The Blighted Stars

The Blighted Stars by Megan E. O'Keefe
Series: The Devoured Worlds #1
Published by Orbit Books on May 23, 2023
Genres: Science Fiction
Pages: 544
Format: Paperback
ISBN: 0316290793
Goodreads

When a spy is stranded on a dead planet with her mortal enemy, she must first figure out how to survive before she can uncover the conspiracy that landed them both there in the first place.
She’s a revolutionary. Humanity is running out of options. Habitable planets are being destroyed as quickly as they’re found and Naira Sharp knows the reason why. The all-powerful Mercator family has been controlling the exploration of the universe for decades, and exploiting any materials they find along the way under the guise of helping humanity’s expansion. But Naira knows the truth, and she plans to bring the whole family down from the inside.
He’s the heir to the dynasty. Tarquin Mercator never wanted to run a galaxy-spanning business empire. He just wanted to study rocks and read books. But Tarquin’s father has tasked him with monitoring the mining of a new planet, and he doesn’t really have a choice in the matter.
Disguised as Tarquin’s new bodyguard, Naira plans to destroy his ship before it lands. But neither of them expects to end up stranded on a dead planet. To survive and keep her secret, Naira will have to join forces with the man she’s sworn to hate. And together they will uncover a plot that’s bigger than both of them.

Thank you to Orbit Books for sending me a finished copy of this for review! This does not affect my review, all thoughts here are my own honest opinions.

Okay the fact that this book only has 1014 ratings and 248 reviews on Goodreads is a CRIME!!! A crime I tell you! Because this book whips ass. It’s an incredible start to a sci-fi trilogy that has elements of horror (in a creepy, survival way, not a scary way) and dystopian fiction (in a corporations controlling society way). It starts off with a bang and doesn’t let up the whole time. Also, the casual queerness is a wonderful thing to see!

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The world-building

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I loved this book so much that I really want everyone to read it. However, I know a lot of people are often put off by hard sci-fi. Though I wouldn’t classify this hard super hard sci-fi, there are elements that may be confusing at first if you’re not used to the genre. So I just want to briefly explain some of the science-y elements. That way, if you do pick it up you’re not scared away by those things! Also I just want to talk about the concepts and how they tie into the world, because I think they are fascinating haha.

Firstly, in this society is you can create a digital copy of yourself/your neural map. This means you can “re-print” a body for yourself if you die, or if your body doesn’t fit you. For example, one of the main characters is a trans man. Once he was old enough to have himself “mapped”, he was able to print himself a body that fit with his gender. This of course is a privilege generally afforded to those with money. The wealthy can print their bodies many times and live for much longer than a standard human lifetime. This naturally feeds into how the wealthy families stay wealthy, and stay in charge.

Another element of body printing is that you can augment a body to have “pathways” that enhance abilities. For example, soldiers may have pathways that enhance strength and reduce pain. These pathways are tied to physical abilities. These pathways are made possible by a (fictional) mineral called relkalite. It is mined by the Mercator family, who is one of the wealthiest ruling families.

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The plot

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The relkalite mentioned above is a key aspect of the book. The book starts with the son of the Mercator family, Tarquin, on a mission to an Earth-like planet to mine relkalite. In addition to being using in print pathways, the mineral also has uses in powering space stations. This is critical, since Earth and Earth-like planets are being affected by something called “shroud,” which drains all life from the planets. Shroud generally appears after a planet has been mined for relkalite. Our second main character, a revolutionary named Naira, has accused the Mercator family of causing shroud as a byproduct of mining.

As you might guess, through MYSTERIOUS and STRESSFUL circumstances, our two main characters get stranded on this planet. Which, GASP, has not been mined but already has shroud! So now the two along with a handful of other crewmembers must work together to escape, and figure out what happened to this planet. BUT PLOT TWIST! Naira has been printed into a body that is not her own, so no one knows that it is really her.

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Why I loved it!!

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Okay now that we’ve got all the basics out of the way!! I can dive a little deeper into why I loved this book so much. At the base level, I think that O’Keefe did an amazing job balancing politics with action. The pacing never felt off, and the tension was well done in all of the different kinds of scenes. I was just as eager to read the fight scenes as the scenes between the ruling families. She also does a really great job of telling what is ultimately a very complex story in a way that is very digestible and fairly easy to follow.

The characters are also SO GOOD. The two mains, Naira and Tarquin, are definitely my favorites. Tarquin is such a nerdy softie and I love him!! And he’s bi and trans, and is allowed to just be himself and its just. Beautiful. We get to see both of them experience so much through the course of the book. The character development is amazingly well done, and it is so satisfying to see how their experiences and the associated revelations about their world change them. ALSO THERE IS ROMANCE!!! And I thought it was cute as heck! I ate that shit up!

But also I want to say that I love that the other characters were very fleshed out as well. The story is mainly told from those two perspectives, but every so often we get a chapter from a different character’s perspective. I thought those chapters helped a lot with fleshing out the story, and giving dimension to other characters. And the key is that they never felt awkwardly placed or forced.

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And on and on…

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There are so many other things I could talk about but this is already the longest review I’ve written in a long time haha. But just for some extra bullet points!

• the villains are complex and well fleshed out!
• and there are a few different ones!!
• there is a cute little robot named Pliny
• there are definitely some The Last of Us vibes…

And to top it off, this came out in May, and the sequel comes out in ONE WEEK!! O’Keefe mentioned in her afterward that she wrote all three of the trilogy in 2020-2021. I’m hoping that means we don’t have to wait too long for book three either.

SO GET THEE TO A LIBRARY OR BOOKSTORE AND GET THIS BOOK!!!!