The Stars Are Legion

Kameron Hurley

Feb 2017 · Simon and Schuster

About this ebook

“[A] thought-provoking space opera.” —Kirkus Reviews
“One of the most unusual and powerfully disturbing space operas we’re likely to see this year.” —Chicago Tribune

Set within a system of decaying world-ships travelling through deep space, this breakout novel of epic science fiction follows a pair of sisters who must wrest control of their war-torn legion of worlds—and may have to destroy everything they know in order to survive.

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. Here in the darkness, a war for control of the Legion has been waged for generations, with no clear resolution.

Zan wakes with no memory, prisoner of a people who say there 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.

In the tradition of Iain M. Banks’s Culture novels and Roger Zelazny’s Chronicles of Amber, Kameron Hurley has created an epic and thrilling tale about tragic love, revenge, and war as imagined by one of our most celebrated new writers.

Ratings and reviews

The most innovative world-building in the space opera genre I've read in a really long time, with some amazingly rich & complex relationships of all kinds between women as an added delight. Zan awakens with no memory, but a battered body that knows how to fight brutally and instincts that tell her that she loves Jayd, the woman who is caring for her, but that Jayd is keeping secrets -- and that something is terribly wrong with the world she has awoken in. Zan learns that she is in a living worldships of the Legion. It, like all the others, is slowly dying, and the families that rule the worldships battle & scavenge for the resources to keep their ships healthy for a little longer. She is to lead an assault an anomalous worldship called the Mokshi, as she has apparently done many times before, losing her memory and emerging as the sole survivor of the attack each time. As Zan recovers bits of her memory & learns more about the herself, Jayd, and the worldships, she has to decide if she truly wants to remember what she's done as well as who she wants to be. This book will not be for everyone -- these worldships are living beings, with organic tech that is gooey & visceral & tentacled for the most part, rather than stainless steel & lasers. Ships have to be self-sustaining, and that means all organic matter gets recycled, and there are passages that get downright horrific. Additionally, there are themes of reproductive rights that shade into outright body horror, as the the all-female denizens of the ship birth what the ship needs, on the ship's schedule. Hurley tackles these themes seriously, but the material can be triggering. The Stars Are Legion is not light reading & it isn't cheerful reading, but it is fascinating & the plot is propulsive. I found Zan & Jayd easier to empathize with than some of Hurley's other protagonists; if the Bel Dame series was a little too brutal for you, this might be more up your alley.

Grim, gruesome, disturbing and ultimately depressing. The world(s) presented here have no sense of wonder, and I found it difficult to care for any of the characters, even (or especially) the protagonists. Maybe that's the point. Hard to believe that the author is a Hugo-winner.

Ever forward. Amnesia, war, love, birth, duplicity, and the nature of all things - a finely wrought story celebrating life.

About the author

Kameron Hurley is the acclaimed author of the novels God’s War, The Mirror Empire,and The Light Brigade. Hurley has been awarded two Hugo Awards, the Kitschies Award for Best Debut Novel, and has also been a finalist for the Nebula Award, the Arthur C. Clarke Award, the British Science Fiction and Fantasy Award, and the Locus Award. Visit the author online at KameronHurley.com or on Twitter at @KameronHurley.