I enjoyed the Catholics in space premise. I wish there had been more details about the nuns and their personalities. In both the previous book and this one, there are fewer named characters than total characters on the ship, e.g supplies/life support for 6, but only 4 were named, so who are the other two? I think the original crew was 12, but I only counted 7 or 8 named characters. With a cast that small, it's worth at least mentioning everyone even if the story focuses on just a few of them. Especially because they had meetings for everyone to weight in on big decisions. If it was a ship with 40 or 50, it would make more sense for some of them to be a faceless crowd. But with that said, I really liked the story and the big ideas it brings up. I will definitely read the next one in the series if there's more!

From a librarian's perspective, it would probably only find an audience in bigger SF collections, since it deals with religion and also has LGBTQ characters and those two groups tend to prefer separate books.

Lina Rather is a Creative Genius. I devoured SISTERS OF THE VAST BLACK during 2020's Space Opera September and adored it, longing for a sequel. SISTERS OF THE FORSAKEN STARS is equally fantastic! Now although it can be read as a standalone, do yourself a favor and read both books, in order, to perceive the true flavor of character evolution and unfolding plot issues.

This Series, while Feminist Science Fiction with an LGBTQ+ rep, is also metaphysical, philosophical, classical, and pacifist. The established Church plus centralized government are kept under the spotlight, and the revelations come at almost faster-than-light-speed. Ms. Rather x-rays her characters, one and all: they can't hide from the reader nor even from themselves.

I hope this Series continues until the Heat death of the Universe.