The Ely­si­um Heist is a queer romance, stand-alone sci­ence fic­tion nov­el explor­ing the per­spec­tives of Fin­ley, Kiyokimo­ra, Psa­lome, Ilar­ia, and Psyli­na as they attempt to steal from a pow­er­ful casi­no that uti­lizes hyper-pow­er­ful arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence. The nov­el shifts point of view between the five char­ac­ters, each telling their sto­ry to the audi­ence in a first-per­son nar­ra­tion style. 

To account for this many char­ac­ter per­spec­tives, the nov­el spares lit­tle room for hard­er sci­ence fic­tion con­cepts. If it were not for a robot-and-human romance, the men­tion of Jew­ish plan­ets, or Psylina’s incred­i­ble com­put­er-hack­ing abil­i­ties, the read­er could real­is­ti­cal­ly imag­ine the events of the text tak­ing place on plan­et Earth, with a few lib­er­ties and sus­pen­sions of dis­be­lief. Aliens are not includ­ed in the work, space­ships are easy to steal, and even eas­i­er to pilot, and there is more ten­sion and social com­pli­ca­tion in the char­ac­ters’ rela­tion­ships and their social iden­ti­ties than there is in the heist. 

The nov­el is its strongest when it is char­ac­ter-focused and embraces char­ac­ter-focused scenes. The clar­i­ty and straight­for­ward­ness of the prose rein­forces this, mak­ing the work pri­mar­i­ly an explo­ration of sex­u­al­i­ty and the flu­id­i­ty of iden­ti­ty. While some may lament that this makes the sci­ence-fic­tion ele­ments feel like win­dow dress­ing or unnec­es­sary to the core of each woman’s quest for actu­al­iza­tion, oth­ers will find the ease of con­cepts fun and more appeal­ing to engage with. 

Read­ers should expect that what caus­es fric­tion between each of the heist team­mates is less about black­jack in zero grav­i­ty, and instead more about debts, shy­ness dur­ing intense sex­u­al encoun­ters, nav­i­gat­ing your partner’s wants, and whether Jew­ish reli­gious doc­trine allows for one to go to a casino.