The Stars Are Legion

This one is from the category 'WTF did I just read?' It's not my first book by Kameron Hurley, the queen of zero exposition ever. You just get thrown in, and the missing exposition, in this case because of amnesia, is part of the story.

Zan is a warrior from the family Katazyrna, and apparently the only one who can conquer the Mokshi, a world-ship that has left the Legion, a group of decaying world-ships and is supposed to be the salvation, as all other world-ships are dying. But Zan loses her memory every time she comes back from the Mokshi, and along with her amnesia, just like Zan you as the reader have to figure out what exactly is happening here.

We get two PoVs in this book. Zan, who remembers nothing, and has to regain her memories, and Jayd, apparently Zan's love, daughter of the Katazyrna leaders, who gives herself away in marriage to the rival Bhavaja family, in order to fulfill the master plan she's worked out with Zan before she lost her memory.

Zan's chapters are great, Jayd's chapters I detested, just like I detested the character. What I wasn't prepared for was the amount of body horror in this book. The world-ships are organic, and this case it means very visceral and disgusting. At some point, Zan gets tossed to the bottom of the ship and has to basically claw her way back up through the bowels. It was disturbing yet also my favorite part of the book. I could easily transplant this into a Numenera roleplaying campaign, it was delightfully weird, with a group of four adventurers traveling through the world.

The main Mokshi plot left me a bit cold though. It was interesting, but not as good as Zan's story on the Katazyrna. Also a bit disturbing, if strange pregnancies might make you queasy. I should mention that this story has female characters only, and conception is sexless, as women get pregnant and birth ship parts as the world ships need them. Yeah, weird, I know. But also interesting, because female autonomy over their bodies is HUGE in this story, and should be in RL too.

Anyway, not my favorite for sure, but interesting.

I have to preface this review by saying that this is a good book, I am just the wrong reader for this book or I was in the wrong mindset which is just as likely.

While I do not always read blurbs or reviews ahead of reading a book for fear of spoilers in case of this one I should have done so. It might either have prevented me from reading this or giving me a better set of expectations.

I saw this filed under space-opera and both cover and title also suggest the genre. Which is misleading. It might take place in space (kind-of) and the title is reminiscent of space-opera but it is not. Not really. I think I‘d file this as feminist-military-space-bio-punk-exploration if such a genre existed.

Feminist: not sure about this part but there is not a single male in this book and it‘s not a trick of pronouns either, just no males, but lots of often-pregnant women (how they get pregnant without males remains a mystery though)

Military: a lot of this is about soldiers, battles and war. But the military element is later subsumed into the exploration and it only plays a major role at the start and end of the book. So... maybe not.

Space: there are space battles and space-„ships“ but generally not a lot of space, just like the military element

Bio: everything is made of bio-mass. Metal is rare. Everything is recycled - yes humans are recycled. The whole world is alive here and I would put this as the major genre element that one should know about. It is slightly reminiscent of an Octavia Butler story I once read from the [b: Xenogenesis|60929|Dawn (Xenogenesis, #1)|Octavia E. Butler|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1388290339s/60929.jpg|1008111] series, but ... slightly. For the longest time I was wondering if the whole legion was some kind of metaphor for a human body, and the people being just cells...

Punk: it‘s not shiny, but dirty, slimy, angry and dark, both the world and the story. If you want shiny, utopian joy: this is not it. Everything is dying, or already dead and rotting.

Exploration: a major part of the story is spent by one of the two protagonists exploring the world/ship.

The story is certainly unique and the writing style is good. However, besides wanting/expecting to read something more space-opera, I have a major gripe with the plot and characters.

The story has two protagonists Zan and Jayd Katazyrna who are introduced to the reader as sisters who live on the Katazyrna world/ship, and we get to read the story from each of the POVs for half the book. But Zan has lost her memory and never really regains it and Jayd keeps referencing the mysterious plan the two of them made to „save the legion“ without ever really telling what it is. The book manages to keep the reader in the dark for most of the story, only giving out the most mysterious of clues and then tries for a big revealing ending. While I like reveals, I find it telling when the story has to resort to memory loss tropes to pull it off.

Add to this that Jayd is a cruel, untrustworthy, opportunistic, cold schemer and that even Zan is anything but a hero or a character I wanted to sympathize with. It takes until about 80% for me to start rooting for at least Zan to succeed.

The ending is good, the pace there is fast and Zan turns into a hero at last. But the big reveals aren‘t as big as I would wish after the whole setup and the mysteries created by the memory loss made me stumble through the first half of the book. When Zan is exploring the „lower levels“ of the world, that should be interesting but this is the middle of the book and the pacing is still off. Throughout the book, I am not anticipating stuff to happen just stuff to be explained and that really is not a plot at all then, or is it?

So if you enjoy elements of exploration, extensive world-building and bio-punk and don’t mind the dark and dreary sliminess of the world, this book offers a rather unique premise and is well-written. But if you are looking for a shiny fast-paced space-opera... this is not it.

“The monsters don't live in the belly of the world like they all say. The monsters live inside of us. We make the monsters.”

The Stars Are Legion no es una lectura agradable, no solo por su estética, donde existen naves planeta que viven y se retroalimentan, de tentáculos y pistolas cefalópodas, de bestias de dientes afiladas, sino también por su historia y sus personajes.
Quizás Zan me ha parecido la más difuminada de todas las personajes, aunque sea la voz principal; las secundarias como Casimir o Das Muni, e incluso Rasida, me han llamado mucho la atención por lo marcada de sus voces y la importancia de cada una de ellas como engranaje dentro de la historia.

Esta es la primera novela de Hurley que leo (no la última, ya que tengo pendiente The Mirror Empire) y me ha gustado mucho. Con una trama de descenso a los infiernos a la superficie, quizás The Stars Are Legion se vuelve un poco previsible hacia el final, pero eso no le quita una originalidad deslumbrante y tentaculosa.

Habrá relectura, seguro.

I had a hard time falling into this one at first, and I think I can attribute it to only getting to read in small fits and starts. And I think the short reading bursts kept me from getting to immerse myself in the book the way I needed to. A Hurley book doesn't drag you along by the plot...it drags you by the characters, by the chance to explore the world the characters live in. You want to see what happens, sure, but more than that you want to see how the characters evolve because of what happens.

She trots out probably my least favorite scifi trope, the POV character with a missing memory. And a couple times during the book, it was driving me bonkers. But if you hate that trope, too, stick it out...she doesn't do what I'd expected with it.

I continue to be amazed at Hurley's ability to barrage the reader and her characters with horrors and death, and somehow find her way back to an ending that doesn't leave me wanting to drink myself into a stupor. And that without it being obvious, or feeling cheap. She didn't disappoint this time, either.