Book: These Burning Stars

Author: Bethany Jacobs

Pages: 517

Source: Orbit

Publisher: Orbit

Genre: Sci-fi, Space Opera

Publication Date: October 17, 2023

Goodreads Summary:

A dangerous cat-and-mouse quest for revenge. An empire that spans star systems, built on the bones of a genocide. A carefully hidden secret that could collapse worlds, hunted by three women with secrets of their own. All collide in this twisty, explosive space opera debut, perfect for readers of Arkady Martine and Kameron Hurley.

Jun Ironway—hacker, con artist, and occasional thief—has gotten her hands on a piece of contraband that could set her up for proof that implicates the powerful Nightfoot family in a planet-wide genocide seventy-five years ago. The Nightfoots control the precious sevite that fuels interplanetary travel through three star systems. And someone is sure to pay handsomely for anything that could break their hold.

Of course, anything valuable is also dangerous. The Kindom, the ruling power of the star systems, is inextricably tied up in the Nightfoots’ monopoly—and they can’t afford to let Jun expose the truth. They task two of their most brutal clerics with hunting her preternaturally stoic Chono, and brilliant hothead Esek, who also happens to be the heir to the Nightfoot empire.

But Chono and Esek are haunted in turn by a figure from their shared past, known only as Six. What Six truly wants is anyone’s guess. And the closer they get to finding Jun, the surer Chono is that Six is manipulating them all.

 It’s a game that could destroy their lives and devastate the stars. And they have no choice but to see it through to the end.

My Review:

I received a free advanced readers copy of These Burning Stars by Bethany Jacobs from Orbit books in exchange for an honest review.  Thank you, Orbit!

These Burning Stars takes place across three star systems collectively known as the Treble.  They are many light years away from our solar system.  In fact, Earth is never even mentioned.  The people in this story only make vague references to their ancestors coming before them to colonize the system via jump gates after discovering a rare mineral, called jevite, to fuel them.  Naturally, mining jevite is a lucrative business, and where there is money to be had there is conflict.

The overarching conflict throughout the story is multifaceted, but understanding this conflict, at least broadly, is key to understanding the motivations and decisions of the main characters in the story.  The key players are the government, known at the Kindom, and the leading merchant families in the Treble system.  The government of the Treble is an authoritarian theocracy consisting of three branches, known as Hands of the Kindom.  Each Hand is in charge of overseeing a different aspect of life in the Treble, and every governing decision is made based on religious beliefs and traditions.

The Righteous Hand consists of clerics in charge of the religious aspect of the Kindom and its citizens.  There are six gods and goddesses worshiped in varying degrees and with their own patron planets and peoples.  Ruling above all of them is the Godfire, and each Hand is expected to adhere to the principles of the Godfire as they are recorded in the Godtexts.

The other two Hands consist of The Brutal Hand and The Clever Hand, which are made up of the cloaks and the secretaries respectively.  The cloaks make up something similar to a police or military branch.  They enforce the law, brutally if necessary.  Meanwhile, the secretaries are much more bureaucratic and mainly concern themselves with record keeping, economy, and law.  Naturally, there are political squabbles between the three branches of government, but the government as a whole tend to act towards similar goals.

The final facet of conflict lies with the wealthy merchant families that control trade mostly within the bounds of the law.  The most powerful of these families is the Nightfoot family.  After the in-fighting between merchant families over jevite resulted in its near depletion, the Nightfoots managed to fill the void with a manufactured mineral, called sevite, as a suitable replacement.  Under the leadership of their matriarch, Alisiana, the Nightfoot family has amassed enough wealth and power to rival that of the government.

It is this ruthless and brutal environment of political power struggles that spawned someone like Esek Nightfoot.  She is nominally a cleric, but she is most well-known for her eccentricity, brutality, and ability to train unrivaled cloaksaan.  It’s this penchant for only taking on novitiates who intend to become cloaksaan that leads Esek to a local kinschool.  One of the kinschool teachers wants Esek to look over his latest crop of students. 

During the inspection, Esek meets Six.  All kinschool students are given numbers instead of names.  Names and gender choices must be earned in this society, and while Six is the best student of its year, it has not yet earned those distinctions.  Esek uses this excellence to goad Six after watching a demonstration of fighting skills.  Thus begins a decades long conflict between Esek and Six in which both use their political surroundings to try to pin down the other and emerge victorious.

Ultimately, These Burning Stars is a revenge story.  All the other events in the books can be traced back to this one incident and this one conflict.  I found it amazing how Bethany Jacobs was able to illustrate the far-reaching consequences one person’s decisions and actions can have while fleshing out a rich world.  The conflict between Esek and Six is like a gravity well drawing all the other characters into their orbit, and it colors all the decisions the characters make leading them down paths they may never have trod if the conflict didn’t exist. Don’t get me wrong.  The Esek-Six Feud isn’t the only conflict in the story worth exploring, but it is central to the plot of the book.

The other conflict worth mentioning involves the people known as the Jeveni.  It was their moon, Jeve, that gave the mineral jevite its name.  The Jeveni and their moon are also the source of a lot of conflict within the Kindom, and they have been ever since a rogue agent took the genocidal act of bombing Jeve into rubble resulted in the remainder of their population being homeless.  The Jeveni are the outcasts of the Kindom.  They are simultaneously subjugated and ostracized by the Kindom as a result of their differing political and religious beliefs.  Their story will surely resonate with readers from various backgrounds, and I enjoyed the weft they added to the warp of the story.

A few other things I really enjoyed about this book were the mindful use of flashback chapters and the vibrant descriptions.  The entire story is told in alternating chapters that each take place on a different point in the timeline, but both move forward in time.   For some readers this may be confusing, but after the first few chapters I was able to follow it easily.  This narrative structure coupled with Jacobs’ ability to describe everything in rich detail really made the story come alive and revealed the massive scope this book encompasses.  Jacobs managed to do this all while telling the story from tight third person perspectives, and I think that is truly impressive in a debut novel.

Needless to say, I absolutely loved this book.  Everything from the political scheming to the far-reaching consequences of seemingly innocuous actions kept me interested all the way to the very end.  Not to mention the big twist in this book really made an impact.  I probably should have seen it coming, but I absolutely did not.  After it happened, I immediately went to Twitter to ask Bethany Jacobs how she could do this to me, and she just laughed like the diabolical genius that she is.  Let’s just say this political revenge story is worth every minute of your time.

My Rating:

I gave These Burning Stars by Bethany Jacobs five out five stars.  This book has tight plotting in an interesting political atmosphere with a huge scope.  The consequences of action over time is a huge theme in this book, and I loved reading about how all the pieces fit together.  The characters were also fleshed out with various personalities.  I can’t wait to read more in this planned trilogy, and anyone looking for a good space opera should definitely pick this book up!

Have you heard of These Burning Stars before?  Are you interested in reading it?  What about other space operas on your radar?  Let me know in the comments below!