In a move designed to frustrate this podcast specifically, a really good story has been hamstrung by the addition of boring lesbians and alarming philosemitism.

2024 reads / storygraph

These Burning Stars

political space fantasy

follows an infamous heir to the Nightfoot empire and a stoic cleric who are hunting down a figure from their past - the cleric’s classmate who the heir challenged to impress her, or die trying

and a hacker/thief who’s gotten her hands on something that could implicate the Nightfoot family in a planet-wide genocide

sapphic & nonbinary characters

reading these burning stars and never have i seen two characters who are so held back because they are not having gay sex i swear. esek and chono if they boned once would fix them

5 stars

I loved every bit of this book!

The cat-and-mouse chase between Esek and Six, Chono and Jun's chapters were all so extremely interesting. Each reveal was expertly placed to give us new information and shine new light on something else or a new direction. The fact that each character's story is expertly woven together was just chef's kiss.

One of my complaints was that casting was described pretty vaguely so I don't understand it super well.

But I loved the worldbuilding and the characters and the plot. The ending!!!!! I can't wait to see how the story progresses.

DNF at 56%. I can't take it anymore. The structure of the book is divided in current day events and past in alternating chapters. Every chapter set in the past is detailing a psychopath given unquestioned leeway to murder her way across multiple starsystems. There's so much gore and rape, it's exhausting: particularly since the time difference between past and present is around 20 years and one of the MC's keeps obsessively mass murdering her way acrose the universe. No change, no growth, no resistance from society, the other MC or even the hidden protagonist. The technology level is highly fluctuating and frankly, more fantasy than SF. Hackers and other computer-savy people are "casters" like in spell casting and its description is exactly like that: lyrical with no glimpse of technology. Same goes for the medical procedures: regrowth of a limb and several cosmetic mods: no problem, but DNA tracking seems to be unknown. Same goes for the spaceships. We don't get any technical detail - it's all handwavey: the small Warbird where the distance from one protagonists cabin to the others is 30 yards - not so small at all then? The travel based on the substance the whole conflict is about: it burns. That's it. Wait no, it's black with red striations and on contact with oxygen it ages and loses its color in about 100 years. Like a pearl. Nothing more. Gender identity is dealt with in the form of gender-tags (no further information given on how that works), which can be switched at a moments notice and are of no further impact. As a non-native English speaker coming from a gendered language I'm always interested to see what authors do with this setting and I must say, if I compare Ancillary Justice to These Burning Stars Ann Leckie comes out the winner in terms of detail, precision and impact. The Jeveni genocide and Remembrance Day. By description of their language alone I'd say these are a stand-in for the Jewish people and - since I didn't finish the book - I can't say how this will play out, but it is certainly a dangerous path, putting them into a sci-fantasy. The author substitutes real world words with in-world words (champagne, for example) but keeps to real world idioms (takes to it like fish to water). I don't know. I'm out.

Astarion - Little Star

ARC Review: These Burning Stars by Bethany Jacobs

Book: These Burning Stars Author: Bethany Jacobs Pages: 517 Source: Orbit Publisher: Orbit Genre: Sci-fi, Space Opera Publication Date: October 17, 2023 Goodreads Summary: A dangerous cat-and-mouse quest for revenge. An empire that spans star systems, built on the bones of a genocide. A carefully hidden secret that could collapse worlds, hunted by three women with secrets of their own.…

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These Burning Stars

We are well into spooky season and I’m not even sure what to do with myself about it. Gotta make sure the decorations are up and the candy bowl is full. But I get to take a break from that to talk about books just now. And this is a book worth talking about even though I’m not sure I did it particularly well. This one is thanks to netGalley. Here’s Bethany Jacobs’ These Burning Stars.…

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across the NATO bloc we are faced with a political class who are openly and loudly cheering on a genocide that they are funding and enabling. this is the political reality of the "developed world"

same heart same blood

@coline7373

Child of the sun, doomed to burn so intense that he will consume himself to ashes

buddies🍺

wow vittu and kitr meow meow

testing out some more lineart based stuff, alternative colors under the cut

S06E18 - A STAR IS BURNS