These Burning Stars

The Kindom Trilogy, Book 1

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**WINNER OF THE PHILIP K. DICK AWARD**
**SHORTLISTED FOR THE LOCUS AWARD FOR BEST FIRST NOVEL**
Jun Ironway, hacker, con artist, and only occasional thief, has got her hands on a piece of contraband that could set her up for life: evidence 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 three 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 down: 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 - and that they are heading for a bloody confrontation that no one will survive unscathed.

'One of the best SF books I've read. Period' Michael Mammay, author of Planetside

'These Burning Stars pulls off one of the most brazen, gasp-inducing reveals I've experienced in an age' Esquire

'Vivid, violent and visceral: an impressive debut' Kate Elliott, author of Unconquerable Sun

'Intricately plotted and tightly paced . . . Space opera fans will eat this up' Publishers Weekly
©2023 Bethany Jacobs (P)2023 Hachette Audio UK

Bethany JacobsNatalie NaudusLittle, Brown Audio

Fiction

Science Fiction

Space Opera

Fiction Science Fiction Space Opera

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These Burning Stars introduces us to the setting of The Kingdom and The Trebel, and gives us an exciting cast of characters with wildly divergent motivations, and deftly works them together for a massive final twist. That said, it commits one of the bigger worldbuilding sins in my mind: the mono-polity. All three known star-systems are governed by The Kingdom (no king or monarch in sight) and there are no other polities, nations or empires. The Kindom is ruled by a triumverate of organisations known as Hands, which incorporate religious clerics, assassin cloaks and the... secretaries? And in addition to a smattering of various underclass groups, we have a disposessed racialised subgroup who are a victim of a recent genocide, whose society and traditions are forcibily supressed by the dominant society.

It does a lot right, but there's a lot of red flags in terms of the world building that risk the story becoming quite two dimensional as it continues, and despite there being a signfiicant attempt to portray various characters as morally reprehensible, it does feel like the morality of the story is pretty black and white. The protaganists are generally seen to be correct in the long run, even if they do bad things to get there.