"Things shifted while he wasn't looking at the ground and now the world is different; everything is beautiful and wild, and precarious, because now he knows how the sky can change."

The Comet Seekers is a story told in snapshots over the space of 1000 years, each taking place while a comet is in the sky. We follow the story of two lovers who met in Antarctica and how their paths there were intertwined in unexpected ways. Róisín,  who grew up in a small village in Ireland, has always had a deep love for the skies. She traveled the world studying them, fascinated especially by the comets that streak through the sky faster than anything else. After the loss of her cousin Liam, she finds herself turning from the skies and turning to the frozen tundras of Antarctica. François  was raised in France by his mother. Both dreamed of adventure, but his mother could not turn her back on her past. François  struggles between his love for his mother and the feeling that she has turned her back on him as well. More than a love story, I feel The Comet Seekers is more a story about how these two characters endured love, loss, heartbreak, heartache and change,

I was instantly drawn to the concept of this book. I have loved the skies and the stars and so I was fascinated by the idea of only seeing someone's life during these celestial events. Add to that the lore of ghosts appearing to their family members only while the comet was in the sky and I was hooked! Severine and François's story line held the most interest for me. I'll admit though, I was a little weirded out by Róisín's story till about 2/3rds of the way through the book (I won't spoil it here, see the "p.s." section below if you want to know why). I felt that each story held a lesson that the reader needed to learn.

Throughout the book, there is the theme of the sky versus the earth - how being preoccupied with the skies can often led to neglecting the earth; how refusing to leave the ground will not stop change, but will simply lead to being blind to the skies changing. How there is comfort in knowing that the skies can change, for if the skies can change, then so can we; there is more than what we now know, this too shall pass. I loved this imagery and the subtle way that Sedgwick was able to teach us these things without having to spell them out for us. These are lessons for astrophysicists and farmers alike, they are lessons for all of us.

I have read a couple reviews of The Comet Seekers who felt they were a little disappointed by the story, but I felt that this book was more a way for Sedgwick to convey these important life lessons, rather than meant to be an epic tale of fiction. All in all, I enjoyed this book and I think it did a marvelous job of communicating both its messages and the stories that held them.

p.s. There were two f-bombs in this book but I can't remember any language other than that. So when the first f-bomb just came out of nowhere, I found that whole scene just really... alarming? I can't put it any other way. Here's why: when it came to handling intimate scenes, Sedgwick usually gave us the intro and the outro, what happened before and what happened right after but left the middle bits out, so we know what is happening but she doesn't go into detail about the how. The scene I was referring to above though is between Róisín  and Liam, her cousin, and that love story goes on for a long time. I might just be traditional, I know that romantic love between cousins is kind of a taboo subject, so maybe that's why it made me so uncomfortable, but I didn't know how to make that sit right in my brain.