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The Stars Are Legion

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The Stars Are Legion

By: Kameron Hurley
Narrated by: Nicole Poole, Teri Schnaubelt
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About this listen

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.

©2017 Kameron Hurley (P)2017 Tantor Adventure Fantasy Fiction Science Fiction Space Opera War LGBTQIA+

Critic reviews

"This gripping book is both hard to read and easy to appreciate." ( Publishers Weekly)
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This book had me hooked all the way through. It was such a breath of fresh air amid so many sci-fi novels in which the worlds seem to revolve and centre around men.
I adored the visceral biopunk setting and the continual themes of rebirth and the gruesome nature of, well, nature. Life and death and biology and war and love. I especially loved Zan's journey and the cast of women she met, all very distinct.

However I feel as a stand alone novel this tried to do too much at once and as such left a lot unanswered. This should have been at least a duology to fully explore the world. As in some parts feel underdeveloped (for example the nature of the world ships themselves and how they came to be and what they are).
I also felt that Jayd's storyline at times felt a bit like filler and I kept finding myself wishing to return to Zan instead. As others have pointed out, the ending also seems just a tad anticlimactic and rushed. The author maybe should have allowed this story to have a bit more breathing space.

But overall I loved it. Great story, great performance. Four out of five stars, I wish there was more.

Amazing ideas

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The story is decent and it's very setting is very organic and disturbing at times, which is awesome more makes you want to find out what's happening.

Unique world. Loved it

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Ships are living worlds in this novel, made up of layers of tissues and fluids, hosting a number of different beings (yet all women), and assigning to such beings the task to birth what is needed for their maintenance, as nothing is wasted and all is recycled. The main characters are involved in a complicated plot, aiming at regenerating and healing a world and possibly its whole legion. Their plan and path so far are only revealed at the end, and readers mostly discover the past as well as the present bit by bit, together with the amnesiac main character, while the other main character hints at past decisions that would put the story and characters in a different light. The quite imaginative settings and ecology of the ship-worlds are as gripping and fascinating as the plot and characters' mysteries. The interpretation is sometimes too dull and monotonous.

Surprising plot, fascinating settings

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A deeply visceral, disturbing and incredibly imaginative. Well read (despite some dubious accents). Strongly recommended.

Astonishing book

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Its an unusual, creative and very gooey world that Kameron Hurley creates in The Stars Are Legion. These organic living world ships with all their strange communities and inhabitants existing at different levels of the world. It takes a little while to get going and only does once Xan undertakes her quest through the belly of the world. I enjoyed the book but never found myself completely hooked, it kind of just had something missing. The narrator is pretty bad and probably has something to do with it, I think an AI might have bought more emotion to the story! I persevered as I found the world and the story interesting.

Unusual, creative and very gooey

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