I don’t think I’ve ever read a space opera so I wasn’t sure what to expect but my expectations were absolutely exceeded. The characters were so compelling and their voices/personalities were distinct so I didn’t have to wonder which point of view I was reading from. I loved the world building/political intrigue aspect and the exploration of gender. This was an incredible debut and even though it could exist as a standalone, I’m really excited to see what happens next in this story. Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for a digital advanced reader copy in exchange for an honest review.

I received a free copy on Netgalley against an honest review. Thanks to the publisher.

Unfortunately, this is a DNF at 30%.

The premise sounded really good, and the book started strong, but after a few chapters, I realized I couldn't connect with any of the characters and didn't care enough to keep reading. I was also surprised by how the book has a big fantasy vibe when it is marketed as sci-fi. It could fall under the science fantasy genre, which I love, but the balance was leaning way too strongly toward fantasy and I didn't feel like I was reading sci-fi at all.

In the end, I think it's simply not for me. I saw that many people loved the book, and I could see the quality in the writing, so I don't think this book is bad at all. Just not my cup of tea. I hope others enjoy it.

First, I want to thank Orbit and Netgalley for allowing me access to a eARC in exchange for my honest review.

These Burning Stars is the first installment in a new series that takes place in a society spread out over three planets, a handful of moons, and myriad ships and stations drifting in the black. That alone is a great start for any science fiction fan, but that is only the foundation for the ride that this novel takes you on.

We start with a challenge made by Esek, a mercurial and unscrupulous cleric, challenges a young trainee to find a way to impress her or else be banished from their chosen path in life. Although Esek may only intend to toy with the young trainee, she unwittingly begins the toppling of dominoes that will lead her, the child, and all those around them to a fight for their lives. Many years later, we are introduced to Jun, a net savvy caster with a nose for lucrative information. When she buys a memory coin that could be damaging to a host of people, including Esek, Jun is pulled into a decades old power struggle that could change everything for the people of the Treble.

As for my personal thoughts on this book, I barely know where to begin. I find myself comparing many parts of it to classic stories in the genre, most notably, Dune. Bethany Jacobs drops us straight into the action without much explanation, and slowly peels back the layers of history, diplomacy, mythology, tradition, and politics to reveal an intricate backstory that draws you in. I really enjoyed the world building, and the character development in really strong for a space opera type story with this many players. I am really looking forward to the next book.

Furthermore, I would usually take this time to detail my few dislikes about the novel, but I really only had one major concern. It took me a few chapters to truly feel like I understood the world, but I think that is really only a testament to the deep depths of the world and society building. I am left really wanting even more explanation about the history of the Treble and its variety of people.

If you like Space Opera, then obviously this is a hit. There are also two actual stories here, one being a sort of spy v spy with Esek and Six as well as a political intrigue with some cyberpunk vibes going on with Jun and her crew. These all coalesce into something pretty special. I definitely suggest giving The Burning Stars a shot. I hope this helped you decide if this is the right book for you, and if you do take a chance on it, I would love to hear your thoughts. Have fun and happy reading.

These Burning Stars had a lot of world-building, and yet somehow didn’t feel fully realized to me, nor did the generally unlikeable characters. And the violence, oh, the violence. There seemed to be a savoring of the brutality of it, and it was not what I wanted. I think ultimately this book was just not for me, and I will definitely be skipping the subsequent books in this series.

Thank you Bethany Jacobs, Orbit Books, and NetGalley for providing this ARC for review consideration. All opinions expressed are my own.

Genre: Science fiction

Sometimes revenge can take decades. Esek Nightfoot is powerful, brilliant, and ruthless. On a visit to the Kinschool of Principes, Esek has the opportunity to watch a class of promising clerics. Students are genderless and go by numbers, and Esek is as impressed as she should be by the first five she watches fight. But then there’s Six, who is utterly brilliant. Ruthless Esek challenges Six, telling it, “impress me, and I’ll consider giving you a spot as my novitiate.” Years later, the matriarch of the Nightfoot family instructs Esek to find Six, to hunt it down, and Esek, who has begun to think of Six as “them” rather than “it” takes on a new obsession to find out Six’s identity and what it has to do with interstellar politics, jump drive resources, and the fate of the Nightfoot family.

A debut novel with an absolutely impressive scope, Bethany Jacobs tackles so much in this science fiction political thriller and drama. The time span of this book is twenty years, but the revenge arc actually stretches from before the story begins. It still moves quickly, as the intensity of the chase is pressing. The present-day timeline has urgency while the timelines in the past are a bit more reflective. Luckily for audiobook listeners, this is handled very well on audio, with the year-of-action recited at the beginning of each chapter.

These Burning Stars also has some of my favorite SF worldbuilding - you learn enough about Esek’s world - and her worldview - in the first chapter without info-dumping, and more about the Houses, space travel, the political backdrop are revealed along the way, most of the time as those details relate to plot. The mark of good worldbuilding is to never say “well that couldn’t happen” about an event or technology because the appropriate groundwork wasn’t there. Jacobs does a fantastic job of giving us an expansive empire, a brutal inheritance system, and cutthroat machinations and revenge.

While I did receive an eARC for this from @orbitbooks_us I primarily listened to a library audiobook copy (by the time I received the ARC, the book had been published), but I found that this was an excellent multi-format read. Places, names, and dates were easier to track in print, but I also love Natalie Naudus’s narration. Naudus has a way of making intense action feel intimate as she reads, and I loved listening to this.

These Burning Stars is out now! And I can’t wait to see what Bethany Jacobs comes up with next!

While I knew this book was releasing and I liked the cover and premise, it wasn’t on any high priority tbr in my mind. But then I read a glowing review of it by my friend Cait @realmsofmymind and I was immediately intrigued. And once I started reading, I just couldn’t stop.

Wow it’s been a while since a sci-fi novel got me in such a chokehold. The plotting of this book is absolutely precise, with flawless execution and you feel instantly hooked from page 1. While it may feel like the author throws us head long into the middle of a story set in a galaxy spanning empire, it’s easy to get our bearings and then follow along with our characters on a (not so) merry chase from planet to station to ship and more, never being able to guess where it’s all going. The author does a masterful job giving us the details about the world, its governing mechanisms, the plights and prejudices of the people, as well as the motivations of the characters - all in little chunks through well placed flashback chapters, which we have to piece together like a puzzle to get the complete picture.

It’s the characters though who shine through and make us unable to turn away from the book. Esek Nightfoot maybe a cleric but she hardly behaves like one. She is obsessive, bloodthirsty, charismatic, impulsive and strategic all together and even when you feel like you hate her, you can’t stop yourself from trying to get to know her better. Chono is also a cleric but more righteous unlike Esek, but the dynamic they share transcends that of the usual mentor-protégé. To round off the trio is Six who remains an enigma throughout the book and we are chasing alongwith Esek and Chono to find her truth. And then there’s Jun, whose search for a memory coin that might upend the status quo of their world is what starts off this whole adventure, without anyone realizing the ultimate stakes involved. We also have other supporting characters who are equally well written and play very pivotal roles in propelling the narrative forward.

My memory these days is not very good but I think I still wanna say in the end that this might be my favorite debut of the year, and will definitely make it to my top ten list of 2023. This cat and mouse ride perfectly encapsulates the Chinese idiom “The mantis stalks the cicada, unaware of the oriole behind” and I promise that you’ll get all the thrills and drama and twists that you can ask for in this stunning sci-fi novel. Don’t miss it.

"Our lives only matter if we use them well."

Righteousness for the Clerisy. Cleverness for the Secretaries. Brutality for the Cloaksaan. These are the Kindom’s three hands, tasked with maintaining balance in the Treble. This stability becomes precarious as three of the most powerful women in the galaxy pursue the same memory coin - a coin planted by a single thread tying the three together, one which is capable of implicating the Kindom in the plot of a lifetime.

I’m absolutely starstruck by the fact that this is Jacobs’ debut novel. Told through alternating points of view across multiple timelines, 𝘛𝘉𝘚 follows Esek’s Moonfoot’s rise to power, and the ramifications that follow those pulled into her intense orbit. It was these multi-layered timelines and points of views that initially piqued my interest in 𝘛𝘉𝘚, and which kept me enthralled throughout.

𝘛𝘉𝘚 immerses you in a world defined by political systems and religious lore, which had the potential to lose the reader, but which added layers of richness and complexity to the overall story. Even though the Kindom is light years away in time and space, it’s laden with the strife that’s currently plaguing our own society; which made it that much more human of a story in spite of all the sci-fi elements.

𝘛𝘉𝘚 is such a brilliantly accessible novel for those looking to dabble in the world of sci-fi. I can’t wait for the rest of the trilogy! Jacobs penned such a rich world that I'm longing to return to, if only to immediately reread these 517 pages to find the subtle clues I missed regarding the most ingenious plot twist I've read to date.

Thank you to NetGalley and Orbit Books for the chance to read this ARC in exchange for an honest review. These Burning Stars will be published on October 17, 2023!

So this book at heart is basically a cat and mouse quest. Esek & Chono are hunting the thief Jun…they’ve also been hunting Six for a couple decades. But this book is anything but simple. There is so much detail, both with the chase itself, but also with the characters and their motivations. It’s also jumping back-and-forth in time for each chapter, which took a little getting used to, but I think it works for this story. The world building was really fascinating. The ruling class are essentially religious figures, and yet they are also assassins, criminals, hypocrites, and corrupt (hmmm, might be some correlation there 😉). I really enjoyed Chono, but Esek is a straight up psychopath.

There’s a huge twist in the last third of the book that just had me screaming “WHAT?!” I am already really looking forward to re-reading this book so I can pick up on more of the details and nuances that made the story so great.

TW: SA of children (off page)

Thank you to NetGalley & Orbit Books for this advance reader copy. All opinions are my own.

Honestly, this is a hell of a debut. You've got a family that controls the industry that makes the empire run, a person bent on revenge, and all the various intersections between them all. I did have to go back and forth and check where the chapters were on the internal time line occasionally just to keep things straight in my head, but there's lot of time jumps from chapter to chapter, and the reveals are immaculately done. It looks like there's a sequel to this, and I'm definitely interested, but if nothing else, Ms Jacobs also lets the individual story of the novel stand by itself. Just came out, and definitely worth your time.

This excellent debut science fiction thriller, the first of a trilogy set in the far future, quickly plunges you into elaborate world-building with a complex, compelling set of three women all out for revenge. There’s Esek, from one of the ruling famiiles, who is talented, powerful, gorgeous but also completely vicious and cruel, if not psychopathic. The novel open with Esek visiting a training facility for teens, where she meets an incredibly talented noviate, named Six (only upon graduation can one choose one’s name and gender) who Esek prohibits from working for anyone but her, but will only take her on as a mentee is she does something extraordinarily dangerous to get Esek’s attention. Lastly there’s Chono, close friends with Six during training then a trainee cleric under Esek, who’s torn in loyalties between the two. Six dropped out of school before graduation, has disappeared, and Esek’s on a quest to find her for unknown reasons. Meanwhile pirates are violently attacking Esek’s family, and Six may be orchestrating things behind the scenes exacting her revenge.

The novel’s set among a grouping of planets, the Treble, known as the Kindom (a clever play on Kingdom). The Kindom is ruled by a religious order, but there’s power hungry, wealthy, and back-stabbing elite families in the mix and the conflicting worship of all sorts of specific gods based on individual planets.

The ruling power structure involves three counterbalancing branches of governance: with factional infighting within the branches and power grabs between all three. There’s the clerics who oversee religion, the secretaries who oversee the law, and the Cloaksaan who serve as both the military force and police. There’s also an oppressed sect of people, whose planet’s destruction has turned them into migrants and one step above slaves to the Kindom’s mining complex.

All this rachets up to unbelievable twists and unexpected plot reveals. Cannot wait for the next book in the series. So impressed at the finesse of this exciting debut!


Thanks to Orbit Books and NetGalley for an advanced reader’s copy.

I had such high hopes for this book, but had to dnf and set aside for later. It started off with strong potential but I couldn’t get through it with how children are treated. These are captured children from opposing families and they are stripped of their gender, and referred to as ‘it’ and sometimes have a number attached as their designation. Normally I could just put that as part of the story, in that it’s a place of war, but with Ukraine and Palestine currently suffering, I had to set this down and go for something else.

I managed about forty percent of the book. It’s not a permanent dnf, but it’s set aside for now. My apologies to the author, but I just don’t think I can manage this right now.

This book took me embarrassingly long to get through, not due to any faults of the book, but because I happened to read it during a time when I had a lot of stress going on, so I read it in bits and pieces on my phone while eating breakfast or when I had 15 spare minutes. It took a little while for the book to get going; it was difficult that the character who got the most time in the beginning, Esek, made my skin crawl (which I think was the intent - kudos to the author!). It got easier and more engaging as characters that were more interesting and possible to root for, like Chono and Jun, became more prevalent, and I enjoyed how the author revealed more and more about the world and its history, culture, and politics by exploring the stories of the individual characters. I will say that it was a bit of a tough read at times - I don't have a super weak stomach, but like I said, I was already stressed at the time, and the book didn't hesitate to include violence, both individual and political, genocide, rape, and other sexual situations involving major power differentials. All of this contributed to and was appropriate for the plot, and none of it was handled in a way that glamorized or excused it, but it definitely made me feel gross (again, probably the intent).

I felt like the book was a solid 4 stars for the first 3/4, but it picked up immensely in the last quarter, and the twists, reveals, and payoffs were incredibly interesting and successful, especially in the focus on the internal lives of different complex, flawed, but ultimately somewhat relatable characters. I'm very pleased to hear that this is the first book of a trilogy; while the ending was satisfactory enough that it could be left at that, there are certainly characters with a lot more to do and explore, and I'm excited to read on.

Thank you NetGalley and Orbit Books for an eARC in exchange for an honest review!!

Before I got a chance to start reading this, I saw a review that said if you liked A Memory Called Empire or The Traitor Baru Cormorant you should pick this up. I’d already been looking forward to starting this—some people I know had read the ARC before I did and enjoyed it, and the blurb already seemed like something I’d be interested in—but seeing that certainly raised my expectations because I love those books. I’m a little sad my reading schedule did not allow me to read this earlier, because I really, really loved it.

I really enjoy science fiction so I’m always excited when it seems like a sci-fi title I’m interested in will drop, and I am so impressed by this debut. I was sucked in immediately and it was super easy to just keep on reading. I really enjoyed the world building Jacobs has done and the story on the whole is extremely compelling—the twists and turns were wild and I loved the themes Jacobs is exploring here (loyalty!!!! empire!!!!!). I’m a fan of sitting back and letting a story happen to me, so maybe I was extra surprised by all the things that happened. I loved that this was a queernorm world and I also really liked all of the POVs and the characters—Esek, Chono, Six, and Jun were a really fun cast, and I liked their moral ambiguities and complexities.

This was such an interesting and compelling read, and I think it’s really neat that the way it ends works as a standalone and sets up future novels; I’m definitely eager to read more in this world but I also feel completely satisfied with the story as it stands now. Definitely recommend, and I’ll definitely be wanting to reread!

This was a really solid start in what will hopefully be an epic sci-fi trilogy. It’s a very detailed work, maybe a little too detailed at times for me. It’s interesting to see how similar and different the civilizations can be to ours in such a world building experience.

Thanks to NetGalley and Orbit for an ARC of this book.

A brilliant debut - I look forward to reading more from this immensely talented author. Thank you to the publisher & NetGalley for the opportunity to read this advance of its publication!

3.5 stars.

This is such a hard review to write. So much so, that I’ve been totally avoiding it. But alas, the publisher has reminded me ‘Melissa….you’re late’.

Let’s start with the good news: for a debut, it’s a smashing success. I hate using ‘well written’ because that’s somewhat subjective. Let me instead say, the writing is *well supported*. You can tell our author knows her writing craft.

The bad news: the characterization could have used a few more passes. I understand wanting to create a stoic character to contrast a flamboyant villain (and boy, what a flamboyant villain she is!) but when the stoic one is who we should trust (I think?), it becomes difficult since they’ve been written so flat. At one point I called her a cardboard cutout and our villain a caricature. I still don’t think that’s entirely off base. I think a little more backstory would’ve helped make them both grayer, and therefore more accessible.

Now that I’ve gotten my technical issues out of the way: holy crap, that ending was super fun. Really looking forward to the next adventure, now that all of our Team Not Evil is all together. That Kingdom better watch out!

Summary

These Burning Stars is a sci-fi fantasy about a society called the Kindom, with a complicated government system that splits power between clerics (religious leaders), Cloaksaan (agents of brutality, like a hit squad), and secretaries (those who keep the records).

Esek is a cleric and the heiress to the leadership of a powerful family that controls the trade of sevite, which provides most of the power for operations within the Kindom. She's pretty vicious, and kills anyone who gets in her way during her missions. She and Chono, one of her old trainees, are sent on a mission to find a memory coin which contains information that could undermine the sevite trade.

There are also a group of people called the Jeveni, who went through a genocide and experience extreme oppression as those who used to mine jevite (organic sevite) and now work in the sevite factories to create the synthetic replacement.

Esek and Chono chase after the memory coin, which falls into the hands of Jun, a castor (think of a hacker) known as Sunstep, and Maser, a pirate who is secretly Jeveni. When Chono was training with Esek, the two of them spent most of their time chasing after a person they called Six, who collected incriminating evidence against Esek's family. Six was a childhood friend of Chono's, and so Chono is sometimes reluctant to continue pursuing them.

Jun decides to trust Maser and bring the coin to Maser's collector, who wants it so he can identify missing Jeveni people. Jun, her partner, Maser, and one of the leaders of the Jeveni go to the giant warship that the Jeveni can use once a year to celebrate their culture. Unfortunately, the area is flooded with Kindom personnel, including cloaksaan.

The Jeveni leader is killed, and Jun, her partner, Esek, and Chono all end up in the panicked gunfight that takes place among the Jeveni crowds. They manage to get onto a train, but Chono is shot first, and against her character, Esek does everything in her power to save the other cleric.

Jun is trying to get an invisibility cloak over all the Jeveni ships in the area to save them from the Kindom threat, and this is when Esek reveals that she's not Esek at all--they are actually Six, who modified their body to look like Esek and took over her identity.

They manage to save Chono's life and the Jeveni escape to a planet they've been preparing as a refuge for years with the help of Jun's invisibility hacking. We learn that Six did everything to try and give control of the sevite trade over to the Jeveni, but having their own back-up plan, they aren't interested in it.

At the end of the story, Chono convinces Six that they must return to the Kindom to make sure everything doesn't fall apart without Esek to control the family and ensure the sevite trade continues.

Critique

My favorite thing about These Burning Stars was the twist about Esek and Six. I truly didn't see this coming and it brought this one up from a three-star to a four-star read for me. Another thing I really appreciated about this story was how the introduction of choosing a gender and a name made this society feel unique and separate from our own. I thought this gave the book a refreshing sort of queerness that could be wholly organic in this fantasy society. I also think These Burning Stars did a good job with world-building and avoiding info-dumping.

I only have one real critique for this book, and it's that I felt the pace of the book slowed in the middle, as this was when I struggled the most to pick it back up and continue reading. From about 50% to 75%, I had to force myself to push through to get back to the stuff that was fast-paced and interesting.

All in all, I did really enjoy this one and may even continue reading the series.

This had the slowly unfurling intricacy of the best kinds of epic fantasies mixed with the particular analysis of humanity and history that is purely science fiction. But what really feels special is the chaotic, arrogant horribleness of Esek’s character; she is a wildfire, a black hole drawing everything else about the story into her twisted and unsteady orbit. But she is also very clear and directed, the perfect anchor for a complicated story. Jun was rather boring; a standard SFF MC. Chono, on the other hand, made for a good balance, being almost entirely swept up in Esek’s gravity despite her best intentions.

Where this story falls short is, ironically, that it’s too long. Long chapters, frequent flashbacks, and a lot of background information that could have been seriously trimmed. I’m very glad I stuck with it, but there were times especially in the first 25% where I was ready to give up. I also am not really sure how the story will maintain momentum in more books, but I’m ready to be surprised.

I found out about this book from the audiobook narrator and received an ARC ebook from the publisher. These Burning Stars was such a fun ride! What an incredible debut by Jacobs! I loved the queer representation and how flawlessly it was woven into the story without being the “whole thing.” The action, politics, world building and other science fiction elements were all incredibly well done, and mostly importantly I had a great time reading it! I devoured it in a weekend and loved the twists and turns and the character development and I can’t wait for the second book to come out.

This is a epic Sci Fi with amazing writing and a plot that sucks you in. The timeline does jump around some and follows multiple characters. This book is so worth the read for fans of space opera.