Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for an ARC in exchange for an honest review!!!

A queer portal fantasy and the first novel in a new series, Saffron Coulter must decide where her allegiances lie in a mystical world on the brink of ruin. Relying on the help of a myriad of interesting women with their own agendas and goals, she strives to make the most of this chance at heroism. Stumbling into a mess far beyond her capabilities—a civil war is decimating the land of Kena—Saffron isn't the Chosen One, but she still wants to help save as many people as she can.

Just who will she side with and how?

Our secondary lead Gwen Vere is a middle aged freedom fighter and fellow travler between worlds. A bit jaded by past failures trying to free the land of Kena, she still does her best to encourage others to stand and fight. Keeping both her family and regrets close to the chest, will she be able to fix any of her mistakes before causingnfurther harm to the world she's come to view as her own?

Lovers of the isekai genre and roleplaying games, you'll likely have a delightful time exploring Kena. The cast is almost exclusively comprised of women, which is a lovely change of pace. In many popular high fantasy novels/series we're lucky to have two named female characters who impact the plot in any manner beyond just fucking the male lead or dying...

I'm not quite sure what age range this novel is aiming for, as we bounce primarily between two POV with a smattering of others for additional context. Each feels like it was written for the age range represented: with a more YA lens for Saffron and an adult focus for Gwen.

I don't know if this was intentional or not to appeal to a wider audience, but the rapid shifting between the two could be jarring at times. It's possible to write a teenage lead and still feel like the novel should be shelved in the adult fantasy section and vice versa so this was a bit of an odd choice in my opinion. It didn't fully ruin the experience for me, but did mess with pacing and tension a few times.

I've been waiting for a queer portal fantasy since I first read Chonicles of Narnia a hundred years ago! (Even though I didn't quite know it at the time.) Like all the best fantasy books, the politics of this one are rooted in the real world, and boy do they resonate deeply at this moment in time. However, the fantasy worldbuilding is so brilliant and so fresh. There's also plenty of grey morality to explore, another hallmark of great fantasy. Best of all, I never even peeped a straight cis white guy. Truly revolutionary! I'll be giving this one as a gift to all my speculative fiction pals!

An Accident of Stars is one of the most ambitious political commentaries that I have read, set in a distinctive portal fantasy. The book revolves around Saffron Coulter, an Australian teenager who stumbles into a new world where magic is real and technology is rudimentary. Guided by another 'worldwalker', Gwen, she becomes ensnared in the latest coup.

The worldbuilding is exquisite, the religious factions and different nations well fleshed. The politics are complex but well explained. The characters are distinct, believable and well rounded. The younger generation are more perceptive and accepting than their elders - but isn't that so often the case on Earth too? The plot moves at a steady pace and information is expertly drip fed as it progresses. Meadows is clearly a talented author from page one.

The good guys aren't wholly good. They have their vices, biases, betrayals and weaknesses, as they should. The bad guys are less complete. Their motivations seem unclear and I would like to see them develop more in future.

If I had to choose one way the novel could be improved, I would advise adding a vehicle for comic relief. It's an emotionally heavy book and would benefit from a little whimsy occasionally. There are lighter moments - chats between old friends, a little spark of romance - but for me, when things are at their darkest is when a little black humour is most needed.

Truthfully, I find it remarkable that there isn't more hype surrounding this series. To speculate, I'd attribute this to the left leaning political influences which are becoming less popular. Polyamory, varied sexualities, transgender characters, no concept of promiscuity - this book is composed with radical liberal ideology and perhaps that is a step too far for the average reader. Personally, I find it a delight that there isn't a straight, cisgender, white man to be found and eagerly anticipate the rest of the series.

Overall, An Accident of Stars is a masterpiece and I look forward to reading more about Saffron's adventures.

This review will be published on Pending Plays on Monday 24th March 2025.

Okay, I am officially hooked! An Accident of Stars is one of those books that pulls you in from the very first page, and you just don’t want to leave. It’s a portal fantasy, yes, but it’s so much more than that—it’s a complex, immersive world full of fascinating characters, intricate politics, and some seriously high stakes. I can’t wait to see where this series goes next—this is only the beginning!

I am happy to see Foz Meadow's earlier stuff get the attention they deserve! An Accident of Stars opens a portal fantasy trilogy and a door into a queernormative world, where you'll be hard pressed to find a cis guy going about his cis guy business. For that alone, I welcome it. It's also been a while since I picked up a portal fantasy, so it was nice to dip toes again into a specific kind of fantasy escapism.

An Accident of Stars has hallmarks of FM's future writing: interest and attention to worldbuilding, of which the author has a great detail at hand, and a queer, diverse cast of characters and a lot to say about gender and societal norms. However, the growing pains here are still very visible in the uneven pacing and a fondness for overwhelming worldbuilding detail.

Overall, an optimistic 3 - interesting to see how the story evolves in the next instalments.

Feeling curious & trying to escape a bully, Saffron follows a mysterious woman through a portal, & lands in a world of magic & queens & prophecy.

I love portal fantasies! And this was a fun one! All the most important characters are women, and the fantasy world is queer normative. This world also has such a fascinating magic system, and opened the door for a whole multiverse of stories!

But for such an info dump heavy book, the world itself felt very narrow, and while I loved the focus on familial and friend relationships, the tag on of a rushed romance at the very end, plus a very sudden and abrupt ending made me lose a little bit of my initial enjoyment. Most of my issues feel like they’re are beginning author problems, so I am very excited to move onto book two, though!

Thanks NetGalley and Angry Robot for this arc.

When a mysterious woman disappears into a portal behind her school, Saffron follows and discovers a completely different universe where she has to navigate complex cultures and politics. 

The fantasy societies in this book are incredibly well thought-through and detailed, a hallmark for Fox Meadows. The complex political plotlines take up the most space in the book and will appeal to those that most enjoy reading and thinking about fantasy settings rather than long fight scenes or explanations of how magic works in a particular universe. As others have said, the diversity of characters is also welcome for this type of fantasy, and the gender and sexuality elements of the setting are particularly well-incorporated.

That said, the pacing was a bit off for me - the book felt slow in parts and too fast in others. I agree with other reviewers that this book feels like the middle of a series, where there's significant backstory of interest to the reader that is only summarized. 

Overall, this book takes some effort to read, but is well-worth it for those who enjoy complex fantasy setting and political plotlines.

Thank you Thank you AngryRobot and NetGalley for the ARC! I got this to celebrate the new paperback cover, and my thoughts on that are below.

An Accident of Stars (Foz Meadows) is an exciting, daring portal fantasy. When tollowing a mysterious woman around her school, she is led from her world into another one, with new rules, creatures, gods and monarchs. To her family back home, she is but a missing girl, but here she must put her past aside and help aide in a fight against the matriarch, finding family and gaining godly blessings along the way. As someone who reads a lot of fantasy and soi fi, I haven't actually ever read a portal fantasy, so this was a book I simply got thrown into, and I enjoyed most of this!
Saffron is a wonderfully written self sufficient girl, and honestly I couldnt fault her at all in this book. Perhaps naive at times, but if you were thrown into another world with no warning, only to be told you might be killed for merely existing, then so would you. We meet a wonderful cast (a very big cast) of characters with most of them being memorable for their talents and relationships, but most I recognise as being there to move the plot along, and aren't ones we should be focusing on.

The world is big, and the polar opposite of Earth being both in culture, war, and animals (Roa's are adorable!) and while we were thrown into this world with Saffron, her viewpoint made things much easier to understand. Meadows clearly uses her characters and world as a viewpoint focusing on queer rights, feminism, racism, and politics all of which felt very necessary and written beautifully. Gwen being disowned for a worldwalker (someone not from Veksh), to Zech being shunned and ditched as a child due to the precedent of her unruly skin, to Jaiden believeing he has to follow in Matu's footsteps as the result of being a man. All of this is thrown and tossed around in the book to defy the crown and the thoughts of the two societies we meet. The POV switching was new to get used to, but I really enjoyed this take on it and it was clear within the first sentence who the narrator was. There is romance, but its not at the front of this fantasy and it has queer rep from the get go! Being polyamorous is the standard, and with Gwen being aromantic, there is just as much focus on romance as there is the firm friendships made throughout. Also as a result of this though, so romances toward the end did feel very rushed, with there being no chemistry between those two. Most of this was well paced, and I would certainly recommend for anyone wanting a queer portal fantasy, with a touch of fiction-veiled literary fiction.

That said, sometimes however the words and world building was all quite a bit...much for me. I reached the 70% mark and began skim reading a little bit because I simply didnt fully understand what was going on, and there were "too many" names and still more being introduced. It would have been helpful to have this pointed out to me at the start of the book to refer to, but there was no such indication.
At times, I felt there was a lot of buildup for very little payoff-something new cropped up and it felt very disconnected from the rest of the journey we had already gone through, including the snap decision for Saffron to go back home. Characters were revealed towards the end, and true identities, and sudden character sacrifices that left me a little dissatisfied. However in hindsight this is setting up a new book, but it feels like to me this is 'this book' and 'that book' instead of a series. I'm not going to pick up the second book just yet until I can re-read this one, and hopefully wrap my head around it more!

About the new paperback cover; Having only looked at the original cover when logging into Goodreads, I absolutely would not have picked this book up on a shelf without the change! I feel there is more of a focus on the city and its rules and cultures, opposed to the rozinial being about two travellers in a new world (and I firmly believe the book reflects the former rather than the latter). I'm not often one for a perilous journey, but am one for mysterious cities.

This was a strong start to the Manifold Worlds series, it had that element that I was looking for and worked well in this universe. I was invested in what was happening and thought the characters worked well overall, it does a great job in creating this world and was everything that I was looking for from this element. Foz Meadows has a strong writing style and can't wait for the next book.

A coming-of-age portal fantasy!!
An amazing story with amazing characters that I enjoyed a lot.
Feminist undertones, every important character is female!!

I enjoyed reading An Accident of Stars but I wouldn't re-read it

A fun portal fantasy with plenty of action of heavy themes. 16-year-old Saffron has an encounter with a strange woman named Gwen, a worldwalker, whom she follows through a portal into a highly queer-normative world full of political upheaval. She undergoes many harrowing trials and finds a new family among her new friends. The Trials of Queens Saffron and Zech face is truly spectacular. Can't wait to read the second installment in this duology.

Thank you NetGalley and Angry Robot for an advanced copy of this book.

When a teenage girl follows a strange woman into a portal, she finds herself in a different world. Unable to leave, swept up in local politics and schemes, she makes friends and enemies.

I think for what this book is, it does a good job at what it wants to do. It unfortunately made me realise that I've really grown out of enjoying young adult novels. I found a lot choices the author made in the plot too convenient, unrealistic. I found it hard to truly care for any of the characters or their relationships. Most things felt very rushed, but somehow the book felt like it dragged on for too long despite that. It is the first in a duology, but I still think the ending could have been more satisfying. Now all it raises are questions, but not enough to make me want to read the next book.

By no means do I think this was bad, I think it simply wasn't for me.

Thank you to Netgalley and Angry Robot for an e-arc in exchange for my unbiased review.

An Accident of Stars by Foz Meadows is an exceptional high fantasy world-walking female centered epic. Saffron Coulter is tired of being harassed by boys at her Australian school. When Gwen Vere happens to be walking by while Saffron is being accosted, Gwen steps in. Saffron is so impressed and thankful that someone FINALLY saw fit to help her, that she follows Gwen, right through a portal to another world. Once their Saffron (Safi) learns new languages, goes through numerous trials both physical and mental, and makes friends she won’t ever forget.

This book was great! I really enjoyed the characters, especially the unexpected strength of Zech. Saffron becomes a completely new person and so much stronger than before. The world building was extensive, and some readers may find it hard to remember all of the nuances of the political landscape and religious beliefs that are present here. Though challenging, it was satisfying to understand the underlying structure of a whole new world. The pacing was mostly good, but I did have to put the book down a few times in the beginning. I’d say about the 60% mark was when I really couldn’t put it down and needed to know what happened.

This book was reminiscent of the Gunslinger but with N.K. Jemisen vibes and a whole lot of woman run communities. I would give this book 4/5 stars and I will definitely be reading book 2!

Meadows weaves an incredible story in An Accident of Stars with strong world-building, characterisation, and a genuine sense the everything will not be all right in the end. From the opening lines of the story where we meet our protag Saffron and she is facing sexual harassment from male peers at her school, I was immediately hooked and knew that this wasn't a story that was going to shy away from some very hard truths.

The is an immediate sense of a stranger in a strange land from the moment that Saffron steps through a portal into a new world and is surrounded by unfamiliar things and people speaking a language she doesn't understand. Whilst there is magic that eventually helps the characters to integrate, the sense of not fully knowing what is happening doesn't truly ease; this creates a really firm sense of believability. I particularly enjoyed the muti-perspective approach of the book as it enabled readers to be one step ahead of the characters as you're able to connect the dots that the characters don't even know to look for and made it all the more satisfying when it came together.

This book has some jaw-dropping moments and definitely had me crying at a couple of times. I look forward to seeing where these characters' journeys take them next in the conclusion to the duology.

When 16 year old Saffron Coulter makes an impulsive decision to just through a hole in reality following Gwen, a strange woman who helped her with a school bully, she finds herself in an alternative universe where she has to decide who to trust and how far to go for these people she just met.

This story switches perspectives between multiple different women all dealing with trying to get the current ruler, Vex Leoden, off the thrown.

The suddens changes in perspective were a bit jarring but I did get used to them the more I read. The story did a lot of jumping around. Admittedly the beginning did drag a little, but there was a lot of world building to do which was well done. You could easily picture what the characters looked like and the lands they traveled through.

This was a coming of age story for multiple of the characters, including Gwen who is in their 40s. I really enjoyed the queer-normative world and the matriarchal society. It was a nice change from most books to see women making the big decisions.

The story was a little more violent than I was expecting but it did make sense in the story. I really did not expect a lot of twists and the politics were interesting and well written.

This ended on a cliffhanger and there is a second book that I can't wait to check out. This was not an easy read but kept me turning the pages to see what happened next. Highly recommend if your looking for an exciting coming of age fantasy.

Thank you NetGalley and Angry Robot for the ARC in exchange for an honestly review.

This richly layered portal fantasy throws you into a world teetering on chaos, where alliances and betrayals shape every step. Saffron’s journey is both personal and epic, with strong, flawed women leading the charge. Vibrant and immersive, it’s a story that lingers long after the last page.

I loved this book. It has really well written polyamory and queerness which is really hard to find. I liked how the main cast is not just POC but Women of color, it's something not explored enough.

I’ll start with my main negative I wish this book had a chapter or something at the beginning to explain what happened before rather than it just dotted into the story as I found that a little difficult.

I wish I’d of known there was a glossary at the end as I’d of read that to start with.

The book was great, it was very unique and i loved that is showed a map at the beginning I thought it was a nice touch, the plot and characters were both great though it has left it on a cliff hanger which I really hope there will be a second book 🤞🏻

Unfortunately, I have DNF’d this book at 44%.

I don’t think it’s particularly flawed in any way. It’s well-written and overall I think the premise is great. From the blurb, I expected some politics or political intrigue, of course, but it’s a lot heavier than I thought it would be and I find that when I read books with a lot of heavy politics throughout, they tend to drag for me. I’m not talking about the “politics” of race, gender, and sexuality, I’m talking about the politics of government/queens/vex, vex’mara, etc. I find it a little hard to focus or care as much about the world and the characters. So really, it’s just a me thing!

I've never read a portal fantasy before, so this was new and exciting for me! I liked the characters and the setting and I will read the next book when it comes out.