The Cruel Stars is a great sci-fi space opera read. John Birmingham has written an engrossing read that is thought provoking.

Going into this book there were a lot of characters and info thrown at the reader, so it took a while to get used to and to figure things out. I was immediately drawn to the first character that was introduced, Lucinda Hardy and continued to enjoy any chapter she was in. Other characters took a little while to grow on me, but they eventually all did. McClennan in particular was crass and I could have done without some of the profane things he said, but at the same time he could be amusing as well. I think less profane language in the book in general would have been a good thing. It was excessive for me. I do wish there was a bit more character development, but with this many characters that would be hard.

I liked the mix of drama and comic relief. I thought the book had a good balance of it. There were a couple of scenes that unexpectedly had me really laughing. One involved a hedge trimmer, but that's all I'm going to say. These scenes were needed because there were some rather gruesome scenes to get through as well. In the end this wasn't a favorite, but I liked it enough that I would probably read the next book in the trilogy (at least I think it's going to be a trilogy).

Some other things I liked about the book:

-Ships that are bigger on the inside, like the Tardis.
-Loading a persons consciousness into different bodies or even machines.
-The beautiful cover.

Thanks to NetGalley and Del Rey for providing me with an advanced copy of this book.

I love space operas, space books of all sorts so I jumped at the chance to read The Cruel Stars. At first I couldn't get into the book and to be honest I think it was my mood and not the book. There were so many people in the book, I thought I would never get what was going on. That being said, I'm not one hundred percent sure of things that happened, but I got the jist of it and started to love it.

There are five groups of individuals that are going through one thing or another. This is what threw me off as I wanted to get to know the first group. They pretty much all come together in the book when they have to fight for their lives and such.

The book has plenty of blood and guts too, let me tell you! I mean that's fine with me, I'm just sayin' for those that don't like that kind of thing. There are some cannibal people things that were quite disturbing at times. There are radicals and humans and human things and stuff.... yeah.. good times. There is a war going on and there always seems to be people getting bit, ate, throwing up, yelling, cursing and what not, but it makes for a good story. I do believe my sci-fi peeps out there will enjoy this book!

*I would like to thank Netgalley and the Publisher for the opportunity to read this crazy book.

Happy Reading!

Mel ♥

Yes this was similar to Battlestar Galactica and I enjoyed it. This is a fun read that was fast. At first I was concerned that there were too many story lines but they all kept me reading and it was tied together nicely.