These Burning Stars

## Ratings
Cover: ⭐⭐⭐
Initial Draw: ⭐⭐⭐⭐
Characters: ⭐⭐⭐
Pacing: ⭐⭐⭐⭐
Finish Line Feeling: ⭐⭐⭐⭐



## Review

#### Cover

The cover of These Burning Stars is nice and simple if not a little generic. It doesn't really give you any insight into the story or evoke any particular emotion. 

#### Initial Draw

I love sci-fi so any new sci-fi that pops up I am willing to give a go. The main plot reads as:

Jun Ironway, hacker, con artist, and only occasional thief, has got her hands on a piece of contraband that could set her up for life: evidence that implicates the powerful Nightfoot family in a planet-wide genocide seventy-five years ago. The Nightfoots control the precious sevite that fuels interplanetary travel through three star systems. And someone is sure to pay handsomely for anything that could break their hold.

Which sounds intriguing in itself. I work in cyber security so anything in the hacker culture vein gets extra points for me when it comes to picking it off the shelf. 
#### Characters

The characters overall I didn't find particularly exciting. Not great but not bad either. I'm a sucker for a strong character driven story but this delivered less in character development and more in political intrigue and cat and mouse. 

Esek and Chono were the two supposed “good guys” but it was clear that Esek was being portrayed as unhinged from the start so it really didn't provide much in the way of shock factor the more she did anything and everything in her persuit of justice. 

The hacker Jun, Six and associated cast were much more engaging. I'm not sure if the intention was for the reader to engage with them more from the start but that was certainly what kept me interested. 

#### Pacing

Pacing was fast and flowing but the jumping around between characters and time periods did break the flow a bit. In general it could do with a more engaging overarching story as a large chunk of the book was just between the hands and six going tit for tat over finding or evading each other. 

I did enjoy the pace and constant action though as without it the story could easily have lost me. 

#### Finish line feeling 

Overall I found this book enjoyable but I don't think it will turn out to be overly memorable. It's an amazing effort for a debut novel and I am really keen to read the remaining books in the trilogy. 

My hope is that the world that Bethany has created gets fleshed out more in future series as it seems to have a lot of potential to be explored and expanded upon with other stories. Similar to something like the Scythe book series. 

An empire controlled by a religious body called the Kindom. Corporations controlled by powerful families, such as the Nightfoots, who have a monopoly on sevite, the material needed for interplanetary travel. A mysterious figure out for revenge, aiming to reveal the bloody truth behind this house of cards, threatening to bring everything crashing down.

I think I would categorize this book more as space opera than hard sci-fi, but that's not a bad thing. It's a complex world with characters that are not necessarily likeable, morally ambiguous, but forces to be reckoned with. Chono, the stoic noviate was a good foil for Esek, who comes across as just completely and utterly unstable and chaotic. Then there's Jun, the hacker who's just trying to stay alive.

I love the world building and I am a HUGE FAN of the explosion of queer stories within the sci-fi and fantasy genres. This is an excellent addition to the slate, and I love to see more and more of them.

I feel almost like I should have seen the twist at the end coming, and yet, it took me completely by surprise, just like it did the other characters. If Goodreads allowed partial ratings, I'd give this one a 3.75. It's not QUITE a 4 for me, but it's close. And I'll definitely be reading the rest of the series.

The start of this book seemed to have the makings of someone living in a royal court where everyone is looking over their back for the stabber, either bodily or politically. I began picturing everyone in black leather, floor-length, coats and black boots. Just my own perceptions.