The Stars Are Legion

The most innovative world-building in the space opera genre I've read in a really long time, with some amazingly rich & complex relationships of all kinds between women as an added delight. Zan awakens with no memory, but a battered body that knows how to fight brutally and instincts that tell her that she loves Jayd, the woman who is caring for her, but that Jayd is keeping secrets -- and that something is terribly wrong with the world she has awoken in. Zan learns that she is in a living worldships of the Legion. It, like all the others, is slowly dying, and the families that rule the worldships battle & scavenge for the resources to keep their ships healthy for a little longer. She is to lead an assault an anomalous worldship called the Mokshi, as she has apparently done many times before, losing her memory and emerging as the sole survivor of the attack each time. As Zan recovers bits of her memory & learns more about the herself, Jayd, and the worldships, she has to decide if she truly wants to remember what she's done as well as who she wants to be. This book will not be for everyone -- these worldships are living beings, with organic tech that is gooey & visceral & tentacled for the most part, rather than stainless steel & lasers. Ships have to be self-sustaining, and that means all organic matter gets recycled, and there are passages that get downright horrific. Additionally, there are themes of reproductive rights that shade into outright body horror, as the the all-female denizens of the ship birth what the ship needs, on the ship's schedule. Hurley tackles these themes seriously, but the material can be triggering. The Stars Are Legion is not light reading & it isn't cheerful reading, but it is fascinating & the plot is propulsive. I found Zan & Jayd easier to empathize with than some of Hurley's other protagonists; if the Bel Dame series was a little too brutal for you, this might be more up your alley.

Grim, gruesome, disturbing and ultimately depressing. The world(s) presented here have no sense of wonder, and I found it difficult to care for any of the characters, even (or especially) the protagonists. Maybe that's the point. Hard to believe that the author is a Hugo-winner.

Ever forward. Amnesia, war, love, birth, duplicity, and the nature of all things - a finely wrought story celebrating life.