A twisty, complicated and rich space opera following the consequences and results of obsession.
Obsession is a strong word. It's a word that can completely define and overwrite a personality. And it defines the primary pair of characters in Bethany Jacobs' These Burning Stars. Esek is a investigator, a cleric in the Treble (three star system) polity of the Kindom, this more than slightly theological polity spread across three distant solar systems. Esek is obsessed with finding a person she only knows as Six, a threat to her, her family and the whole stability of the empire. Six is obsessed, too, it seems, with "impressing Esek". For, you see, Six can be said to be Esek's own creation, in a school incident that starts off the novel. But now, having created the monster, Esek's obsession and Six's obsession will define their futures, and possibly the futures of all.
These Burning Stars relies heavily on jumping back and forth in time of the narrative, making strong use of limited information by the reader in a particular time, and then showing an earlier time that contextualizes earlier chapters that are ahead of it in the time stream. So, aside from that first chapter, where Esek, already a ferocious and dangerous figure in the Empire, creates Six in almost Batman-Joker like fashion, the rest of the novel bounces us back and forth, showing the fruits of Esek's creation, and the obsession both have for each other, and the poisonous fruits of those obsessions.
The world (three solar system) of the Kindom is a fascinating set of worlds, power players and culture. It is a polity that has a strong theological bent and control. It is not quite a theocracy, it is more akin to a strong aristocratic empire, with a number of families in competition and contesting with each other, of various ranks. The First Families (such as the Nightfoots, from which Esek is a member and also possible heir) run everything and while together they form the Kindom and cooperate against interests that they see as destabilizing it, otherwise they are strong rivals. But scions of these families are often given to be clerics, and that is the situation which Esek Nightfoot had long since fallen into.
Add in the fact that, as the plot unfolds, that we find that the Nightfoots controlled a planet with a natural substance that helped provide interstellar travel, and then later, when that was depleted, developed a synthetic version, oppressing the workers who spent decades mining the original material, and you can see that Jacobs is quite clearly inspired by the world of Frank Herbert's Dune. There is no strong Emperor manipulating matters, instead it's all Landsraad politicking and infighting, and of course competitions and struggles within families themselves. Esek is ambitious, and her obsession with Six and stopping her is grounded firmly within her own plans within the Nightfoot family (as opposed to the Church hierarchy, which she is far less interested in social climbing within).
The other books that this book made me strongly feel resonance with is Jo Graham's space opera series. Those novels, like this, are in a limited number of solar systems that had been colonized by generation ships long ago, and so competition and control rage over these several star systems. Those books, too, show a strong interest and show the importance of religion and religious identities among the populations of the planets, and the characters themselves.
Books like Graham's, and These Burning Stars, here, feel like they are definitely an evolution of thought on how societies out among the stars would handle religion, faith and belief. I read a fair amount of old school science fiction, and for a while believed myself, that humanity would "shed" religion once we were established among the stars. The only religious beliefs in, say, the Foundation universe are manipulative and manipulating cynical exercises in power, by the Foundation and others. There's no church in the panoply of worlds in Heinlein's future history. Pournelle's future history has the Catholic Church resurgent, though, a counter-example. But even that doesn't take into the account the idea that once we as a species get out among the stars, we are likely to find new and different paths to the numinous. Those paths and how that faith and spirituality might be manifest, is something that I get a lot of authors don't want to tackle, but they are part of the human experience. Faith is a core part of what makes humans humans.
Back to this book and its characters, and speaking of faith, while I've talked about Esek and carefully for spoiler reasons not mentioned much about Six, the real heart of this book is the character Chono. Chono is, for much of the book, Six's right hand in the search for Six, although she split off on duties of their own. Chono also reminds me that one sociological fillip in these novels is that until people choose their name, they are not given a chance to choose or associate a gender; Six's gender remains mysterious because Six is their school designation. Also, it seems that women have equal or possibly greater than equal power to men in the society of the Treble. There is a TV trope called "Red Oni, Blue Oni", where a passionate, violent, impetuous and reckless person is partnered with a cool, calm, collected and rational person. Usually, you see this dynamic with a cool and collected leader who has a hothead for a subordinate, the one you really don't ever want to piss off, because she will gut you like a fish. In These Burning Stars, Jacobs flips this dynamic. Esek is the reckless and violent and impetuous one (she did create Six thereby by her reckless action) but she is grounded and given ballast by the imperturbable and solid and dependable Chono.
In real ways, Chono is our everywoman character, the character we can relate to (or at least I did in spades), especially because she does not have that overriding obsession that Esek develops, is observant, determined, and doggedly loyal. Chono is also, much to Esek's disbelief and surprise, very sincerely devout and a believer. Esek joined the church for very similar reasons spare sons in pre-modern times might join the Catholic church as clergy, not for any particular strong belief, but because it was a ladder of power they could access. Esek is the same way, and worse, Esek seems to have blinders on that other people can think and act differently in that regard. That obsession and focus on Esek makes her a little unrelatable at times, which again, "drives us" to go and seek Chono as our refuge in finding out way through this world.
I should point out at this stage that for all of the plotting and the obsessive characters, the novel delivers its action beats and intense writing is quite engaging. It could well be considered brutal in multiple places when it comes to that action, this is a world of violence that Jacobs does not shy away from describing. The opening scene with Six's fight as a student against other students in a competition does set the tone for the novel in this regard. And in a real way, whenever the complicated plotting and intricacy seems about ready to be too much, we get the flashes and doses of violence and action. Jacobs does a good job in balancing sharp action and deep plot.
A lot of that deep plot revolves around reveals that make more sense as we unpack the fractured and jumping back and forward of the timeline, so discussing it is difficult without giving away spoilers. This is definitely a novel for the reader to discover and unpack what is really going on, why it is going on, and what the whole Esek-Six conflict means and what is driving it in the end. There is obsession, ambition, and desire on the personal front, and these are paired with political manipulations, conflicts, tactics and the fate of the Kindom itself. This is a puzzle of a plot to work out and I had to stop and consider all I had learned once all the pieces fell into place.
I don't think that the book would have worked nearly as well if the book was told in a straight and dogged manner from earliest event (the first meeting of Six and Esek) all the way down to their final meeting, aboard the still functioning generation ship which was one of the ships that helped found this society in the first place. A straightforward narrative would have simplified a lot of the emotional beats and underpinnings by giving some things away, and at least two major plot twists would have been muffled by having things in straight up order. I find myself conflicted on whether the book would actually stand on its own without these twists, and I do so because the book is a first in a trilogy. With the revelations and the untangled narrative by the end of the novel, will it all hold up in a second volume.
I am not sure it will, given how powerful the use of timeline is in this novel. On the other hand, one strong point in this book's favor for you as a reader is that there is an offramp right here. The book ends on a note that allows you to exit the Kindom-verse...if you want. If you don't want to risk the second volume, you can read this twisting, baroque, complicated and rich space opera as a single work and go on your way. And I do recommend that you do. Jacobs may have set up strong expectations and ambitions in this novel for the rest of the series, but the first book is right here for you to dive into.
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Highlights:
- Twisting, complicated, rich plotting
- Baroque, intensely detailed setting
- #teamchono
Reference: Jacobs, Bethany, These Burning Stars [Orbit, 2023]
POSTED BY: Paul Weimer. Ubiquitous in Shadow, but I'm just this guy, you know? @princejvstin.
