Table of Contents
Preamble
I wish I remembered which booktuber I first heard about These Burning Stars from. All I remember was hearing about it when I was watching a bunch of 2024 book of the year videos from booktubers I don’t usually watch. I think I should start noting down such things when I add books to my TBR, otherwise I always forget.
This book caught my eye because I have been looking for some decent-to-good scifi to read. I enjoy good scifi but before this book it has been a while since I’ve read any and I was really feeling a craving for this type of book. I’d categorize this book as a space opera with elements of a thriller with light sci-fi elements sprinkled throughout.
Let’s get into it.
The Book
The first thing I noticed as started reading this book is that it is very technically competent. By that I mean – the world is structured and explained in a natural way, characters, their motivations and ideologies are presented naturally and the amount of worldbuilding is just right.
By the time the first quarter of the book had ended, I had a good idea of what the world was like and how the characters fit in it. This seems like faint praise but it is not a given for a sci-fi or fantasy book to do this things well and it is refreshing to get a book that is at least got a solid foundation to build the rest of its narrative on.
Worldbuilding
The world this book paints is interesting but not in a way that is breathtaking or mindblowing. There is a set of space systems (the Treble) governed by the Kindom which is by all appearances a theocracy. The three arms of government are – clerics aka the priests, secretaries aka the bureaucrats, and cloaks aka the security state. The conflicts between the three arms are present in the book but not overwhelmingly so.
The primary religion in the book is not named (as far as I remember, I may have missed it). It contains a pantheon of gods and goddesses along with the central concept of the “Godfire” which very much reminds me of something out of the Soulsborne video games. There are bits of the religion’s scripture quoted at the beginning of chapters and I do appreciate that bit of flavour. Here is one below.
For when you die, you shall return to that which matters most, to that which is the core of yourself. And you will see what you are laid out before you as a banquet. In your death, you will eat the fruits of your life, and whatever ripens them shall ripen your death–either with joy, or regret. And your loves and your hates will gather to you, and you will dine with them at the long table of your life. And thus all death is a return.
Words of Sajeven, 11:3-7. Godtexts, pre-Treble. These Burning Stars by Bethany Jacobs
I have not fallen in love with the world but I do appreciate the amount of thought and care that has clearly been putting into building the world of this book.
Characters
If you have read previous books of mine, you’ll know I am someone who is very character focused when it comes to my fiction. There are a lot of characters in this book, so much so that the book very helpfully provides a “cast of characters” at the beginning to make sure you can reference if you forget who someone is.
Like with the worldbuilding, I am not particularly in love with any of the characters but all of them are appropriately fleshed out with motivations and actions that make sense. I say “appropriately” because there are certain characters like Vas Sivas Medisogo who are quite one-note but such characters are needed as plot devices and I don’t have a problem with them as long there are characters that are more complex.
All in all, the character work here is competent, nothing special but nothing that has left me leaning strongly towards or against any of them.
Narrative
I mentioned earlier that this is a space opera + thriller combination and while that is true there is also a strong Moby Dickesque obsessive chase going on throughout the book. The narrative here moved at a reasonable pace and for the most part made sense.
Every once in a while the book jumped back in time to provide context for why a character is doing a particular thing or why they have certain feelings about another character etc. These sections weren’t particularly jarring for me and it is pretty clear that these chapters happen in the past.
Now, I get to the only real criticism I have of this book – the twist at the end. When I got to the last quarter of the book my thoughts were “this is pretty good, let’s hope it sticks the landing”. Well folks, it did stick the landing but it was a very bumpy landing that soured the memory of the rest of the experience.
Airplane metaphor aside, I thought the twist preset at the end of this book is an own goal. I don’t think it was necessary and it weakens a major narrative arc of the book in a way that I don’t think was necessary. I wish this book didn’t have this particular twist. It lowered by opinion of the book, not significantly but lowered nonetheless.
Conclusions
Overall, I think These Burning Stars is a solid sci-fi space opera book with well fleshed out world, interesting characters and a thrilling narrative that keeps things interesting. Pretty damn good for a debut novel. This book is the first of a trilogy; the second book in the series is already out and I have put it on my to-be-read pile for whenever I get a craving for more books like these.
This made me want to read more space opera novels, I think those are my most favourite kind of sci-fi story. I would love more recommendations along that front. I am still chasing the high from reading Arkady Martine’s A Memory Called Empire. Maybe one day I’ll find something else like it.
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