The Stars Are Legion

The Stars Are Legion by Kameron Hurley 380 pages

"Set within a system of decaying world-ships travelling through deep space, this breakout novel of epic science fiction follows a pair of sisters who must wrest control of their war-torn legion of worlds—and may have to destroy everything they know in order to survive.

On the outer rim of the universe, a galactic war has been waged for centuries upon hundreds of world-ships. But these worlds will continue to die through decay and constant war unless a desperate plan succeeds.

Anat, leader of the Katazyrna world-ship and the most fearsome raiding force on the Outer Rim, wants peace. To do so she offers the hand of her daughter, Jayd, to her rival. Jayd has dreamed about leading her mother’s armies to victory her whole life—but she has a unique ability, and that makes her leverage, not a leader. As Anat convinces her to spend the rest of her life wed to her family’s greatest enemy, it is up to Jayd’s sister Zan—with no stomach for war—to lead the cast off warriors she has banded together to victory and rescue Jayd. But the war does not go at all as planned…"

I took the above summary from Goodreads because I couldn't figure out a way to summarize this story in a way that made any sense.  I liked the idea of this story and I found some of the characters to be interesting . . . but I didn't love this book.  I kept reading because I wanted to know what was going to happen, but I often found some of the story hard to follow.  I have read other stories like this, where you begin and you're in the middle of a world that you don't know and can't relate anything to and you just have to relax and go with it.  However, there was some back-and-forth in the timeline and with different characters' viewpoints at times, I found it was just a difficult book to follow.  Add in all of the nightmarish elements in these worlds and the entire experience was like having one long fever dream.  Strange and interesting in the moment, but then you're glad when you're feeling better and can leave that fever dream behind.

I did really appreciate that all of the characters were women --- that's different, especially for science fiction (and so the book really passes the Bechdel test!!).