paperback, 400 pages
Published Nov. 7, 2017 by Gallery / Saga Press.
Somewhere on the outer rim of the universe, a mass of decaying world-ships known as the Legion is traveling in the seams between the stars. For generations, a war for control of the Legion has been waged, with no clear resolution. As worlds continue to die, a desperate plan is put into motion.
Zan wakes with no memory, prisoner of a people who say they are her family. She is told she is their salvation - the only person capable of boarding the Mokshi, a world-ship with the power to leave the Legion. But Zan's new family is not the only one desperate to gain control of the prized ship. Zan finds that she must choose sides in a genocidal campaign that will take her from the edges of the Legion's gravity well to the very belly of the world.
Zan will soon learn that she carries the seeds of …
Somewhere on the outer rim of the universe, a mass of decaying world-ships known as the Legion is traveling in the seams between the stars. For generations, a war for control of the Legion has been waged, with no clear resolution. As worlds continue to die, a desperate plan is put into motion.
Zan wakes with no memory, prisoner of a people who say they are her family. She is told she is their salvation - the only person capable of boarding the Mokshi, a world-ship with the power to leave the Legion. But Zan's new family is not the only one desperate to gain control of the prized ship. Zan finds that she must choose sides in a genocidal campaign that will take her from the edges of the Legion's gravity well to the very belly of the world.
Zan will soon learn that she carries the seeds of the Legion's destruction - and its possible salvation. But can she and her ragtag band of followers survive the horrors of the Legion and its people long enough to deliver it?
In the tradition of The Fall of Hyperion and Dune, The Stars are Legion is an epic and thrilling tale about tragic love, revenge, and war as imagined by one of the genre's most celebrated new writers.
Didn't really click with the characters, too much people saying how terrible they were and doing terrible things because they were working for something they couldn't explain. Then the explanation is very obvious, and has the logic of a game rather than a story.
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 …
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.
Second read through:
I liked it (as an audiobook). Was really confusing, but eventually I gave up trying to understand the world in this book, and just live with the mystery. The strange organic-mechanical nature of the universe was certainly interesting! I also found the birthing of everything (tools, babies, etc), really interesting.
First read through:
Such a purposely confusing main-character-so-disoriented that I had to give up. Wanted to like it, but couldn't reald it fast enough to make things happen and fall into place, so lost patience and stopped reading.
Unique worldbuilding and solid story.
3.5 stars.
I really enjoyed the concepts and Hurley’s writing style but have to concur with the reviews that say that the plot doesn’t make a lot of sense. It really, really, really doesn’t. However, it’s wonderfully confusing and I look forward to reading more of her works.
I haven't had the feeling of disgust and fascination since I read "Naked Lunch".
Couldn't put it down.
However the end was somehow disappointing.
dnf
Read this mostly because I was looking for something with LGBT characters in, that was scifi. Not sure it counts as gay representation if everyone is a woman.
I wasn't that interested in the story, the characters felt flat and the story a bit dull, I know some people like it so don't like this review put you off.
Awfully close to a 4⭐, hampered by a slow start and a somewhat unsatisfying ending. The writing is strong, the world new and interesting, and the story engaging though!
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 …
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.
La novela me ha gustado y pienso que ha sido original en algún aspecto. Pero si no fuera por el final creo que le habría puesto bastante menos puntuación.
Having read [book:Mirror Empire|22934035] and [book:Empire Ascendant|23920769] I was very happy to see a science-fiction release. At the beginning I was quite confused. Some of the details were not clear. After a moment, the confusion was replaced by intrigue: who are these people? where do they live? what the heck is going on? is this all just some analogous reference to life?
In other words, I really wanted to see what happens and see how the characters develop, and that is a great thing to get out of a book.
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 …
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.
