Book Review
The Sky Took Us
by Anthony Bonato
September 16, 2026
Book Review
by Nilima Nigam.
Here’s an opening to a novel that is like catnip to a mathematician: ’The logic held. Within the span of the first paragraph, Anthony Bonato evokes in us the familiar shaky, exhilarated, dare-I-believe-it feeling that we get when we’ve proved something challenging. It’s a magical, rewarding sensation that provides fodder for our ambitions and fuel for the long, difficult, frustrating journey. Now imagine you’re a sixteen-year-old-girl, live in Toronto, and have just proved the Riemann Hypothesis. Your mom adores you, but also keeps you tethered to reality ’I can’t remember what you proved last week, baby’. Also, your guitar-playing cooler older sister annoyingly reminds you that you’re not the center of the universe. Everything is just about to get strange, and scary, and your biggest challenge is yet to come. A giant dark floating orb appears over Sankofa Square, flashing patterns – and then it stops. Your mom disappears. In fact, many such orbs levitate, menacingly, above major cities; millions are taken. You’re recruited into an international task force to decode the message in the flashing patterns on these orbs, your goal nothing short of saving humanity. Proving the Riemann Hypothesis is the second most important thing you’ll do.
Many of us have encountered Bonato’s engaging mathematical exposition, and when I started this novel I was prepared for excellent writing. What I did not anticipate – but loved! – was the excitement of the plot: Aliens, the Collatz conjecture, Erd¨os-Ramsey theory, a team of brave people tasked with saving the world and a certain hilarious coffee mug. As the plot progresses, our heroine grapples with more than just an apocalyptic end to humanity. It’s a wildly stimulating high-stakes mathematical romp (6 words that rarely appear in sequence). It’s also a meditation on beauty, identity and humanity, all through the eyes of an inspiring young person. She reminds us that heroes come in all guises, and that our connection to mathematics is both very human and universal. This gem of a book grips the reader from the very first page. A science fiction coming-of-age novel, a treasure-chest of mathematical ideas and puzzles, this is above all a moving story about love, connection and communication. This summer the news featured daily reports of amazing LLM-related achievements in mathematics. I confess none of them filled me with as much awe and joy this summer as the mathematical adventures of young Kris. ’The Sky Took Us’ comes highly recommended, to be enjoyed with a side of dark chocolate and coffee in a certain white-with-red-lettering mug.
