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The Stars Are Legion

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The Stars Are Legion

By: Kameron Hurley
Narrated by: Nicole Poole, Teri Schnaubelt
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About this listen

Somewhere on the outer rim of the universe, a mass of decaying world-ships known as the Legion is traveling in the seams between the stars. For generations, a war for control of the Legion has been waged, with no clear resolution. As worlds continue to die, a desperate plan is put into motion.

Zan wakes with no memory, prisoner of a people who say they are her family. She is told she is their salvation - the only person capable of boarding the Mokshi, a world-ship with the power to leave the Legion. But Zan's new family is not the only one desperate to gain control of the prized ship. Zan finds that she must choose sides in a genocidal campaign that will take her from the edges of the Legion's gravity well to the very belly of the world.

Zan will soon learn that she carries the seeds of the Legion's destruction - and its possible salvation. But can she and her ragtag band of followers survive the horrors of the Legion and its people long enough to deliver it?

In the tradition of The Fall of Hyperion and Dune, The Stars Are Legion is an epic and thrilling tale about tragic love, revenge, and war as imagined by one of the genre's most celebrated new writers.

©2017 Kameron Hurley (P)2017 Tantor Adventure Fantasy Fiction Science Fiction Space Opera War Greek Mythology Queer Ancient Greece

Critic Reviews

"This gripping book is both hard to read and easy to appreciate." ( Publishers Weekly)
All stars
Most relevant  
well it was a story. Maybe it had a point not too sure what. I think I liked it!

interesting but,

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This book throws you right into the mystery of an amnesiac main character in Zan and makes you hit the ground running with utterly original worldbuilding. The other POV main character, Jayd, reveals bits and pieces of the mystery but not enough to really explain the end goal. Hurley keeps that going well right up to the end.

I struggled to decide what genre this book fits into. The organic technology made me want to fit it into the Bugpunk genre of her Bel Dame books, but that’s not quite right because it’s less bugs and more… everything mucous and squishy. During a certain section that I won’t give away because of spoilers, the book got so gory I felt like I was reading splatterpunk. Certainly the food aspect of the book kept that feeling going somewhat. Biopunk might fit but that seems too… optimistic? This was a heavy book, dealing with decaying and dying worlds (ships) and decaying and dying people. I’m not too concerned with categorising it except to help new readers decide if they want to give it a go. I guess New Weird science fiction with elements of horror might suit.

The characters are very complex and while I felt like I didn’t know what was happening most of the time, the story we’re following has enough understandable elements for us to follow it while dangling the bigger mystery of Zan and Jayd like a carrot to keep us intrigued. I loved that it seemed Hurley thought about every tiny thing and made it just weird enough to make me uncomfortable. Are the ship’s tentacles actual tentacles or just the world for tubes? Are these people some leftover remnant of cloned human populations doomed to a decaying ship because they’ve all forgotten how and why they came to be? I think Hurley is more original than that, so I think this is not some far flung human history sci fi but rather a completely unique people and universe. If she ever makes sequels, I will definitely read them.

Fascinating and original

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For those in the Alastair Reynolds/Anne Leckie/Elizabeth Bear kinda zone:
Absolutely cracking read.

For those unfamiliar:
This brand of science/speculative fiction is highly cerebral and visceral. Prepare to be weirded and/or grossed out, and enjoy this crazy ride.

Heads up

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This is such a fascinating, immersive book set on enormous organic-tech worlds complete with saliva and mucous. The female inhabitants (there is one gender) are warring and entrenched in Machiavellian power struggles to overthrow and control the least damaged of the Legion’s worlds. The world building is truly amazing, very squelchy and worth the listen alone. It is violent and visceral, loving and intimate. I do not want to reveal the plot, as the book has a great sense of mystery and a journey that is definitely a quest. Very unusual, very well done. Not for all tastes. I first gave it four stars but on contemplation it gets five.

Organic-tech planet ships but oh so much more

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I love Sci-Fi but this was honestly terrible. The writing was one dimensional and the character development was poor.

Really terrible

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