To all the brutal women: una dedica del genere può stupire solo il lettore che non conosca vita e opere di Kameron Hurley, una voce in ascesa della SFF statunitense contemporanea che con The Stars are Legion, il suo ultimo romanzo fresco di stampa, sembra aver raggiunto un nuovo traguardo di una carriera davvero mai facile.

Certo la Hurley non è una novellina, dato che dal 1998 è editorialista in pianta stabile della prestigiosa testata Locus e i suoi lavori sono di recente finiti in un’antologia il cui titolo è già tutto un programma: The Geek Feminist Revolution. La rivoluzione però ha cominciato davvero a scriverla nel 2010, quando ha dato il via a una carriera da scrittrice di romanzi e inevitabili trilogie, sia in campo fantastico che fantascientifico. II suo esordio in forma lunga con God’s War, primo volume della trilogia Bel Dame Apocrypha, ha rischiato di essere il suo epitaffio, ma Hurley è stata tra le poche penne a sfuggire alla mattanza di giovani talenti che il collasso della casa editrice di genere Nightshade ha provocato.



Per la sua seconda trilogia The Worldbreaker Saga, stavolta di stampo fantastico, è passata alla scuderia di Angry Robot, che si mormora non sia in condizioni migliori: in attesa dell’ultimo volume (che probabilmente beneficerà del buon passaparola del romanzo autoconclusivo di cui vi parlo oggi) c’è da tenere insomma le dita incrociate.

Con The Stars are Legion, terzo corpus importante della sua carriera, Hurley approda alla terza casa editrice indipendente, Saga Press, con un’idea che le frulla per la testa da tempo ma si chiede se sia possibile portare in libreria senza scatenare un putiferio: quella di una legione di pianeti abitati esclusivamente da donne. Le derivazioni sexy e lesbochic alla Barbarella che un presupposto del genere solleticano nella fantasia del lettore Kameron Hurley le ha anche sublimate in una sorta di copertina alternativa con tanto di honest title: Lesbians in Space!

Non nuova ad eroine toste e sessualmente intraprendenti, in una vetta di ironica genialità Hurley si è fatta stampare delle locandine e ha fatto realizzare una sovracopertina alternativa per il romanzo, tanto che ormai è non raro sentirlo citare dagli appassionati proprio con quel titolo intrigante.

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Se Hurley si può permettere di giocare pesante su sexy aliene che limonano felici sullo sfondo di paesaggi stellari è perché la sua nomea di scrittrice grimdark e senza compromessi la precede e non consente di farsi illusioni in merito alla galassia di pianeti dove è ambientata la vicenda. In questa distesa infinita di pianeti nota come legione, le due famiglie delle Katarzyrna e delle Bhavaja si fronteggiano in una guerra millenaria, nonostante ogni luogo abitabile intorno a loro stia morendo, consumato da un misterioso morbo.

Niente sexy aliene quindi, solo un universo in cui il genere y non c’è e con esso è sparita anche la distinzione tra maschile e femminile. La partenogenesi è quindi la prassi e si estende non solo alle neonate, ma anche ai componenti di ricambio per le astronavi e, per alcune donne, al parto di nuovi pianeti.
La legione è infatti un world building d’impressionante bellezza e brutalità, che riporta in auge estetica ed etica di quella biomeccanica tanto cara al celeberrimo artista H. G. Giger.

Le lesbiche di Hurley sono in realtà simbionti e parassiti di pianeti organici e semi-senzienti di cui sono al contempo regnanti e prigioniere: una credenza vuole che siano i pianeti stessi a indurre il parto dei pezzi di ricambio necessari e mostruosità varie, esistono poi miti ancora più oscuri riguardo al mostro riciclatore che ne abita i recessi più oscuri di ogni pianeta e che provvede a riciclare tutto il materiale organico, vivo o morto, che viene spedito nei bassi livelli.


Un esempio dell’estetica biomeccanica di H. G. Giger.
Da quelle profondità oscure Zan è tornata di recente, senza alcuna memoria e con un’unica missione: tentare l’assalto a Mokshi, l’unico pianeta della Legione in grado di staccarsi dal sole attorno a cui l’intero sistema orbita. Le persone intorno a lei le assicurano che ha già tentato decine e decine di volte di conquistare il pianeta abbandonato e parzialmente danneggiato per volere di Anat, la terribile sovrana di Katarzyna che la rispedirà al riciclo se dovesse di nuovo fallire.

Al suo fianco Zan trova Jayd, una sorella che lei sa d’istinto essere in realtà sua amante e sua ragione di vita e disperazione. Intuisce di far parte di un piano ideato con lei e poi dimenticato, che richiede la conquista da parte di Zan di Mokshi e lo sposalizio di Jayd con Rasida, la sovrana di Bhavaja, l’unica in grado di generare un nuovo pianeta nella Legione.

Il piano per salvare Katharzyna e riportare la pace fallisce spettacolarmente e catapulta le due protagoniste in uno scenario orrorifico e gore degno del Cronenberg più carnale. Zan si ritroverà di nuovo nei recessi del pianeta a fronteggiare il mostro riciclatore (in un capitolo 14 così splatter e tarantiniano da diventare memorabile chiave di volta del libro) e una risalita verso la superficie attraverso livelli e popolazioni del tutto inconsapevoli della guerra in corso. La storyline di Zan diventa una quest odyssey, un meta-romanzo fantastico dentro il libro fantascientifico, dove ad ogni nuovo livello si aprono mondi d’inquietante bellezza e pericolose derive horror, spesso abitati da donne con tante cicatrici e tanta energia quanto Zan e Jayd. Se il tempo per Zan pare dilatarsi all’infinito, la storyline contrapposta di Jayd è al contrario sempre al cardiopalma, prigioniera sia di Rasida (un villain spettacolare e carismatico) che della consapevolezza di essere persino attratta dalle perfida e calcolatrice sovrana di Bhavaja.

Capace di scavare le carni del mondo organico e delle protagoniste bad ass fino a rendere il suo world building una cicatrice nella memoria del lettore, The Stars are Legion è un’importante punto d’arrivo nella carriera di Kameron Hurley, che gestisce con maestria un’idea geniale con una ricchezza di trovate, scenari e twist diabolici tale da fare sentire anche il lettore in pericolo: se chiudiamo il romanzo, ritroveremo Zan e Jayd ancora vive al nostro ritorno?

Imprevedibile e traditore, il nuovo romanzo di Kameron Hurley prova che in uno scenario spesso stantio e popolato di vecchie idee riciclate fino alla noia, lei è in grado di tirar fuori qualcosa di nuovo, scavando nella carne viva delle sue protagoniste, fino a cavarci fuori personaggi davvero memorabili, come non accadeva su questo fronte dai tempi della traditrice Baru Cormorant. Peccato le manchi ancora la letterarietà necessaria a trasformare uno stile di scrittura completamente al servizio della storia nel valore aggiunto che possa rendere un romanzo davvero esaltante da leggere anche un sicuro titolo da ricordare nel tempo.

The Stars Are Legion is almost certainly the sunniest novel Kameron Hurley has ever written, which was a pleasant surprise. At the same time, it’s still very recognizably a Kameron Hurley novel, with its badass women, moral ambiguity, and copious grossness. It might be the most ambitious Hurley novel to date, at least thematically; it’s a smart, quick read; and it’s full of the inventive worldbuilding that Hurley is best known for. That it’s a standalone novel rather than the first in yet another new series that I’d have to follow for several years is just icing on the cake.

To start with, there are only women characters in this book. They live in a vast fleet of living world ships and reproduce through a kind of parthenogenesis that doesn’t always produce human babies. Unfortunately, the world ships are sick and dying, and the women who inhabit the ships are at war with each other. It’s against this backdrop that we’re introduced to Zan, who has no memories as well as a quest and an arduous journey ahead of her, and Jayd, who has a valuable womb and a complicated, high stakes plan that takes several hundred pages to unfold. The book has been called, somewhat jokingly, Lesbians in Space, and this has even been adopted as something of a marketing phrase for the title. However, though all the women in the book are lesbians, there’s not much romance to be had, the sexual relationships depicted are dysfunctional at best, and the overall tone of the novel is much darker than that blithe description, humorous as it is, would indicate. I was only mildly disappointed by this, but it does seem like a failure to manage reader expectations.

That said, Hurley’s choice to have only women characters is an excellent one for the story she’s telling. War is a common theme in Hurley’s work, and complex highly stratified societies are recurring as well. Here, the decision to have complex, highly stratified and brutal societies made up of only women makes it impossible to interpret them through the lens of patriarchy. The violence endured and meted out by the characters in The Stars Are Legion isn’t gendered, and we’re able to examine it as a function of corrupt hierarchical systems without the complication of sexist gender dynamics. Hurley creates a truly alien world that frees her characters from real-world constraints and expectations and frees herself as an author from having to communicate her ideas about war, pregnancy and birth, violence and abuse, and healing with any consideration of men’s opinions, points of view or desires. This is a novel that is probably as free of the male gaze as it’s possible for a book to be, and that’s refreshing.

As always, Hurley’s worldbuilding is excellent, and the enormous world ships she imagines are just marvelous. The first part of the book is full of almost over-the-top ugliness as we first meet Zan and Jayd and are introduced to the warring spacefaring families they are members of. The world ships themselves are living things, metal is rare, and everything seems to be at least slightly sticky and/or oozing. The women themselves are battle-scarred and often cruel, even our protagonists, and things get even weirder and more viscerally disgusting when Zan finds herself “recycled,” cast down into the bowels of the ship where she finds a great abattoir ruled by enormous woman-eating beasts. Hurley’s vivid description is at times slightly overwhelming in this section, and readers without a stomach for gore may find it deeply unpleasant. If you make it through the first part of the book, however, it pays off big time. Zan’s journey back to the top of the world is compelling stuff, and the slow reveal of Zan’s history and purpose as she journeys through alien lands to finally achieve what she and Jayd planned together is masterfully executed. The other women Zan meets along the way are fascinating characters as well, and the lands they move through are less bloody than the areas described in part one but just as slimily odd and even more wonderful.

If there’s any major criticism that can be levied against this book it’s that Zan is almost too interesting. Her story tends to dominate the book, and it’s so full of adventure and excitement that Jayd’s story of political maneuvering, manipulation, and patiently waiting and hoping for Zan to return has a hard time holding the reader’s interest. In the end, it’s Zan who must make pivotal decisions and take actions to create a different ending to a story that has played out in many variations many times before. It’s not that Jayd is uninteresting or even particularly passive. It’s just that Zan has an epic journey to take in search of her own identity, while Jayd’s struggle to survive by her wits and charm doesn’t have nearly as much sightseeing to it. While Zan and Jayd have a close to equal number of POV chapters, Jayd’s story never has as much room to breathe as Zan’s, and nothing Jayd does feels quite as consequential as what Zan does.

Still, The Stars Are Legion ticks off a lot of boxes on my list of things I want to read. I love difficult and unlikable female characters, and Jayd and Zan are a pair of glorious, passionate, murderous bitches like no others. I never get tired of Kameron Hurley’s weird fixation on bugs and organic tech and lavishly described gore. An all-women space opera with war and generation ships and parthenogenesis and a bit of a hero’s journey and a message, ultimately, of something like hope? Perfect.

Living world ships move through space; if there is any destination the people on the ships don't know it nor any history of another way. Sadly for these women the worlds are dying as entropy finally seems to be beating out their long living systems. Rival factions war for resources; recycling what they find in an effort to extend the life of their own piece of the sky. Zan wakes among one of these factions and slowly learns she has an ambitious plan for a rebirth of kinds. Problem is an almost complete memory loss gives her no idea what the plan is.

The way Hurley uses such a short page length to build multiple worlds and still have space for a story should be taught in school. No spare time is spent on wasted details yet characters' travels and conversions tell the reader everything that is needed to be known and more. This dying earth space opera checks all the right boxes. It is unique and alien. Dark, occasionally gross, and full of mystery. Strong imagery lets you see experience what Zan and her collected group of outcasts are experiencing. The world ships are a thing of wonder; but also horror as the curtain is pulled back to see exactly what it takes to keep them living for so long.

This is an author with a track record of making readers care for bad people doing bad things; even if there is occasionally justification for each action. Zan seems to be a basically good person; collecting a mixed group of allies as she works toward her unknown cause. Yet she has snatches of memories that make her doubt even her own intentions. Her path seems interlaced with Jayd's, a women who appears to be a friend (or more) but obviously has her own secrets. Both of these women are playing politics with monsters as the rival factions of the Legion cut deals, war, and otherwise live brutal lives on the unforgiving ships.

Though quickly paced the reader is always left one step behind. Because of Zan's memory loss the long game is as much a mystery to her as it is to the reader. Chapters focusing on Jayd are completely unreliable as her mind is so twisted its one is left to wonder if she even knows what she is hiding from who. This is both a pro and a con though. It makes each chapter a must read, one more page, 'oh didn't see that coming' experience. But by playing the cards so close close to the vest surprises can fall a bit flat. Questions of what is a betrayal and what is planned make it hard to get emotionally involved in the proceedings, even if intellectually one is 'all in.'

It is that lack of emotional connection that keeps this from being a really great book; though settling for really damn good is no insult. It is still completely unique, very engaging, and a stand alone to boot allowing one to avoid any fear of commitment. Come award season expect to see it get some run. Though the 'Lesbians in Space' tagline has already got a lot of internet traction please know that The Stars are Legion has an all women cast but is not solely defined by it. Men have no place on the legion and it both works and makes sense; a statement it may be but not one that doesn't back itself up within the narrative.

The Stars are Legion is yet another highly ambitious book from Kameron Hurley and once again she comes through with the good stuff. It has the scope space opera needs, the alienness that anything set in the future should have, and a strong enough story to carry it.

4 Stars

Copy for review provided by publisher.

This was a did not finish. Story did not catch me even when I had read 20% of the book.

I'm a longtime fan of Kameron Hurley, and to say that I was pretty excited about her writing a space opera was an understatement. I adore good space opera (and honestly, a lot of fairly ordinary stuff too - give me spaceships and explosions and I'm happy). Hurley has talked online about the fact that The Stars are Legion contains a purely female cast (and if you haven't seen the Lesbians in Space cover, go and find it now) and I was intrigued as to how she was going to utilise this.

I don't know what I was expecting, but it was not this book. I don't even want to describe anything about the actual wordbuilding because it is so damn amazing. The Legion is utterly unlike anything I've ever read before (and made me wonder, sometimes, what the inside of Hurley's mind looks like).

An interesting thing while reading - I found myself occasionally slipping into thinking of some characters (and creatures that we come across while reading) as male, even though we're told clearly that they're all female. Coming up against this was interesting, since it reflects so much of what I've come to expect as a reader from all of the books and media I've consumed.

There are several scenes from this book that are going to stick with me for a long time (Without spoiling, I'm just going to say the cog, and recycling - if you've read the book you'll know what I mean). The only thing that didn't quite work for me was that I felt that the very ending of the book could have been fleshed out (ha) a little more - after some of the amazing journey we're taken on with the main characters, everything kind of finished up quite rapidly.

With this book, Hurley cements herself as one of our foremost writers of innovative science fiction. It's immediately become one of my favourites of the last few years.

Well, Kameron Hurley certainly doesn’t play by anyone else’s rules. The Stars Are Legion is a space opera with a flavor that’s all its own. The Legion is a group of worlds, or spaceships, (the word for both is the same) traveling through space and filled with warring groups.

The worlds are organic constructs, many of which are dying and cannibalizing each other for materials with which to regrow. The worlds are in fixed orbit, except for the Mokshi which is a world capable of independent movement. Zan awakes with no memory. Jayd tells her she is a great general and has a crucial role to play in a plan they both conceived which involves conquering Mokshi. Zan feels a powerful attraction for Jayd but also a great deal of mistrust. Jayd is promised to a rival and Zan ends up dropped in a “recycler” where she falls to the center of the world. Climbing back to the top she discovers new civilizations even as she struggles to regain her own memory. Zan questions if she truly wants to remember who she was previously yet remains determined to be reunited with Jayd and to complete their plan.

Hurley has fascinating world-building at work here. Organic ships, odd symbiotic relationships between world-ships and the people who live on them, and intriguing politics and relationships. Hurley’s books are filled with blood and guts, quite literally, and there is no shortage of that here. As brutal as some of the action is, there is also a hopefulness to it as well. The story is told through Zan and Jayd’s eyes, and while they are interesting, they are a little hard to get to know. They sometimes lie to themselves and they know themselves to be untrustworthy. Zan is more of a blank slate, even as some of her memories return.

Much is made about the fact that there are no men in this book, or this world or this universe. That’s perhaps a little overblown. There are plenty of books that are predominantly or exclusively populated by male characters and that are unremarkable for that fact. Much like I don’t need to see characters going to the bathroom on TV or in books to assume that they do. I can accept a civilization made up only of women that manages to continue to propagate the species, particularly in science fiction, without fretting about the how. That’s kind of the point here.

There is a lot to like here, even if it is all hard to digest, no pun intended. Complicated world-building, interesting relationships, and thought-provoking concepts. Hurley continues to push the boundaries of science fiction, and that’s a good thing. This book may not be for the squeamish, but it is for everyone who likes their science fiction to stretch their minds a little bit.

I was fortunate to receive an advance copy of this book.

An intriguing science fiction premise - I'd label this Weird Science Fiction.
The mystery of the setting and story kept me reading, even when the setting itself turned me off.
The setting is depressing, sad, and quite gross. Even the happy ending comes with certain conditions.

<i>The Stars are Legion</i> is a gorgeously crazy book. No matter how much speculative fiction you've read, I'll bet you've never read anything like it before. It was my first book by Hurley, and it won't be my last. The writing is gorgeous, deeply embedded with metaphor and allusion. (It's so very quotable that I'm physically pained to be unable to include any quotes at present at the publisher's request.)

If I were forced to categorize the book, I'd say it doesn't quite fit into fantasy or scifi and instead belongs to their parent genre, speculative fiction. Don't go into this book expecting hard scifi. No, the idea of jumping from planet to planet in a matter of hours wearing nothing but a sprayed-on suit and dragged around by a living shuttle doesn't exactly work in terms of Newtonian physics, nor does a planet composed of layer upon layer with an outer layer of tentacles. Just go with it. The sheer breadth of imagination is staggering, from cephalopod cannons to recycler monsters to disturbing funerary feasts to fungal forests to sentient boats to so much more.

Like <i>Ancillary Justice</i>, it is a story told entirely with female pronouns, but unlike the Radch, the world Hurley creates is genuinely feminine, each member of each world capable of giving birth, yet sex and procreation are entirely separated. Themes of reuse and rebirth and cannibalism and closed systems, of wombs and maternity and birth, of agency and freedom, of memory and identity, are beautifully woven into a backdrop of complex characters, dizzyingly hallucinogenic imaginings, and wild creativity. I can't write much because I don't want to spoil anything, but if you're looking for a genuinely unique read, look no further.

Zan wakes up on the world-ship Katazyrna with no memory of who she is or how she got there. The mysterious Jayd takes charge of her recovery from her battle wounds, but won't tell her much about her past.

Sabita tells her not to trust Jayd, but Zan's instincts tell her Jayd is someone she loves very much.

She finds out her memory was lost on a raid of the world-ship Mokshi, where she boarded the Mokshi only to be ejected with no memory. It's happened countless times--the Mokshi has the capability to save the dying Katazyrna, and she needs to take it. Every time she's tried, if the Katazyrna enemies don't stop her or the Mokshi's defenses don't repel her, the Mokshi simply spits her back out.

Jayd tells Zan that the only way to retrieve her memory is to take the Mokshi. Zan will remember who she is, even if it kills her.

Hurley has written a fascinating book documenting a journey through living ship-worlds, mirroring an internal journey of the mind to a literal internal journey of our intrepid band of characters through the insides of a living ship. It's interesting, clever, and something very different from what I've seen lately.

The world building is detailed, vast and strange, populated by characters who are far from perfect--but we care about them all the same.

Great book, and something I expect to see on several recommendation lists this year.

In order their save their world (big W), Zan and her wife, Jayd, need a metal arm and an object known as the world (small W). Only problem is, Zan has no memory, their plan has been tried several times previously and resulted in failure, and their dying world ain't the only one in the Legion, which provides plenty of spark for conflict.

Kameron Hurley's The Stars Are Legion is a thick piece of science fiction with a hefty dose of fantasy swirled in. I'm not typically big on the fantasy genre, so it's not much of a surprise that I was more drawn in by the sci-fi elements of space-based shenangians and inter-world politicking. The story is divvied up between the two central women, with chapters alternating their first-person narrations as the plot drives them apart. For me, the story began to drag once Zan was thrust into the underworld of her planet and the book took on plenty of fantasy-genre overtones, becoming a Lord of the Rings-styled walking tour through the world's various domains. More intriguing were Jayd's experiences with a brutal Lord on a rival planet. The Bhavaja Lord is even more manipulative than Jayd (certainly no slouch in manipulation her own self), and their dodge-and-parry dynamic is some of the more interesting elements in this book.

Zan, though, is certainly a cool character in her own regard. Her memory loss and slow recovery make for captivating reading, particularly as she begins to understand who she was and what she could become, thanks to her interactions with a motley crew of monster- and mutant-fighting bottomworlders who make up her quest party. Hurley gives her plenty of time to shine and does a great job formulating Zan as a character. Zan's arc, in fact, was a strong highlight of the book for me, and the finale packs an emotional wallop thanks to the strong character development of both Zan and Jayd.

The world-building, though, is where The Stars Are Legion really shines. Hurley takes the literary technique of world-building up a notch by making actual world building a strong element of the plot itself. We have dying organic world-ships, populated entirely by females -- in fact there's not a single man in existence; this is a space epic in which women rule entirely and completely, an awesome feat in its own right! -- who the world uses to birth whatever the world needs - spare parts, children, and even, yes, new worlds.

It's a wonderfully feminist view, written by a wonderful female author, with strong women galore at every inch of these worlds. The women here are life-bearers, engineers, warriors, and rulers, each of them carrying the responsibility of their society, and their world as a whole, on their backs and deep within themselves. They live, they fight, they die. And through it all, Hurley brings to table plenty of solid action, a nice bit of gore, and some intriguing Big Ideas.

[Note: I received an advanced copy of this title from the publisher via NetGalley.]