"Fires of Hina" is a luminous and haunting eco-spiritual novel that explores the fractured relationship between humanity, nature, and the cosmos through the lens of loss, longing, and resistance. At its heart lies a grieving ocean-and Lani, a young marine ecologist caught in its tide, searching not only for endangered whales and alien songs but also for a sense of wholeness in a rapidly unraveling world. Lani is not so much a hero as a vessel-fueled by grief, fury, and ancestral promise. Her journey isn't linear, but instead it's a tide oscillating between despair and defiance, spiritual numbness and awakening. She is driven by a promise that she doesn't fully understand-a vow made in blood and saltwater, rooted in familial love and cultural duty. The ocean has taken everything from her, yet it is also the only place that knows how to hold her sorrow-it's both her wound and balm.
Lani's reality is marked by planetary collapse and corporate exploitation, and when an oceanic exoplanet called Thalassa is reopened for exploitation, Lani must confront her deepest fears, grief, and rage to become the planet's unlikely protector. Being guided by indigenous wisdom, ancestral spirits, and the echoes of lost songs, Lani embarks on an interstellar journey to defend the Nesoi-indigenous to Thalassa and sentient beings whose fate is tied to both Earth and the stars.