The Stars Are Legion

Really enjoyed this one. It is an intriguing and compelling book.

Another exceptional, unique, and totally wild story from Kameron Hurley. This is one of her best.

While this book is rife with first-person dialogue, introspective dialogue, gender challenging assumptions, it is grossly deficient in world building, cohesive detail, and literary continuity. This book is like eating a piece of Swiss cheese. There are so many holes in the story, that the reader leaving responsible to make up the difference. In addition the first person dialogue is disjointed and does not gives the reader a true sense of the artists vision. I feel like the artist did the reader a disservice and because well to be frank, that sucks, and it’s lazy.

The author does not go into detail about the physics for the realities of the world she’s trying to build. Everything surrounding the actual world building of the Stoval is fake, extremely far-fetched, and just downright illogical. Having vehicles that are sentient that can travel through space without any kind of protection just shows the authors ignorance when it comes to knowing anything about science and fiction. I give the author credit for being imaginative but that’s it.

Honestly I think she just got a lot of support for this novel because she’s probably a lesbian. Not to say that there aren’t any good female authors out there, I just think that maybe her book was overhyped Because of her sexual orientation. The entire time I was listening to his book I had many more questions than answers and the world that she built was unreal and not in a good way.

I really wanted to like this novel and considered rating it with three stars to recognize the risks it took. My rating is two and a half going on five stars.

The story moves brilliant moments, quite a bit of complexity, and interesting concepts. Like other reviewers have said, this novel is different than any I've read before. My issue is the lingering feelings of disappointment and disgust. (Was the disgust intended?) Too many times, I thought, This could be great, if only....

From talk online, I'd expected a space opera / military science fiction with a strong romance between the main characters. The reality is, maybe, political Body Horror on a global scale. There's a disregard for both self and life in general that is hard to stomach.

The tagline of "Lesbians in Space" suggested romance, or at least of talk about characters' sexuality. Love in this story isn't romantic, the rare bits of romance are sickening (read: abusive), and since men are nonexistent, sexual orientation is irrelevant.

What carried me through the story was the setting, specifically how everything works together. My disappointment comes from how every bit of world-building invited unanswered questions. (Was that intentional?)

The characters are hard to like, as their thoughts are repetitive and their motivations are vague. Their war felt like a sidestory, especially when each character came across as a bigger threat to herself than any of her enemies were.

By the end, I'd expected to feel more about the characters or to understand more about The Legion.

strange, gross, amazing, weird, and emotional. loved it.

Beautiful and haunting as the people who are in it, this is a science fiction story of love,loss and the yearning for something more for oneself. Another great work by Kameron Hurley, as always.

This was not my cup of tea. Too gory, too violent and too meandering.

Horrible. Had nothing. No story, jus an unconnected hodgepodge . Waist time if you wii

The characters were so strongly written and the world building was superb. No one e was one dimensional and I truly enjoyed this unusual take on the “world ship” trope.

If women ruled the world, what's stopping it from being as violent and problematic as one ruled by men?

What if we never expected for women to be the feminine, kind, soft, cosmic balance to masculine energy? Will we be world leaders? Will we be driven to conquer eachother through distructive wars? Will we be capable of great violence and unspeakable horrors? Will we fight for love and country with a consuming ferocity?

Who are we if we were not constantly in the shadow of the male construct of strength and patriotism?

Maybe...just maybe, we will be just as flawed--because we are equally as human.

For me, this novel gives strong women the permission to have shades of grey. It gives us permission to be multifacated individuals and be shaped imperfectly by the challenges of circumstances and fear and anger and desire and all the aspects that are universal to all human beings.

This is an important part of the conversation when we talk about a "post-patriarchal" society. It's important because equality does not mean we are the "same as men" it means we, both men and women, are simply people.

This is the first book that's gotten me excited to read in a long time. Absolutely amazing concept! My mind is still reeling.

Started out interesting… then quickly started repeating itself… then degenerated into “the protagonist gathers and adventuring party and goes on a quest” around the middle of the book and I just couldn’t care anymore.

It all becomes very monotone.

It’s gross and leans into body horror. If one likes that, great. Because that’s the tenor of the whole damn thing.

Only women exist. Ok. Fine. At a certain point that becomes kind of irrelevant, doesn’t it? Repeat it enough and it’s just humans, after all.

Badass action? I mean … there is action and gore and body horror and on and on. But why? Who knows.

The further I got, the more bored I got. Couldn’t finish it. Skipped through to see if it resolved in any meaningful way. Don’t think it did, but who knows.

Ok, so I finished this book because I felt like if I had a lot of negative things to say, I should at least give it a fair reading. On the whole, this was a just not for me, because I want likeable characters to the point where the spectacular world building could not save this book. This is one of those horrible people being horrible and manipulative to other people books, and I just don't enjoy that sort of book at all. I don't even care that it was all in the service of some greater good or tiny sliver of hope. The premise never really panned out -- why is Mokshi so different from the other worlds? despite a few throwaway lines that it is different because it was built to be, that is never explained. In fact, most of the culture/development history of the societies is only ever given a wide brush -- which I guess makes sense given their level of disintegration, but I found unsatisfying. Further problems below:

1: cultural appropriation of names. Why are the brutal women in this book all named with East Indian names? And why are the tribes/world inhabitants similarly named? It's deliberate enough to be striking, but I'm not really getting any actual inspiration from the Bhagavad Gita, so I feel like this is an appropriation of the exotic, rather than an exploration/retelling of Indian Mythology. Flair without substance bothers me.

2: Honestly, so far it feels like a want-to-be Ancillary Justice with an anti-hero as opposed to likeable characters and more! hot! lesbian! sex scenes. I'm in favor of lesbian love scenes, but this feels like shock factor and I am not super impressed. I mean I think it's cool to explore the ideas of a world without men, I guess? But what is the point of that, except in making it perfectly clear that women are equally horrible? Or maybe just to emphasize the gory horribleness of people birthing things all over the place. blech.

3: The weird organic worlds are fascinating, and in general the world-building is excellent -- except. Except that it doesn't really make any sense. They are trying to get out of a solar system? They are trying to capture a different kind of world? I am hoping that this is a thing that becomes gradually revealed. As it is, it definitely sells the alien aspect, because it's clear that whatever is going on may not have analogues to my body of knowledge at all.

4: Seriously? Cephalopods as weapons? Why? That doesn't even make sense. Are they eating the main characters? Is this an opera of mollusks? They spread rot? What?

Clearly there are people who love this book, and all I can say is more for you!

It wasn't a bad read, but it was so visceral and gory that I don't know that I'd ever want to re-read it. High squick tolerance needed to get through this book. I do wonder if a lot of the squick was because Hurley used language and descriptors to refer to things in the world that seemingly couldn't exist there which just upped the disgust factor (like the apples). I don't want to think too deeply about it.

It was cool how everybody was a woman, and the plot and world-building that hinged on that. I did have to keep checking my assumptions and automatic assignment of male pronouns to unknown entities. It was also a case of "literally nobody is a good guy" which some people can find wearisome.

But oh my goodness it was so gross.

"Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from horror" is not what Clarke said, but he might of after reading this book.

The author says it is space opera, but I'm not sure it fits that genre. A big chunk of the middle reminds me of H. Rider Haggard's fantastic adventure stories with a new civilization in each valley. I'm pretty sure I've never read space opera where instead of ray guns they have cephalopod guns.

Overall, it didn't completely suck me in and I still don't understand parts, but this is an unusual book and it is going to be exactly right for somebody.

I was a big fan of Hurley’s Bel Dame Apocrypha trilogy, but was put off her later works after failing to finish The Mirror Empire. But she continued to get good notices and this, her first novel for the newly-formed Saga imprint – as of 2017 – is explicitly science fiction. And, yes, okay, so the sf novel after this, The Light Brigade, was shortlisted for the Clarke Award last year and I had a brainfart one day and saw The Stars are Legion for 99p on Kindle and thought it was the Clarke-nominated novel… The Stars are Legion is set aboard an organic starship the size of a small planet which is part of a large fleet. It’s not clear whether they’re moving, or stopped, or where they’re going. The two protagonists have a plan which will allow them to refurbish an abandoned and dying starship which has the unique ability to leave the fleet. One of the protagonists has lost her memory – deliberately, it seems, in order to safeguard the plan. As with Hurley’s other fiction, this is brutal stuff, with a body count that can probably be measured in five figures, if not more. The world-building with all the organic technology is cleverly done. But the novel really comes into its own when Zan – that’s the one who’s lost her memory – is left for dead and dumped down a tube leading to the starship’s lower levels. She has to climb back up, passing through vast internal spaces, each with their own populations and flora and fauna, in order to reach the surface. The battles and various political machinations I found less interesting. Oh, and the book is entirely populated by women. There isn’t a single male character in it, or in, it is implied, the entire fleet. Even though I bought The Stars are Legion by accident, I enjoyed it and thought it a lot better than I’d expected. I think I’ll stay away from The Mirror Empire and its sequels, but I’m now more keen than before to read The Light Brigade.

I’m finding it very difficult to start this post for a number of reasons. First off, I don’t want to spoil too much, learning about the world Hurley has created is a great part of this book. But also, I think that revealing some of the plot details may put people off this book, and for the wrong reason. If I tell you that this is a book about soldiers fighting for their survival and their world-ship’s survival, but then add that all the characters are female, some people are probably going to nope out. And in one way that’s their loss, but you can bet they wouldn’t react the same if the only characters in the book were men. Of course that wouldn’t work in this world, on account of a very unusual use for pregnancy and birth in the world-building.

There is also the fact that although gender is an important part of the book it isn’t a reason to read, or not read the book. It is just part of the story. Well, not “just”, it is an integral part of the story.

If you’re worried that a book about women won’t have enough action for you, well, that’s your own preconception that needs addressing right there, and I hate the fact that I’m even mentioning it, but it is something that I’ve read in other places. Women can’t write dark and violent. Well, Hurley proves that they can.

In fact that is the one flaw in this book, in my opinion. It is pretty violent and dark. Grimdark even. And I’m not usually a huge fan of that subgenre. Too much blood and gore and darkness for darkness’ sake. Here, though, it works. The world these characters inhabit is one full of threat and violence and the probability of destruction. Power makes right.

But it isn’t all that dark, and the hints of the wider world where life is continuing, albeit under extreme duress, were a nicely done addition. They didn’t alleviate any of the darkness, but provided characters that weren’t quite so weary as Zan and Jayd.

I think this is possibly my favourite fiction by Hurley, because it has that faintest hints of hope and characters’ who don’t live entirely in a world of darkness and violence. They are, of course, influenced by violence and the world in which they live, they just aren’t quite so grimdark about it all. I need that it of light to really enjoy a book I think. I like to be able to wish a character well, and that can be hard when there is misery upon misery in a book.

In short, this is a really good read, a page-turner that kept me reading “just one more chapter”, full of new and interesting world-building. Give it a go, even if you think it might not be for you, who knows, it might be…

This book hit the spot for me. All the characters are women. The technology is all organic, and there's quite a bit of body horror mixed in there. More than that, the characters are not stereotypical. Even as I really enjoyed myself, I must warn people that it was not an easy read. There were times where even I was a little grossed out, but I get why those things were important. The book embodied the icky squishy parts of being a human with female plumbing very well, and for some people that might be too well. I feel like this book does a lot of the same kind of thing with sci-fi that Octavia Butler did with the Xenogenesis books(Lilith's Brood), but the feeling is the main similarity. Story-wise the books are not all that similar. I like books like this that stretch some boundaries and make me a bit uncomfortable at times, so all in all I would recommend it.

Second read through:
I liked it (as an audiobook). Was really confusing, but eventually I gave up trying to understand the world in this book, and just live with the mystery. The strange organic-mechanical nature of the universe was certainly interesting! I also found the birthing of everything (tools, babies, etc), really interesting.

First read through:
Such a purposely confusing main-character-so-disoriented that I had to give up. Wanted to like it, but couldn't reald it fast enough to make things happen and fall into place, so lost patience and stopped reading.

The Stars Are Legion checks big boxes for militarism and "who gets to be king of the kingdom." Those topics, along with romance are at the bottom of my interest in a book. It also checks a huge box for disgusting, smelly, oozy world-building. Having been a nurse for 20 years, I made it through, but it is definitely not for the squeamish. On the positive side is discovering the whole mystery of "what's going on here?" The characterization is also appealing. Casimir is the eternal optimist. Oh, adventure - fun; strange characters don't really want to hurt us, they're just misguided or frightened; of course, we're going to get where we want to go; science solves everything. I really love her because she's the exact opposite of myself. Well, maybe not the exact opposite. I was pretty optimistic in previous days but, like Casimir does as the adventure continues, discovered that maybe some of those creatures really do want to hurt us. It is also very QUILTBAG (LGBT) friendly by necessity as all the characters are female.

Interesting premise that moves well. Sometime in the very far future that is not really explained, mankind lives among worldships that are apparently dying. The main character is played off to be an almost antagonist, but I liked her. Nice twist at the end, that I figured out before it came, but it was satisfying. I enjoyed the story.

mmm this is a strange book

It's a total chaos, I still don't know if in a good way or not xD the story is intriguing at the beginning with Zan not remembering anything and Jayd hiding secrets, but as you go on it starts to get frustrating that one knows nothing and the other deliberately tells you nothing, you’re lost, fortunately, the universe is interesting enough to want to keep reading and find out what happens, although in the end I still have doubts about how these world-ships work (things that turned out to be completely different from what I imagined).

Exciting in parts, boring at times and unpleasant at moments. The book was not what I expected, but I don’t think it’s a bad book, it can be confusing, but in the end, it has a whole original and interesting universe that I would like to continue exploring, who knows, maybe find out if there is a Legion of men.

i dunno xD (Translated from Spanish)

The Legion is a part of a vast number of world-ships that are travelling in the seams between the stars right on the outer edge of the universe. A war has been raging for millennia in the decaying worlds. It is as yet unresolved and not likely to be anytime soon, so a last ditch plan is formed…

Zan wakes with no recollection of who she is, what she was, or who the people are who say that they are her family. She cannot quite believe that she is capable of the things that they are saying; she is the only one who can offer them a chance to leave the Legion, the only one who can gain entry to the ship called Mokshi. There are others though who want to use her skill for the same ends. She must descend with her small team of no-hopers into the very bowels of the Legion to wrestle control and confront the horrors that face them there.

This is the first of Hurley’s books that I have read, and it is a pretty tough book to start with. She must have an amazing imagination to create a world like this one, it is unlike anything that I have ever come across before with its organic world, where everything is recycled, even body parts. This is a life at its most swamp like. There is an immense amount of detail in here, sometimes almost too much, that it felt that the plot was occasionally superfluous to the intricate detail of the world ships, Zan was travelling through. I liked the female culture that she has invented too, it gives you a completely different take on the usual sci-fi space opera, with the characters. Good, but maybe not one for the squeamish!

I'm not quite sure what I think of this novel but I think I like it...somewhat. To my reading what we have here is what feels like a utopian generation ship project gone very badly wrong, thus spawning a war being waged over the scraps for survival. The question which the plot poses is whether there is a way out of the whole destructive cycle and I'll leave it to the reader to discover what that might be. Maybe call this an exemplar of the bio-funk revolution which never quite happened.

I cannot deny the quality, but it has been very difficult for me. The best part for me has been the darkness emanating from that society in perpetual war, with its inhabitants as an evolution of our humanity and with their mutations reminding me of those suffered by inhabitants close to the core in generational ship novels. But this darkness and the action at the beginning of the narrative are not enough. The rest of the narrative felt slow to me, and I finished it simply so I wouldn't have the feeling of leaving something good unfinished. (Translated from Spanish)

I literally want to scream about how much I loved this book.

It is so unapologetically GROSS and I love that so much...blood and fluids and ichor and gore and worlds made of bodies (or bodies made into worlds?) and everything is organic and moist and disgusting and I LOVE IT because it's never played for shock value but it just IS. This is the world inhabited by the characters and the grossness of it becomes integral to the story without consuming it and I love that.

IT IS ALSO ABOUT WOMEN ONLY WOMEN THERE ARE ONLY WOMEN.

And the women are allowed to be SO MANY THINGS they are allowed to be petty, spiteful, immensely cruel, violent, desperate, loving, loyal, determined, devoted, selfish, vicious...OFTEN AT THE SAME TIME like the characters are all so well rounded, so fleshed out (pun intended), so complex and so achingly human you find yourself rooting for them even when they're doing horrible things.

I loved Zan. I loved Zan's crew of misfits as they climb the levels of their world in all the grossness, all the muck and mire and gore, all the organic rotting splendor. I love how no one is reduced to a caricature, how none of the characters feel expendable. I love how the author doesn't commit violence against her characters for violence's sake; this book probably has more blood and guts than all the Song of Ice and Fire books combined yet you never feel like the author is exploiting her characters, torture porn-ing them just for the hell of it.

This was so good I'm sobbing and now I want to read everything else Hurley has ever written

Pros: very unique world, interesting characters, intrigue

Cons: body horror

Years ago Zan and Jayd came up with a plot to save the worlds from their inevitable slow decline. When Zan wakes up from her most recent attempt to retake their neighbouring world, Mokshi, she has no memory of who she is. Again. Jayd’s manipulations are getting them closer to achieving their goal, but her betrayals are catching up to her and others aren’t playing their roles the way she expected.

This is a very unique novel. I have never read of a world, or rather a series of worlds, so… bizarre. They’re things of flesh, orbiting a sun and populated solely by women who birth the components the world (ships?) require. While each world is unique, the lords of some of the worlds discovered that they could prolong the lives of their worlds by sharing flesh, though this causes other problems. I was a little concerned going into the book as I heard it was body horror. While there’s some disturbing imagery around birth, cannibalism, flesh, etc., it wasn’t as bad as I feared.

The narrative is told from the viewpoints of Jayd, who knows what’s going on but isn’t very forthcoming, and Zan who’s trying to navigate situations she no longer understands. It’s clear that she can’t necessarily trust Jayd, though it’s also clear that she loved Jayd deeply at one point.

The plot is fairly straightforward, despite it’s being drawn out. The book itself is a quick read as you’re anxious to find out who Zan really is, what Jayd’s plan is, and why the Mokshi is so important.

If you’re looking for a good book outside the ordinary and you have a strong stomach, give this a try.

The lack of recognition for female SF writers appears to be particularly acute for what's known as 'hard science fiction', i.e. science fiction that pays fairly close attention to scientific plausibility, and that seeks to break as few physical laws as possible (in an ideal universe, perhaps, none). Other subdomains of SF have a better acceptance of female authorship -- for example, Lois McMaster Bujold has made wonderful inroads into space opera with her Vorkosigan series, and it's hard to think about time-travel fiction without bringing to mind Connie Willis' books exploring the London Blitz through time travel. And yet there's still the idea around that women don't, or can't, or shouldn't write hard SF, which is a nonsense. I've started actively seeking out hard SF by female writers, and there's some tremendously good stuff there.

For a literature of the future, SF still has some fairly reactionary attitudes at times.

The problem I have with stories like "Stars are legion" is the use of superhuman powers to achieve goals. Although they may help to highlight problems in society they don't actually indicate any solution, as the likelihood of getting these powers is nil.

Although SF is ostensibly outward looking in its imagination of alternative societies, it is blinkered in seeing these new worlds only in terms of western society, taking their cue from either our capitalist or feudal experience. There are or have been many other societies around the world that are completely different. Although many are now 'corrupted' by contact with the all conquering western society, anthropologists have recorded societies with more or less complete sexual equality (if not matriarchal) and strongly egalitarian. Yet nobody wants to explore a future where humanity re-orders society to bring these basic human drives back into play.

However, dystopian novels win prizes, utopian novels are remaindered.

Narrative-wise, the book felt like an uphill climb. All those crooked mother, pregnancy metaphors... I didn't care about the plot, about the so-called metaphors and while there were bits of Zan's Journey "From the Centre of the Earth" that were mildly interesting, I just didn't care. I hate it when writers have an agenda. I don't want an agenda rammed in my face. I want Story. At heart it's just a somewhat traditional journey where Zan picks up various party members who are at varying levels of sanity, knowledgeability, and trustworthiness, and who agree to help her reach the surface of the planet so she can complete her mission. In a nutshell, that's what you'll get. All crap and sundry, imaginably run by the idea that every experience has some amazing extant point which by juxtaposition to metaphor would add more than a thousand yet unknown words to common vocabulary adding in new contexts to the more extraordinary of imagining past historic events more glorified and opportune than near say scribes whose pen they love but paper they mourn.

What is “Science Fiction” anyway? One of the genre’s greatest (IMHO) authors, Harlan Ellison, could not abide the term. He proposed “Speculative Fiction” instead (and Heinlein before him). And it’s the term I prefer myself. Of course; you may feel that all fiction is, by its very nature, “speculative”, in that it did not really happen. Or, did it? Harlan is utterly mad. He's also right. Speculative fiction is the term we should be using to describe all books that ask "What if?" For example, what if Vikings had actually settled North America permanently instead of giving up after a few years? You'd now have the world's largest socialist democracy and Prime Minister Olafsson of Vinland. And Swedish would be one of the world's dominant languages. Maybe I can get Kim Stanley Robinson interested in this idea. I shall expect only 50% of the book royalties and income from film rights in return for giving him an idea he could have easily thought of on his own.

Anyway! I’m a quasi-bald-headed white male, who has forgotten whatever point he was trying to make. Ta ta.

NB: I just wish this book had been written by Tiptree or Le Guin. And because I don’t want you to say I’m only fond of deceased female SF writers, how about Maureen F. McHugh? “After the Apocalypse” and “China Mountain Zhang”. Does this ring a bell for anyone? I’m sure it doesn’t. No one reads worthwhile SF writers, male or female…


SF = Speculative Fiction.

4,5/5

I really like starting a read and not knowing what to expect. However, the first 70 or so pages were a bit of a struggle. I could however appreciate the unique world-building so I couldn't stop reading. It was shortly after we start reading Jayd's perspective that the books grew from an amazing and imaginative work of fiction to one that also has a lot of emotional impact for me.

I liked the all-female world that Kameron has built. While it is a brutal world (not so because of the femaleness) I feel it would have been a completely different book if it had male characters. In a way a reveled in the lack of maleness. (do worlds have gender?)

I can see how this novel can grow into series and would definitely read any follow-ups to the story. Also some parts of the book reminded me a bit of Hull Zero Three. Maybe because this book - labeled by some "space opera" (which I don't think it is) - is actually a grand personal adventure. One of survival for the characters, but also more. We are reading about people that go to great length and sacrifices to change the way of life and hopefully save their own world.

Fav quotes:

"But I find soldiering false, a broken way to manage people who should be bound to you in love, not fear" #50. Jayd

"What is love anyway but a hunger no meal can satisfy?" #126, Jays

"But I am a great pretender, sometimes so good at it that I convince myself that what I pretend is what is truly real" #189, Jayd

"Perhaps every society is a utopia when you fail to peel up all the layers and look at what's underneath". #251, Zan

I got this book because it's advertised as a huge space opera. Well, it's not huge, it's almost claustrophobic, and it's no space opera.

Some of the weakest points:

- In the first tier of the book, everyone in the Katazyma seem to plot and hate their leader Anat. Why, I don't know because she gets killed pretty easily by their enemy.

- Everyone is plotting against everyone, friends and foes alike,and everyone keeps secrets. Damn I hate those kind of books, they feel sooooo depressing.

- Totally unbelievable world building as far as I'm concerned. So you have those huge world ship. But at one point, Zan hides "behind" a world. Must not be that big to be close enough to her own world to see the attack against it.

- The first person view. You get very little talking and plot, and alot of the character thoughts. Thing is, they are always the same stuff, over and over and over and over and over. ("will she remember? Will she forgive me? What have I done?" ) And most conversations are never finished.

Bored out of my mind reading this. Even the ending was not satisfying. What is the purpose of the Legion, what's in the Core? Why did Zan wanted to leave the Core? No real answers.