enjoyed every bit of this story. I also loved the prominent role music played in the story, and the fact that concerts were banned? I could completely see that happening in the future, though it would be devastating.

If you are looking for a book to get lost in, check out A Song for a New Day. Well-written and supremely engaging, I loved it!

I received a complimentary copy. All opinions are my own.

My reviews can also be found on my blog: www.jennifertarheelreader.com

[Blair · Rating 3 out of 5]

In the near future, the USA is a very different place. After a spate of bombings and the outbreak of a deadly virus known colloquially as 'the pox', public gatherings are forbidden. Live concerts and sport are things of the past. It becomes more common to study, work and socialise in virtual reality, and many young people never leave their homes. 24-year-old Rosemary is one of them, but she's becoming restless. When she's blown away by a virtual concert organised by a company called StageHolo, Rosemary applies to work for them and (to her own surprise) is employed as a talent scout. The job leads her to cross paths with another important character: Luce, who was an up-and-coming musician in the world 'Before', and now runs an illegal underground club.

Luce's fierce love of music and Rosemary's quest to break out of her isolated existence are both fascinating threads. I started off totally on board with the plot. Luce's passion felt authentic, and I loved reading about Rosemary as she tried to get to grips with the difficulties of meeting people in real life – in many ways a perfect analogue of what it's like to move through the world when you have social anxiety. This is a book that's generally very kind to its characters – their insecurities and foibles, the areas in which they lack experience or knowledge – and the diversity of the cast is handled well too (with, for example, white not being treated as the default).

But I have to say that by the halfway point I was ready for the story to be over. That's not because it's boring or badly written – there are loads of great ideas in here, and some scenes/moments are truly beautiful – but something's off with the pacing; things seem to get going, then... tail off. It's never clear how this world's version of virtual reality works, and I was constantly getting distracted by what seemed to be contradictions, or details that simply didn't make sense, particularly around how the 'hoodies' were supposed to work. Plus, crucially, Luce and Rosemary are more interesting individually than they are together.

Really, I probably shouldn't have finished this. The problem was that by the time I'd realised it wasn't going anywhere great, I'd already read almost 200 pages, and felt like I was too immersed in the story to just give up. That's my problem – 'dumping' a book I've spent several days on is something I need to get better at. A Song for a New Day is a likeable story with a few flaws, and I'm sure it will work better for some readers than it did for me. Pick it up if you're interested in reading about music and human connection and don't mind rambling, meandering scenes; avoid if you're looking for a propulsive plot and/or an effective depiction of near-future society.

I received an advance review copy of A Song for a New Day from the publisher through NetGalley.

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[Berit☀️✨ · Rating 4 out of 5]

Sarah Pinsker has written a captivating dystopian/speculative fiction story that prominently features music. While this is not my usual genre it blends two of my favorite things music and books, and I loved it! Pinsker’s Love and appreciation for music especially live music comes across loud and clear in this story. Luce Cannon(Got to love that name) is a musician on the way to the top when the government calls for a halt to all live concerts. Not only concerts but most large social gatherings have been banned, do to continuous terrorist attacks. Rosemary spends her days working from home in customer service for a Walmart/Amazon hybrid. She is given an amazing opportunity to attend an online concert. This leads to a job offer to travel and search out bands who are willing to perform these online concerts. Luce and Rosemary’s haves cross one day at a underground banned concert. Luce and Rosemary are on opposite sides of the issue, will Rosemarys actions cause Luce to go further underground? So what will happen when the two meet up again? Will this be the “day the music died”?

Luce was A dynamic character with a tremendous passion for music and performing live. Rosemary was a quieter character but I found her to be a little more sympathetic I could really understand her inner conflict. The story was much more character driven than plot driven. I think dystopian/speculative fiction fans who are desiring a lot of world building might be a little disappointed, I myself wish the lead up to why the world was this way was addressed more in the book. But I don’t think this impacted my overall enjoyment of this riveting story. This really was a love letter to music and a warning letter to the Reader. While the idea of attending a concert from the comfort of your home Mike sound fabulous, we really don’t ever want to lose the human connection.

This book in three emojis: 🎫 🎼 🎸

[MissBecka Gee · Rating 5 out of 5]

You can feel Pinsker's love for music and touring bleed through the pages of this book.
She described the moments so well you could practically smell the sweat in the venues!
This was fabulous!!!
Giant thank you to Sarah Pinsker for my signed ARC received at BookCon; It was a joy to meet you!!!

[Oleksandr Zholud · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a near-future, slightly dystopian debut novel by Sarah Pinsker. The author was nominated each year since 2013 for the Nebula award for shorter works and won a few. This book was nominated for Nebula in 2020 (It won the award later!) and I read it as a part of the monthly reading for March 2020 at SFF Hot from Printers: New Releases group. I also re-read it once again, this time as a part of the monthly reading for September 2025 at Hugo & Nebula Awards: Best Novels group. The re-read forced me to up the rating by one star.

This is a story of our near future. After several awful terrorist attacks and a deadly pandemic (the book was published in 2019, before COVID-19), people try not to physically contact, and there is a generation that grew up in a virtual world, with both work and shopping alike done distantly. Even family hugging is discouraged to prevent the spread of diseases.

There are two protagonists and two storylines. First is a musician, working under the name of Luce Cannon, who accidentally was the vocalist of the last rock group playing right before the shutdown. She has a problem that she likes to play before large throngs, but all gatherings are forbidden. Making music in the darkness, then music against the darkness. The decision to play for the people who chose to go out instead of hiding in their homes.

Second is a help desk agent Rosemary Laws, who lives and works in the VR of Hoodspace and decides to apply to a large music company that produces virtual concerts. She grew up after the quarantine was installed and for her not meeting people in ‘real life’ is normal. She knows how to read expressions of avatars, but not real people: A man about her age smiled at her from across a reception desk, and she realized with a shock that she couldn’t identify his features. Online she knew the shorthand that told you an avatar’s ethnicity, or where to check if you didn’t know. It was considered appropriation to wear an avatar of a culture that wasn’t yours, unless you were Quality Control, and even they only did it for a minute. She wasn’t sure how to categorize his ethnicity at all, and her assumption of male pronouns might be wrong, too. Nor was she sure why it mattered, or if it mattered. Maybe she cared because she liked the idea of being from somewhere, even far back in family history, since she wasn’t from anywhere special. Maybe she was used to inhabiting spaces where people had ways of telling you how they wanted to be perceived. All those thoughts ran through her head in the time it took him to say, “Welcome to the StageHolo family, Rosemary,” in a Texan accent.

The story is unusual in that a musician plays a major role. While it is not unique – from a poet protagonist in The Green Hills of Earth to Eurovision SF parody of Space Opera, it is far from common in SFF. The SF elements are kept to a minimum; all tech is an extrapolation of the current one. Unlike a lot of SFF it isn't heroes vs villains. Yes, there is a usual giant faceless corporation as a villain, which even uses slogans for its employees like You are valued but replaceable and the overall gathering of your data:
“Noncomm is a philosophy. It’s not anticonsumerism. We still buy stuff, but we don’t want our purchases tracked, and we don’t think we always need to be in contact and trackable ourselves. You said you tried to find his song while I was away from the table?”
Rosemary nodded.
“So now Superwally and StageHolo both know you’re on the lookout for Ethiopian hip-hop, and they know you’re at this restaurant. Even if you’re paying for ad-free, they’re adding to their profile of you, waiting for a moment to sell it back to you in some way, or sell you to somebody else.”

However, the story isn’t as much about the corporations, but more about ordinary people, who, even with good and honest intentions, can destroy someone else's life because they cannot comprehend it. And how can we expect to comprehend aliens from outer space if we have trouble understanding people not only from the same Earth but with a similar culture/upbringing?

I’m into music, but not as much into concerts and live performances. However, I enjoyed how they are described here.

[Mackenzie - PhDiva Books · Rating 3 out of 5]

In a dystopian world where public gatherings have been made illegal, one woman raises her voice to stand up for the power of music, art, and human connection. A beautiful story that will definitely speak to the heart!

I am one of those rare people who, although I absolutely like music, don’t tend to listen to it much. I’m usually listening to audiobooks or podcasts! But even I can say there is something about music and having that in common with another person that can be magical. Often, I find that listening to music with others gives this sense of shared experience, where the emotions each person is feeling are in sync, even if they are different. Our hearts elevate together and calm together.

The idea of not being able to connect with other people is a terrifying one. In A Song for a New Day, a terrorist attack on a major stadium just before the band takes the stage leads to a decision to make public gatherings illegal. It is to help keep people safe. And yet, what sort of life are people living in the wake of this decision?

For Luce Cannon, she feels like she has lost her place in the world. Primed to take the stage before the attack, she now has no where to go. Her family turned her away when she needed them most, and now she holds small illegal concerts, trying to find a way to reconnect with others.

Rosemary Law grew up in the world that has banned public gatherings. She has a job that requires no contact with humans at all. Her first experience with a virtual concert fundamentally changed her. So when she takes a new job finding musicians and organizing virtual concerts, Rosemary is forced to go out in public. And when Rosemary finally experiences not only the power of music, but the power of human connection, she may be the voice that can make a difference.

I wasn’t prepared for how much this book would effect me, but its such a beautiful story. The idea of missing out on those connections with others—that is a powerful story! Seeing Luce lose her way, and Rosemary begin to discover what she has so long been sheltered from made me really think about the world we live in, and how virtual connections can’t quite replace what we get from real human connections. This one is full of heart!

Thank you to Berkley Publishing for my copy. Opinions are my own.

[Marie-Therese · Rating 2 out of 5]

Slapdash world-building, cliched characters, and leaden pacing all meant this promising scenario just did not work for me at all.

Pinsker clearly wants to say something about the power of live music and performance but everything in this book feels so phony and didactic and just...uncool. Like a bad movie from the '80s. (Rosemary is clearly the character with the bad perm, the bell-bottomed jeans, and an excessive closeness to her parents). As someone with lots of friends who make music for a living, this was just inauthentic and kind of embarrassing. The sci-fi bits were so poorly sketched out I kept slapping myself upside the head as every obvious caveat was passed over. This might have worked at a shorter length, but as a novel this fails.

[Gary · Rating 3 out of 5]

In Pinsker’s near-future character study A Song for a New Day, public gatherings have been outlawed after a series of devastating terrorist attacks. This brings an end to live music shows, legally speaking, so StageHolo arrives to fill the void. Users wear a Hoodie to “attend” pre-recorded shows in virtual reality Hoodspace, which begs the question: how do these bands get discovered in the first place? Enter Rosemary Laws – green thumbed, good-hearted, naïve-minded, and StageHolo’s newest talent scout. Rosemary is given an expense account and a directive to find the Next Big Thing amidst the barely thriving illegal underground music scene. What she finds is Luce Cannon, one-hit wonder whose near-fame arrived a split-second before the world changed and left her behind. Luce is a fierce performer and advocate for live music, generous with fans and friends alike. Rosemary wants StageHolo to sign Luce’s band – and many of the others she finds in Luce’s circle – but fails to realize in time that her activities threaten to overturn the delicate ecosystem that fostered all that talent in the first place.
A Song for a New Day features engaging characters and sets up its themes and conflicts nicely. It does feel a bit padded as it goes on though. I constantly felt overwhelmed by backstory details, and the more we learn about this future history the less credible it seems. The resolution also strains believability, and left me with a sour taste.

[Anthony · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a refreshingly accessible, emotionally grounded, authentically rendered near-future tale. It’s my first encounter with the multi-award-winning author’s work, and I’ll definitely seek out more of her stuff.

It never quite soared to the highest heights I was hoping it would, but Pinsker did a lovely job of bringing to life the ineffable power of live music, which is no easy feat. And her vision of what a fear-addled, constrained society would look like rang true in every way.

It was inspiring to follow along with her two heroines as they navigate the challenges of finding their voices in a world that is out to dampen or silence or commodify them.

I understand why this book resonated powerfully enough with Pinsker’s fellow writers in SFWA that they awarded her the Nebula for it.

[Lata · Rating 5 out of 5]

I fell in love with Sarah Pinsker's story of a post-epidemic, frightened world where people congregating together, whether for work or play, was illegal. The two main characters, Luce and Rosemary, have very different reactions to the situation. Luce, a musician, remembers a world where she performed all over the country, and loved the connection she felt with her audience and the high she got from performing. Rosemary, much younger, has never known a world where people were together in numbers, except online in virtual reality. The two come together because of music.
I loved the descriptions of Luce's experiences on stage, then after the anti-congregating laws went in effect and life mostly moved online. And the differences in mindset between the two women, and how both seek to live their lives as they want to, even with the restrictions in place. I can't articulate exactly what it was that made me love this book, but suffice to say that I did. The writing was wonderful, and the vision of the altered US and the way life continued, online primarily post-epidemic, was an interesting take on what life might become if everyone became too scared to connect face-to-face any longer.

[Jessica Mae Stover · Rating 3 out of 5]

There's no reason why you shouldn't read this book, especially if you're tired of how bigoted most more-read scifi is, and are looking for diverse representation, which this book offers with its whole heart.

If you're a reader who enjoyed A Song, but at the same time couldn't quite put your finger on why it wasn't a minor or major triumph, what you're sensing is:

- the literary technique is flat
- there are no challenging ideas herein

That's also likely why some commenters here have sensed that this book is YA-adjacent: those two bullets are hallmarks of the YA marketing vertical.

The lack of challenging ideas leaves a noticeable gap given that this is a punk rock(!) story, and takes a look at corporate consolidation, corruption and consumerism. It's not at all dangerous, and while it examines naivete, is naive itself about aspects of the entertainment industry.

[Carrie · Rating 5 out of 5]

A Song for a New Day by Sarah Pinsker is a dystopian science fiction fantasy involving a pandemic. Seeing that I’m late with this review I had to keep reminding myself with this one that it was written and published pre-Covid times. I’ve said all along that our Covid pandemic seemed like something out of one of my fantasy books and here we have a story exactly like that.

The world within A Song for a New Day was hit with a virus very much like we have had in real life. One of the characters, Luce Cannon, was a musician who had become a big star and out performing when the virus hit. Of course the world went on lockdown to try to contain the virus while many people didn’t survive.

Afterwards big gatherings remained banned in the world and the only way to enjoy things like a concert was through virtual reality. Rosemary Laws works for a company that brings those concerts to life and doesn’t really remember a time people went in person while Luce misses those days of being onstage and performing.

The story would alternate between Luce and Rosemary and was easy to follow between them as they both have a different look on the world. There was plenty of action going on and it was extremely engaging as the characters tried to bring the world back to what it was as the powers that be wanted to keep it locked down and going through a pandemic in real life just made it that much more compelling to read. Perhaps living through a lockdown made this one even better knowing how the world is without the human contact that propelled this story but overall I gave this one four and a half stars and really enjoyed reading it.

I received an advance copy from the publisher via NetGalley.

For more reviews please visit https://carriesbookreviews.com/

[DivaDiane SM · Rating 5 out of 5]

I loved this book. I don’t know why I waited so long to read it because it’s right up my alley. I mean, I’m a different breed of musician, I’m a classical singer, but the feelings expressed in the passages about music and performing really spoke to me. The bits about the pandemic lockdowns were kept pretty vague except for the non-congregation laws which persisted 15 years or so later and which formed the framework for the story.

It was an interesting choice using the 3rd person for the POV character of Rosemary and 1st person for Luce.

I read this for the Revolution prompt for the SFFBC TBR challenge. I hadn’t realized why it was fitting, someone else plugged it into theirs, but now I know. You will just have to read it to find out.

One thing I noticed was that Luce’s manner of speaking/writing was very similar to the tone of We Are Satellites, another book by Pinsker that I very much enjoyed. I hope the author figures out how to make each character’s voice unique, because, while not a terrible thing, it detracts ever so slightly and all the rest of it is wonderful.

[Charles · Rating 3 out of 5]

A musician copes with the effects of terrorism and a pandemic; she tries to heal the resulting dystopia through her music.

My ebook version was a moderate 380 pages. It had a 2019 US copyright.

Sarah Pinsker is an American author of science fiction and fantasy short stories. She is also a musician. This is her first novel. It won the 2019 Nebula Award for Best Novel. Note, I thought the field to be a meager lot. This is the first story I've read by the author.

Generally fiction with music as a plot element is my Jam! The book was satisfying that way. Interestingly, it was written before the COVID-19 pandemic about the effects of a pandemic on musicians and later on young folks grown-up in uncertain times. I would not consider this an apocalyptic story. Its a story about how a major disaster of social unrest and a pandemic warp the present into a dystopia. This was observed through the lens of a musician.

Writing was good. Both dialog and descriptive prose were about the same. It had the ironic sensibility I've come to associate with Millennial narratives. Some of the observations were amusing. The book had the look and feel of being competently proofread. However, it could have used better editing. (Maybe everything, really good didn't have to be "Amazing"?)

There are two POVs. Luce Cannon (I know.) was the protagonist. She was a Millennial, female rock musician on the cusp of fame when the 'The World Changes'. She's a Self-Made Woman. I liked her character. I did think her backstory would have benefited from a lighter hand. About a decade later Rosemary Laws was introduced. She's a Generation-A, plucky girl and becomes the Supporting Protagonist. She was a young woman who had grown-up through the 'troubles'- a child of the dystopia. She starts working in the much-changed corporately dominated music industry. She was the necessary element in the story to illustrate the consequences of the apocalypse. As a child of the disaster, she typified what folks had become. For example, adept at multitasking, and technologically savvy. Other skills suffered: the art of conversation, the art of looking at people, the art of being seen, and the art of being present. Rosemary's politicization was a bit heavy handed. (Luce had this problem too, but she wore it better.) I also thought Rosemary benefited too much from serendipity in the story. I didn't like her character.

The story includes: sex, drugs and rock 'n roll. Note the book has a LGBTQ+ theme, and could almost be YA. The sex was not heteronormative. There were no explicit naughty-bits. Alcohol was consumed in moderation. There was consumption of soft-core drugs. I don't recall any tobacco consumption or vaped nicotine. (Musicians smoke!) Rock music was a major element in the story's plot. I would have liked to hear some of the songs described in the story.

The story has a small amount of minor, physical violence. There were a few pandemic related deaths.

The future dystopia was credible and well executed. This book was written in 2018, at least a full year ahead of the COVID-19 pandemic. In 2020, Pinsker's observations and extrapolations about a pandemic were remarkably astute or at least well researched. Hopefully, her vision of 10-years in the future isn't also as good? The techy-bits were also credible and well executed. I liked the development of how the safety of hood-space and corporate cosseting became the opiate of the masses. However, this was more a 'Women Against Society' and not a 'Technology' story.

I thought that many parts of the story were prescient and insightful considering it was written pre-COVID-19. The Rosemary character's agoraphobia was brilliant. I had some issues with the plotting. I think Luce's pre-'Troubles' timeline was problematic. When the two POVs converged, I thought decades had passed not about one. The author needs to work on her and time passes. There was also a glaring absence of male characters. When they appear, they're almost all dics or spear carriers. Mostly they're spear carrier dics. (Silva, her final bass player was OK.) The story was also very white. There was also only one, serious, supporting, person-of-color (a woman musician) in the story. Particularly in the urban Baltimore scenes there would have been a lot more? The story would have broader appeal if there had been at least one substantial, good guy male and a few more African American characters.

This story had many layers. Some were very thin, subtle and artful. Others were injudiciously heavy handed. The result was not a 'great work'. However, the research was solid. The world building was very good. To her credit, Pinsker achieved the elusive atmosphere of the present and of the future dystopia. That's very important to me in the stories I read. I personally would have liked the story to be grittier and less YA. Unfortunately, the story had some structural problems. I also thought the supporting characters could have been better, particularly Rosemary. However, you might relate to this story, particularly when you're someone with an interest in music and has been in Lock Down with CORVID-19. This is one of the better first novels I've read in awhile. Pinsker has a lot of promise as an author. Its a modern example of how society can become warped by events and its effect on art.

[Sherwood Smith]

Unnervingly prescient, especially through the third to the halfway point, before a jump in time (toward a cultural situation that is all too believable). It's the kind of science fiction I love most, character-driven, looking at social and cultural change as a result of political/economic/climate/pandemic incidents, plus a dose of terrorism.

The politics is painted with a very broad brush, which I appreciated. I am too old to enjoy monolithic Big Brother governments in fiction; the terrorism felt real, but that was not what the story was about.

The story is about music. And the creative impulse. And about how human beings need to reinvent the social contract.

It's also about people. Luce is the first person character, a musician who has to make music that is heard by other human beings. Then there is Rosemary, who is kept at a single remove through third person, an interesting narrative device. Rosemary, younger than Luce, is a product of her time: she barely remembers the events of the first 40% of the book, and has been raised at home, just she and her parents, schooling all done online so that people don't gather and infect anyone. (Prescient, yes?)

She works for Superwally, the Amazon that Jeff Bezos would like to implement--basically it pretty much runs the world, especially of commerce, keeping Americans supplied with stuff through armies of drones. Rosemary stumbles on a chance to attend a concert through a new souped up music site, which she ends up working for as a scout.

How Luce and Rosemary meet and interact forms the second half of the story, every bit as involving as the first half, though on a personal level.

I loved the characters, I loved how each is given reasons for why they act, I loved how the narrative voice's humanity imbues the story. No cardboard villains here, just thought-provoking ideas, and memorable characters, whose sfnal setup happens to be coming true all around us.

[Genia Lukin · Rating 1 out of 5]

The thing about sci-fi is, authors usually have something to say. And they are using the world, and their writing, to say it. Which makes sci-fi not just about how something is being said, but also about what is being said. The what is as important as the how; the how is there to enhance the what.

Sarah Pinsker has a lot to say in Song for a New Day, a quasi-post-apocalyptic fiction that is eerily predictive of the last two years. She makes her opinions and allusions obvious; a lot of her reality is just our own internet with the serial numbers filed off, with giant distribution centers who will deliver anything to your front door, from a concert to a beer.

And it's obviously bad, so her protagonist, Luce Cannon, fights back by eschewing technology and running an illegal music venue under the façade of a dilapidated hangar.

Her other quasi-protagonist, Rosemary Laws, is assigned the role of the stupid ingenue, because she lived most of her life online and doesn't understand real world situations or people; she has no skills to assess her corporate overlords or anyone she interacts with, and spends most of the book being helped, rescued, and guided. The second half of the book she spends apologizing - we'll get back to that later.

And as the reader, you can feel the author's tacit little disdain towards those online geeks and shut-ins, towards those sellouts and plastic wannabes, towards people ordering their groceries on Amazon, listening to music that isn't live and indie, buying songs on iTunes, dating online, using their phones or laptops for work... You name it, the author probably disdains it.

The thing is, it's all just a little... too. The anti-technological streak is too strong; the main character is too disdainful and too self-righteous, the statements too monolithic. Isolation bad, online relationships bad, online music bad, corporate music worthless. Me rebel, me never sell out. Even when the fact that you 'sell out' means you're going to reach a much wider audience than you ever could, that you stop stewing in your own little pot of three and a half likeminded people. Nope, doesn't matter. It doesn't matter that living without technology basically rendered you irrelevant, no; you're still right - it's the world that is wrong.

People have been writing anti-technological screeds of this sort since, probably, the days some young geek sat down in a cave and spent an entire afternoon hitting two stones against each other. I bet some early homo sapiens' cool friends had a lot of fun going 'our clan sold out to the corporate interests of fire, they forgot the primal feeling of eating their meet raw, of experiencing the artistic difficulty of biting into it just right with your teeth; of feeling the visceral experience of the blood running down your chin. You will see, in a couple of generations their teeth will all fall out from disuse."

Right. Moving on.

It really doesn't help that the main character of the novel - Luce Cannon (because musicians all have cool names), is very clearly an author avatar. Want some examples? Okay, Luce is an ex-Haredi Jew from Boro Park who left because she's queer, got into music and the indie scene, and eventually drifted into Baltimore. The author is a Jewish (though I do not think ex-Haredi) singer-songwriter big into the Indie scene who lives with her wife as a same-sex couple in Baltimore. See?

And that's okay, you can do that. Ernest Hemingway basically just wrote Ernest Hemingway in every single one of his books, but it is a very, very fraught technique, because it then is clear that whatever opinions your author avatar voices, they are your opinions; whatever attitudes they display, those are your attitudes. And unless you manage to be subtle enough, nuanced enough, in the 'what' of what you say, and the 'how' you say it, you really risk sounding like a sanctimonious jackass.

And Luce Cannon and her music scene friends, while being portrayed almost universally as wonderful people (except for the guy who sold out to the corporate overlords leaving his bandmates high and dry, they're all practically angels), come off as astonishingly sanctimonious jackasses. They make you feel so worthless that it gets hard to judge their claims on their actual merits. They really make you feel that those who don't see the world like them, or live like them, are scared little mice, sunken into cultural malaise, are nothing but shallow consumers, or all of the above. Honestly, I never thought I'd be defending mainstream light pop and large corporate production, but this book really makes me want to roll my eyes and go "really?" Luce explicitly says that she doesn't really care about anyone who hasn't made the effort to come see her shows, and many of the venues don't want to seek out or admit new people. It takes poor Rosemary three chapters of incessant begging and repentant chest-beating to get her to agree to a momentary 'oh look it's a revolution' concert that would at least try to do something.

As for Rosemary herself, I wished I could grab her shoulders and possess her for the five minutes necessary to tell all these people off without guiltily crying and prostrating herself. Just tell 'em, girl. "I'm sorry I was the instrument of a terrible situation, but I had no indication that it could or would happen, and no way to find out about it even if I tried. None of this was initiated by me, and if I had known about it, I would have warned you. I am not responsible for what my corporate overlords do behind my back, and leaving them would only mean that some poor fresh sod would come in, with maybe less scruples, with certainly less experience, and we'll go back to square one. You need to stop crucifying me for something I had no idea was even going on, when you were in a situation that could have exploded in your face any day. You have the right to keep being angry, but I am not going to sit there and let you play this blame game with me."

It wasn't your fault, Rosemary. You don't owe these people to act like a penitent sinner for the rest of your life.

We have a saying in Hebrew that stays 'don't be right - be smart'. It means that being right and pushing forward while acting like an idiot solves nothing, it doesn't benefit you, and, in the end, it doesn't actually benefit the world. Being right is well and good, but it's just not very effective, and the impression I got from Luce Cannon (Oof, I really do prefer Chava Leah Kanner, just for the kitsch factor), is that if she had her way and poor Rosemary hadn't begged her, she'd continue being right until the heat death of the universe, and she would feel oh-so-good doing it.

I also can't quite get over the way that music, and the act of making and performing music, is portrayed. I've been a performer for a fair amount of time now, and while there is an energy in performances, a performance, at the end of the day, is 1% inspiration and 99% perspiration, just like any other kind of art. When you're on stage, you're a professional doing a job which yo worked very hard to get right, no matter the situation. You do the same job, professionally, when you record in an empty studio, or when you sing to invisible audiences online. If there is a good audience to feed you, that's nice, but in the end the energy and craft comes from you.

It's really blatant when we have the scene of Luce's final concert, and how she cannot play or interact with her tiny audience of twenty. Only when Rosemary sneaks in a huge group of people who all cheer her does she come alive. And that's... man, that's so wrong, so disrespectful, so misleading. Sometimes, as a musician, you sing to a half-empty room. Sometimes your audience's average age is seventy, and they al would rather be asleep. Sometimes the ambience sucks. But you owe your audience respect; you owe it to them to play the same way for two hundred people, and for twenty, and for two. You're the musician, and these twenty people you think so little about came out here to see you. Play.

I'm not even saying Pinsker is necessarily wrong. This is her experience of music, and that is mine. We could both be right. The point is that there is more than one way to create music, and she spends a whole book trying to pretend like there's just one right way to do it. And that is not okay.

And one last little thing, which personally annoys the crap out of me. This book was published in 2019, a scant few months before it inadvertently came true. And Pinsker has, just as inadvertently, written an anti-masker screed. Fear is bad, corporate entities keep us down and don't let us get together, we need to fight against the lawmakers who are approving this subjugation. Freedom and community are worth the risk. Of course, when the actual for realz pandemic hit, she backpedaled: “I think the radical act right now is actually to follow social-distancing guidelines, to protect people, and to find new ways of connection.” Ah, well, if the Right is saying it, of course you weren't.

Don't backpedal. If you wrote it and put so much social disdain and belief into it, own it! Or don't own it. Come out and say "This is what I thought. Life came and made a liar out of me, it happens."

I will end with a maxim from Chava Leah Kanner's former life. Since the days of the Second Temple, the sages tell us, prophecy has only been granted to fools. I am not sure where that puts anyone, but I would argue that mostly it means that nobody in this world is a prophet.

[Kyra Leseberg (Roots & Reads) · Rating 4 out of 5]

Luce Cannon's music career is taking off with her song "Blood and Diamonds".  She's touring with a great band and loves playing live and winning over new audiences every night.

Then everything changes.  Terror attacks send the U.S. into a panic and then comes a deadly virus that spreads quickly.  The government steps in to enact congregation laws banning large public gatherings.  People begin to live their lives without human contact, living and working online in Hoodspace (a hoodie is worn to connect to virtual reality).

Luce's music will not be silenced.  She takes her royalties and begins performing illegal concerts to those who remember "the Before" and human connection.

Rosemary Laws is too young to remember much from the Before.  Her entire life has basically been in Hoodspace:  school, friends, dating, and now her job as a customer service rep for the corporate giant Superwally (think Wal-Mart & Amazon combined).  She lives on a wind farm in a small town with her parents who are the only people she has contact with regularly.  

She lucks out when she's given tickets to an online concert and discovers a love of music.  Then she's offered a job seeking out new musical talent to sign who will bring their music to virtual reality.  The catch?  She'll not only be going out in public regularly but traveling to cities she's only heard about and attending illegal concerts.

Alternating between Luce and Rosemary's stories, their paths eventually connect.  Luce mourns the Before, offering insight into music and human connection that makes Rosemary begin to question the way things have become.

A Song for a New Day is a dystopian/speculative fiction novel set in the near future.  The plot feels entirely plausible, the atmosphere is exciting, and the characters feel authentic.  I wish there'd been more explanation about the Before; essentially all we know is that some terrorists wreaked havoc and were eventually caught but people remain fearful.  Readers get some background on the two MCs (mostly Luce) and world-building (I would've loved a bit more!) but the primary focus in this novel is the music and human connection.  

A Song for a New Day is intense, immersive, and highly entertaining.  I recommend this to readers who are passionate about music and enjoy modern day dystopias / speculative fiction.

Thanks to Berkley Books and the Penguin First to Read program for an ARC in exchange for my honest review.  A Song for a New Day is scheduled for release on September 3, 2019.

For more reviews, visit www.rootsandreads.wordpress.com

[Peter Tillman · Rating 2 out of 5]

Near-future music-themed dystopia that starts out well, but my interest is fading at about 200 pp. in, and I'm likely to DNF it. The review to read is Blair's, https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
Her reactions are close to mine. 2.5 stars (or so) to where I DNF'd it, rounded down. The story: well, read Blair's. I just lost interest, put it down, and had no real interest in going on. Life is short....
She may just not have had enough material for a novel. Lots of other readers liked the book. And I'd try something else by her.

Here's a multiple award-nominated Pinsker short that I liked a lot, and recommend:
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show... Online copy still available as of 5/24/20 , at
http://sarahpinsker.com/files/WindWil....

[debra · Rating 3 out of 5]

3*s IMO, this was interesting at times. I love music-all kinds of music, but this book pretty much had a one note(totally unintentional, but ha anyway) point that kept banging you on the head. The author writes well, but needed to say more or have more happen to justify the length of this novel

[Alan · Rating 5 out of 5]

She hadn't realized music could reach inside you.
—p.41

A Song for a New Day by Sarah Pinsker freakin' rocked. But... explaining why could be complicated.

At first, you see, I didn't really buy the premise. In Pinsker's dystopian America, so-called "congregation laws"—passed somehow in direct contravention of the Constitution—prohibit any public gatherings of more than twenty people. I had a hard time believing that things could deteriorate that much. But... sometime in the not-too-distant future, the U.S. took a triple whammy—first, a series of domestic terrorist bombings in crowded venues like stadiums and concert halls; then, a pandemic "pox" that killed thousands and scarred millions more. On top of those, the ubiquitous and addictive network of drones and automated warehouses which shouldered aside any need to go out for necessities. All these together persuaded the U.S. to withdraw into itself, to become in effect a nation of hikimomori. (You may at some point want to watch the anthology film Tokyo!, whose fascinating final segment is about just such a shut-in.)

It didn't seem like the most plausible path to dystopia, but the more I read of A Song for a New Day, the more realistic Pinsker's scenario became. The novel very quickly develops its own momentum, and by the end I was cheering along with the rest of the audience...


A Song for a New Day alternates between two times, and two major characters. Close to the present day, we're focused on Luce Cannon, the musician who (it turns out) headlined the very last public rock concert before society turned inward. Farther out, we have farm girl Rosemary Laws, who grew up in the resulting fragmented America and so (at first, anyway) has no idea things could be any different. Rosemary's a customer-service representative for Superwally (kind of like Wal-Mart; kind of like Amazon; exactly as horrible as you imagine such a hybrid to be), which means she works from her bedroom but still has to wear the corporate uniform. When Rosemary successfully fields a call from StageHolo Live, the online provider that (you could probably have guessed) has replaced live concerts, it leads to a career change that takes Rosemary out of her bedroom, and into... the music scene, such as it is, such as it has become. She even gets to meet Luce, who's still around, and still rocking...

"Fear is a virus. Music is a virus and a vaccine and a cure."
—Luce, p.193

And just to show that Pinsker's well aware that there are no entirely evil regimes, she points out one (unintended, I'm sure) positive consequence of those "congregation laws"—they've created a space for tiny, non-franchise businesses to regrow and flourish, completely apart from the megacorporate environment of Superwally and StageHolo:

Rosemary still turned her head constantly to try to catch the sights: tiny ethnic grocery stores, coffee shops, restaurants, hair salons, all small enough to skirt the congregation laws.
—p.231

Now, I know Sarah Pinsker hasn't come up with anything brand-new here. Rock music and science fiction are intertwined; they've been cross-fertilizing each other as long as both have existed. I couldn't possibly list every such crossover, but you'll find a great start in Paula Guran's anthology Rock On: The Greatest Hits of Science Fiction & Fantasy, and especially in her Introduction, where she lists many of my own favorite works, novels like War for the Oaks by Emma Bull; Synners, by Pat Cadigan; Glimpses, by Lewis Shiner; Little Heroes, by Norman Spinrad; and Elvissey, by Jack Womack.

Those are a good start, but this might also be a good place to recommend the nonfiction of Lenore Skenazy, whose Free-Range Kids became a rallying call for anti-isolationism and for trusting our kids to be able to navigate the big bad world... something Rosemary eventually gets to learn for herself, in A Song for a New Day.

Maybe the very fact that people keep writing books like this is, in and of itself, a sign that the music still wins. I hope so. A Song for a New Day is an enormously entertaining and above all hopeful book, and a great addition to a tradition that stretches back to the very first power chord, the very first mix-tape ever sent to a friend, the very first time you heard a first line or read a first paragraph and rushed to find out who wrote that and what else have they done?... or, as I said above: this novel freakin' rocked.

[Sahitya · Rating 4 out of 5]

CW: multiple mass casualty events including a virus caused pandemic; on page panic attack representation.

I remember discovering the author’s name during the Baltimore book festival but I never got to attend the panel that she was in. However, I did find out about this debut novel of hers and seeing such high praise for it immediately put it on my radar. I probably would have waited for a bit longer to read it because I’m an expert at procrastination, but when this was nominated for the Nebula awards, I decided to read it before the winners are announced. And while this was such a unique reading experience for me, I’m still wondering if this was the right time. And that’s why this review might go into spoiler territory, so please bear with me.

The setting of this novel feels like a typical dystopia - a Before and an After with a series of mass casualty events in the middle, and the advent of more governmental control and restrictions on the people in the aftermath. But the timing of this book couldn’t have been more uncanny. In addition to major terrorist attacks on large gatherings, one of the other big mass casualty event in the book is a virus based pox like pandemic that kills a lot of people, leading to massive social isolation among the people due to fear/paranoia and a total ban on gatherings by the government - and what a time to be reading something like this when I’ve been extremely fearful myself for the past few weeks due to the coronavirus outbreak and hardly stepping out of the house. The way the author describes the fear that grips people’s minds (as well as the government’s) and how it affects their relationships with others, the advancements in technology allowing people to remain in their homes and never have to interact with anyone outside of online spaces, how much corporations and governments play on this fear to keep their control and maintain the status quo - it all feels extremely realistic and something you would think might even happen to us and that scared me a lot.

That’s not to say this was a difficult book to read because it’s actually not. The writing style is very easy and accessible, but I don’t think it’s the binge reading kind. This is a book that needs to be read slowly and savored. It’s a slow paced, slice of life kind of storytelling where we follow the characters on their daily lives and journeys of finding those connections which make them feel. And the connecting thread here is music. I didn’t know that the author is a singer/songwriter but that is very evident in the way music is such an integral part of the story - this book is essentially a love letter to the art of singing and performing, the connection that forms between an artist and their audience especially during a live performance and how that magic can never be recreated otherwise, it’s about how much humans crave that connection maybe even subconsciously and how such experiences just make them richer, and how even a simple act of solidarity between artist and listener can be a form of resistance.

I don’t want to give away too much (I’ve already done that a lot above) by talking about the characters in detail but we follow Luce and Rosemary and it was a joy to read about such amazing women. I related most to Rosemary who’s been mostly isolated her whole life but when she gets the opportunity to go out into the world, she has to brave her fears and panic and take a chance at forming those connections. And I love that she found it in music and the way she tried to change the world in her own little ways was amazing. On the other hand, Luce is who I would aspire to be - bold and badass, resilient and strong - she knows that her power is in her music and despite it being illegal, she uses every possible avenue available to her to put herself out there and perform and give opportunity to other artists to do the same. There are many other smaller characters whom Rosemary and Luce meet on their journeys and how they all support each other and collaborate forms the crux of this novel.

To conclude, this is a very unique take on a dystopian novel and if you don’t mind slice of life style storytelling, you should totally check it out. If you are a huge music/ rock bands fan, then I think you’ll appreciate this book even more than I did. Ultimately, this is a beautiful story about human connection and how powerful it is when we all stand in solidarity with each other; and I can definitely see why it’s a Nebula contender. Just pick it up and savor the experience like when you listen to a mesmerizing musical performance.

[Stefanie · Rating 1 out of 5]

I thought this would be a struggle to read because we currently are living in a world locked down by fear of a virus. But I ended up hating this because the two main characters are so stupid that I didn't care about anything they did or felt or experienced.

Rosemary is pathetic, and not in a way that inspires pity, but in a way that makes you want to punch her in the head. Luce is a whiny mopey loser who can't manage anything but dragging her sorry carcass from one underground show to the next. When I realized they were meeting, I rolled my eyes so hard I nearly fell off my couch.

Most of the prose is just yellow ramblings about music and how it's *so important* but nothing actually happens over the course of the whole book. Neither woman actually has a goal or any kind of meaningful plot device, they're both just bobbing on the waters off this shitty world.

This could have been a study of what isolation does to people, or how to find peace in a shitty world, or provided some psychological and emotional insight into a very realistic dystopian. There was almost no world-building (save for a brief mention of the "pox" which of course left our hero Rosemary unscarred in any visible way because she has to be pretty for "reasons") and even less character development.

I think this was supposed to be a call to arms, but instead it was drivel.

[Patricia · Rating 4 out of 5]

I quite enjoyed reading A SONG FOR A NEW DAY. The story takes place in the future after a sickness kills a lot of people, and a new law goes into effect where people are not allowed to congregate. Luce
Cannon headlined the last concert of any real size before the new law and had been headed to the top of the music scene. Luce begins to perform in illegal concerts. It is time for the country to change!

[johnny ♡ · Rating 2 out of 5]

cliches, tropes, lackluster (terrible tbh) world building, one dimensional characters, weird point of view switches, and i could go on. boring. so boring. what was the POINT?

[Suzanne · Rating 4 out of 5]

As I read this story, I kept thinking of Florence + the Machine, whom I saw at the Hollywood Bowl in 2018 and whose charismatic singer has an extraordinary relationship with her audience. Via YouTube, I’ve watched her 2022 show at the Helsinki Flow Festival, while kicking myself that I missed that tour. But 2022, when we were just beginning to come out of the pandemic, was, alas, still too soon for me personally to be comfortable standing shoulder to shoulder with people singing and cheering energetically.

There is one song she performed on the night of that recording in Finland, My Love, that included intra-song banter that references the COVID 19 pandemic.

“This song was written at a time when no one could come together. No one could gather and listen to live music. There was no dancing, anywhere. So, what I would like to perform right now, under the full moon with you, is a resurrection of dance.”

And she proceeds to create the type of compelling participatory moment she’s known for. It’s the type of performance that makes one feel the truth about the way music creates healing and community, a major theme of A Song for a New Day.

{You can find this moment on YouTube, if you care to. Search: “Florence + the Machine, Flow Festival, 2022, Full HD, Timestamp 40:00}

A Song for a New Day is set in a near-future dystopian world of terrorist threats, pandemic-inspired lockdowns, and social isolation, exacerbated by a society that has turned to virtual reality as a substitute for almost all interpersonal interactions. Daily life is dominated by a few mega-corporations. Think: Amazon on steroids. Anti-congregation laws enacted by the government to keep people safe, along with the tactics of virtual concert producers, are destroying the livelihoods of independent musicians and the small venues where they play and connect with their audiences on a personal level.

The book focuses on the lives of two women. Their names lend a parable-like feel to the story, but no matter.

Rosemary Law has grown up on a rural farm and works remotely in customer service for Superwally, a huge big box distribution center, where she interacts exclusively with avatars instead of directly with humans. She has been taught to fear the outside world, but eventually decides to take a chance on a new job opportunity with Sound-Holo Live which produces online concerts. SHL sends her out into the real world to recruit new acts for their virtual shows where she crosses paths with musician Luz Cannon. Rosemary is a foil for this creative artist and their interactions cause situations that become the heart of the plot and frame the thematic concerns of the story. Initially Rosemary, a good law-abiding citizen, is inhibited in all her interactions and used to playing by the rules. But amidst new experiences and new friends, anxiety attacks, and moral dilemmas, Rosemary learns many new skills and develops an appreciation for the beauty and community to be found in live music.

Luce is a slightly older woman who has been playing music for years and has had a small measure of success and fame in the “Before.” She has continued to make a tenuous living in the underground live music scene and encounters Rosemary in her capacity as a rookie recruiter of new acts. SHL’s new acts become absorbed into the corporate machine that is controlling the music industry during the era of lockdowns, which seem pretty much to be a permanent fixture, and not something anyone anticipates will end.

When Rosemary inadvertently and innocently causes Luce a great misfortune, she spends the second half of the book trying to, if not fix it, at least compensate in some degree. She has learned the true value of what Luce creates, performs, and shares, and the unique qualities of healing, connection, and joy the communal experience of live music can generate.

Luce, of course, has known this all along and her joy in the shared experience is the reason she does it, not the goal of money or fame, even when her art puts her at risk. The creation and sharing of music are her reasons for being.

Pinsker writes about music, a tricky thing indeed, more effectively than anyone I’ve ever read. One can’t of course, convey the exact feelings that music can in words alone. But she can and does convey how music can make us feel, through a description of her characters’ feelings as they experience it. Rosemary and Luce’s reactions, physically, emotionally, and spiritually, were beautifully evoked. Luce has an inherent understanding of the value of her art, to herself and her audience, which makes her appreciate that she has the opportunity to encourage her audience to break out of their stultifying, restricted world by creating something, anything their particular talents can allow, and by creating themselves into agents of a better, freer, more connected world.

Author Sarah Pinsker is a musician as well as a writer and so the experiences of her protagonist Luce Cannon feel authentic. I don’t know if Sarah Pinsker still plays music live, but if she does, I’d like to see her play some day. Having read this book, it seems to me that Pinsker knows what the job of a musician is. She gets the assignment.

A solid 4.5 stars.