These Burning Stars

There is a concern I have seen voiced by a number of reviewers that science fiction is dying out. Certainly if you look at bookshop shelves, or best-seller lists, you would get that impression. Fantasy is everywhere. Works that are obviously SF, much less so.

Nevertheless, when the Locus Recommended Reading Lists come out, you will see plenty of science fiction novels listed. I suspect also that most of the books you see in Waterstones will not make the fantasy list. I understand that they are, for the most part, what the publishers call Romantasy. That is, they are romance novels set in a fantasy world. Whether they are good fantasy or not, I can’t say, because I am not fond of romance as a genre. But it does seem that most of the people writing them are not part of the speculative fiction world, and are unlikely to ever turn up at a convention.

This is all a bit strange, and doubtless one of the many side-effects of us having won the culture war. Fantasy is mainstream these days, but the fantasy that sells to a mainstream audience may not be the fantasy we are used to. Science fiction, on the other hand, seems to be mainstream only on TV. But, having seen people bemoan its lack, I figured I should make an effort and review more of it.

These Burning Stars is most definitely in the science fiction family tree. It is space opera, set in a far-future civilization known as The Kindom. There are Noble Families who control most of the resources. There are also three of what one might call Guilds, but the book calls Hands: priests, warriors and bureaucrats. If this all sounds a little bit like Dune, well the same thought occurred to me. Bethany Jacobs has done her reading, and produced something that is, in that well-worn publisher nostrum, ‘more of the same but different’.

As with Dune, the plot is part-dependent on economics. Jump gates are dependent on a rare mineral called sevite. The primary source of sevite is a moon called Jeve whose inhabitants, the Jeveni are both necessary to mine the stuff, and a sort of Jew-analogue in that they are fiercely proud of their singular, ethnic culture, and roundly despised by much of the rest of the population.

The other half of the plot concerns two children and the powerful but reckless priest who shapes their lives. Esek Nightfoot is a member of one of the most important noble families, and also a senior member of the Righteous Hand, the clergy. Esek is young, beautiful, hugely talented, massively ambitious, and totally out of control. She does what she wants, when she wants, relying on her power and talent to allow her to get away with it.

At the start of the book, Esek is summoned to see a group of school children. The Kindom is ruthless with its youth. Anyone wishing to join one of the Hands must pass through rigorous training during which they are known only by a number, and by the pronoun ‘it’. The school thinks that Esek will be interested in a child known as Six, and might perhaps take it on as an apprentice. Six is truly remarkable, but Esek spots something that the school has missed. She refuses to take the child, but instead sets it a challenge to prove itself to her.

Years later, the child who was Two in the same cohort as Six has been Esek’s apprentice and is now a senior priest in her own right. Unlike Esek, Chono takes the job of the clergy seriously and tries to live a moral life. Having been Esek’s apprentice, and now friend, stretches that commitment to breaking point.

Meanwhile Six has graduated and vanished. They took Esek’s challenge very seriously, and the pair have for some years been engaged in a deadly game of cat and mouse in which Esek tries to catch Six, and Six tries to find evidence of crimes that will cause Esek’s downfall. Matters come to a head during a political crisis involving the Jeveni, and Six’s secret ancestry, which is the reason Esek didn’t want them as a pupil, and also involves a massacre of Jeveni.

The story is told with interweaved chapters, half of which are set in the present, and the other half in the past but working forward over the years until the two narratives merge. It is all cleverly done, and there is a nice twist right at the end. I keep thinking that I should have enjoyed it more than I did, but the characters didn’t quite jell for me. Esek I found too extreme, and Chono’s simultaneous devotion to her old schoolfriend, and to her wildly immoral ex-mentor, also didn’t make a lot of sense. On the other hand, the book is the first of a trilogy, and I am intrigued enough to want to find out what happens next.

Title: These Burning Stars
By: Bethany Jacobs
Publisher: Orbit
Purchase links:
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