These Burning Stars

August 21, 2023
Jacobs debuts with a solid, plot-driven space opera, the first in a series. The three Hands of the Kindom control the star system of Treble: Clerics, responsible for religion; Secretaries, responsible for law; and Cloaksaan, responsible for enforcement. Ruthless Cleric Esek Nightfoot has left many enemies in her wake, including Jun Ironway, whose family Esek exterminated to cover up the Nightfoot family’s involvement in a past genocide. Since then, Jun has grown into an expert hacker, and she’s determined to exact her revenge by exposing Esek’s crimes. As Esek and fellow Cleric Chono hunt Jun down, their mission is complicated by a figure from their mutual past: the enigmatic Six, a promising former classmate of Chono’s who caught Esek’s attention as a potential future Novitiate—until it all went horribly and mysteriously wrong. Since then, Esek has repeatedly tried and failed to kill Six, and as Chono becomes convinced that Six is somehow involved in Jun’s revenge quest, Chono’s loyalties are tested. The resulting multiplayer cat-and-mouse game is intricately plotted and tightly paced with a satisfying ending that sets the stage nicely for the next installment. Space opera fans will eat this up. Agent: Bridget Smith, JABberwocky.

September 15, 2023
An intricate plot for revenge drives this far-future SF political thriller, a debut novel that is also the first of a trilogy. The planets of the Treble are ruled by the Kindom, a religious order, and the wealthy First Families. Esek Nightfoot, a cruel, vicious, and sociopathically self-interested Cleric and First Family scion, cut off all career opportunities for a brilliant student called Six, challenging them to do something "extraordinary" to impress her into taking them as a novitiate. Six's "extraordinary" act was to leave school before graduation and begin collecting evidence that exposes the Nightfoots' complicity in a genocide. Esek has pursued Six for years, often with the uneasy assistance of Cleric Chono, a far more pious person who feels loyalty both to Six, a former schoolmate, and to Esek, who once pulled Chono out of a sexually abusive situation. Their quest eventually leads to Jun Ironway, a gifted hacker who holds a piece of the data implicating the Nightfoots and also has her own dark history with both Esek and Six. Does Esek want to kill Six, as her family's matriarch demands, or make good on her promise to make them one of her novitiates? Or does she have something else entirely in mind? As the political situation of the Treble becomes more unstable, the chase careens toward a violent and shocking endgame. The narrative jumps around in time, fully filling in past events that are initially referenced in the present-day story. At first this seems unnecessary and confusing, but as several staggering twists emerge, it becomes clear that the choice is utterly necessary and the confusion might actually be the author's method of obscuring a key revelation. The reader may figure out that revelation before it explodes in the text but will likely be surprised by a good part of what follows. The author also does an excellent job of applying what are typically high fantasy or historical fiction tropes (the tension between religious and secular entities, the unrest over the hereditary passage of power, and the fraught relationship between mentor and student) to high-tech science fiction (perhaps Dune was an influence?). An exciting start from a fresh talent, offering emotional and political complexity plus plenty of interplanetary action.

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Starred review from September 1, 2023

DEBUT In another time and galaxy, there is the Treble, ruled by the Kindom and the first families who settled on the planets after arriving on their generation ships. The Kindom asserts its rule through its righteous clerics, clever secretaries, and brutal cloaksaan. The capricious Esek Nightfoot is both a cleric and a member of a powerful first family that manufactures fuel for spaceships and jump gates. The Nightfoots developed synthetic fuel after exhausting the original jevite mines on the Jeveni moon, which was eventually destroyed, along with many of its residents. Now the Kindom sends Esek and her former novitiate Chono on a mission to retrieve a memory coin that may implicate the Nightfoots in the Jeveni genocide. This leads Esek and Chono to a ship of space pirates and a brilliant hacker, and all the while Esek is hunting the mysterious Six, who also threatens the Nightfoot empire. The protagonists are carefully crafted, with their layers slowly built to impressive complexity. This buildup pays off as the chase escalates across planets and comes to a stunning conclusion on one of the original generation ships. VERDICT Full of political intrigue and impressive worldbuilding, Jacobs's superb debut launches this space opera trilogy.--Melissa DeWild

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Starred review from September 1, 2023
The first in the Kindom trilogy is a space opera set a thousand years after the last humans on Earth boarded generational ships to find habitable planets. Life on Earth is a distant, vague history, unlike the events unfolding on the many planets that span the star systems called Treble. Children of the Kindom, the ruling empire, take no name or gender marker until they have completed training at the kinschool, designed to create brilliant yet brutal pawns of the Hands of the Kindom. Pirates rule the Black Ocean in their warfaring ships, smuggling, kidnapping, and murdering. Certain families have grown powerful, controlling precious trade that fuels interplanetary travel and, in turn, provides greater access to those who control the Kindom. This nonstop, action-packed story follows three powerful women--a government-sanctioned murderer with psychopathic tendencies, a devout cleric who believes in the Six Gods and the rule of law, and a hacker with no options--who are all hunting for ownership of the same secrets. Sapphic relationships, gender-fluid characters, and space pirates take center stage. Readers who love smart thrillers and explosive sf won't want to miss this book. For fans of Everina Maxwell, Arkady Martine, and Becky Chambers.

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