Published by Del Rey on August 20, 2019
As is customary in science fiction, many future humans in The Cruel Stars are wired into the net, but only if they can afford the brain augmentations. Augmented humans can store their engrams, allowing them to survive death by implanting their memories into a new brain. People of means can also live several lifetimes using the same technology.
The only unusual twist in that theme is the presence of the Sturm, humans who believe that the purity of the human race is defiled by augmentation or extra lives. As the ominous name “Sturm” might signal, the Sturm and their Human Republic have dedicated themselves to killing the impure and to restoring human space (the Greater Human Volume) to its pure organic origins.
The Sturm have reappeared after an exile that followed the Great War between the Javan Empire and the Armadale system. Earth brokered a peace to end that war, and the Royal Armadalan Navy ship Defiant patrols space to enforce that treaty.
Several storylines converge in The Cruel Stars. One key character is Lucinda Hardy, who worked her way from a difficult childhood to the position of lieutenant, where she is newly assigned to the Defiant. The Defiant is undertaking a patrol at the request of Earth. Their mission is to find out why three probes have gone silent. They suspect wrongdoing by the evil Sturm. The patrol goes sideways when an encrypted communication turns the captain into a raving, flesh-eating monster. That’s enough to make the survivors excrete their neural nets and take the ship offline for fear that their Artificial Intelligence has been corrupted.
A key character in related storyline is in his seventh lifetime. Frazer McLennan is investigating a Sturm ship that crashed on a remote planet in the distant past. When a pompous prince from House Yulin arrives, McLennan needs to practice diplomacy with a keg of scotch — until an encrypted communication turns the prince into a raving, flesh-eating monster. McLennan’s crankiness makes him the novel’s most entertaining character.
McLennan spends some of his time guarding Princess Alessia, who feels put upon because she is facing an arranged marriage that will join House Montanblanc to House Yulin, part of the corporate realm known as the Yulin-Irrawaddy Combine. Alessia is your basic pampered princess who rises to the occasion when conflict ensues
A pirate named Sephina L’trel commands a ship called Je Ne Regrette Rien. To convince the reader of her toughness, she beheads a Yakuza underboss to get the data chip in his brain. Sephina has a history with Lucinda Hardy. Sephina’s motley crew finds itself caught in the middle of a reengaged war between the Sturm and the rest of humanity.
The final key character is named Booker. He generally lives inside a warrior bot, although at an early point in the story he is waiting for his source code to be deleted. Booker is the second most entertaining character, largely because of his complaints when he gets transferred to less powerful bodies, including a gardening robot. That’s life. You don’t always get the body you want.
The Cruel Stars is an above-average space opera with military sf themes. The plot features a good bit of action, the prose style is above average for the genre, and the background is well conceived, if fairly typical. The parallels between the Sturm, who insist on biological purity, and the Nazis, who insisted on racial purity; aren’t subtle but the theme is timely. By the end, the good guys seem to be just as bloodthirsty as the bad guys (only annihilation will serve as victory), but perhaps that troubling theme will be explored in the novel that I assume will follow this one. For space opera fans, I would recommend The Cruel Stars as one of 2019’s better offerings.
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