Fun read

I enjoyed this book; it was fun to read. The story was interesting and there was good character development. The pacing was also good except for drawn out fight scenes. Although I liked the book, my mind kept coming back to one of the characters having telekinesis which in my opinion is not science fiction. The book is being promoted for fans of Firefly, but I am a fan of Firefly and I don’t see it. It lacked Firefly’s intelligence. Nonetheless, I can recommend it for fans of space opera.

Ahoy there me mateys!  I received this sci-fi eARC from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.  So here be me honest musings . . .

the stars now unclaimed (Drew Williams)

Title: the stars now unclaimed

Author: Drew Williams

Publisher: Macmillian-Tor/Forge

Publication Date: TODAY!! (hardback/ebook)

ISBN: 978-1250186119

Source: NetGalley

Well mateys.  I have to admit that this was just an okay read.  One of me crew, Sarah @ theillustratedpage's review, accurately described it as:

"The majority of The Stars Now Unclaimed is action scenes. I really can’t emphasize how much of this book is action. You mainly get a few paragraphs or pages between various huge action set pieces, which doesn’t leave a whole lot of room for anything other than action. It was a bit like a Hollywood blockbuster in book form."

Hollywood action film indeed.  The characters are fun.  Ye have the hardened snarky daredevil female fighter pilot, an analytical robot, the ship AI, and the rescued orphan girl with telekinetic powers who might one day save the world.  Later ye add in the traitor who happens to be the soldier's ex-lover and the spy.  But while I liked them, there is very little depth to any of them.  The dialogue is full of catchy one-liners but nothing of major substance.  The bad guys are all literally interchangeable faceless guys in suits with no names, no real intellectual reasoning, and no goals other than to take over the universe.

The science-fiction part is also Hollywood-lite.  There was a "pulse" which was a science experiment gone wrong.  It knocked out the technology in the universe with very little rhyme or reason.  Some places keep their technology and other places have gone back into the stone age.  The threat of the pulse is still out there and it's gonna come back.  There is no real explanation for how it works.  The main characters says things like "I can't walk you through it all that well, I'm not a - I don't do science - " and "do I look like I'm wearing a lab coat?  I know what the scientists tell me . . ."  The use of the technology doesn't really make sense either.  Things work or don't work depending on what the author needed to happen to forward the plot.  Logic doesn't really suffice.

Actually that was me major problem with this read - the sheer unbelievably of the plot in general.  There are the many, many lucky coincidences that happen throughout.  There is the last-ditch, one-chance effort against all costs.  There is the main character who is charmed and somehow evades death at every possibility - despite poison, bullets, overwhelming legions  of enemies, and everything but the kitchen sink.  The battle is saved through the actions of a single person.  Remove the main character and the universe is doomed.

Me most recent science fiction reads have had depth of character, plot, and world-building.  In comparison, this be a pleasant, if forgettable read.  I will not be reading any more of the series.  I might have enjoyed it more in movie format.

So lastly . . .

Thank you Macmillian-Tor/Forge!

Goodreads' website has this to say about the novel:

Jane Kamali is an agent for the Justified. Her mission: to recruit children with miraculous gifts in the hope that they might prevent the Pulse from once again sending countless worlds back to the dark ages.

Hot on her trail is the Pax--a collection of fascist zealots who believe they are the rightful rulers of the galaxy and who remain untouched by the Pulse.

Now Jane, a handful of comrades from her past, and a telekinetic girl called Esa must fight their way through a galaxy full of dangerous conflicts, remnants of ancient technology, and other hidden dangers.

And that's just the beginning . . .

To visit the author’s twitter go to:

Drew Williams – Author

To buy the novel go to:

the stars now unclaimed - Book

To add to Goodreads go to:

Yer Ports for Plunder List

This book surprised me from the start.....a science fiction book, the main character lands on a planet, ready for action....and it's a female character - Jane! It's a first for me! It really took me aback it's so rare (I appreciate I may be very wrong here, but it's rare for me to come across one) - thank you Drew!

Ooo - she's hardcore!

Anyway - in a nutshell, Jane  - a member of a cult who is trying to right the wrongs of her cult (not evil in the usual sense of cult), by saving children with various gifts (think Matilda), and using their powers to save the multiverse. Unfortunately, The Pax (evil), have other ideas - wanting to use the children for their purposes, and take over the multiverse.

The storyline here is great - there are a good number of characters to keep things interesting, including an AI that I just couldn't help but love. There's a lot of chasing across space and a lot of battles. If i'm being honest, I tend to zone out in battlescenes and get confused, but I managed easily to stay with these ones, and enjoyed them very much.

There were no characters I didn't like in this book, they were all rounded, and all .had their own story, all equally contributing to the plot. All in all, this was a really good read, and I look forward to the next instalment.

The Stars Now Unclaimed has potential as Williams creates a far future galaxy devastated first by endless war among tens of thousands of sects comprised of 17 space-faring races including humans, followed by the Pulse, radiation that reduced most planets to pre-technological levels. The Pulse effects were random, leaving some worlds almost untouched, others back to steam and others back to horse, spears and clubs. This backdrop has excellent story potential but it needs strong characters to engross us readers.

Williams brings us Jane, the narrator (we don’t learn her name until about 80% through), who works for the Justified, the group who created the Pulse and now seeks to minimize its damage the next time it flows through. Jane is responsible to collect kids with unique mental talents but her primary skill is fighting.

That brings us to the problem. The novel is one fight scene after another, with very little time for character development and not much setting. It is as though the author creates this great world, then figures it is good enough and we can fill in the blanks.

Even though Jane is in the entire novel we don’t really get to know her other than she likes to fight and she is a tenacious friend and worse enemy. The other characters also have little personality and we see them primarily as foils for Jane. The character with the most personality is her ship, Scheherazade.

Jane and friends swear a lot, mostly F-bombs as general purpose filler words, but there is no blasphemy.

Overall The Stars Now Unclaimed is a decent read. I couldn’t get too involved with it given the lack of full-bodied people, but the author writes reasonably well and has created a complex world. I wish him well in future novels in this series, although I’m not likely to seek the next books.

The Stars Now Unclaimed is a great beginning to what I hope is a series! This future universe is well-developed, as are the characters that live there, and I can't wait to read more. Thank you for such wonderfully written sci-fi fun!

I think that once someone reads that this particular novel is akin to Firefly and Levithan Wakes they will be intrigued by how it fits into that universe (I know I was). With that being said, I do have to agree with the majority of people who said they liked this novel but the fight scenes are a little too drawn out... they are. The story itself is pretty exciting and interesting, but it does get bogged down by the fighting. The characters are really cool and fun to read about, especially Esa and the Preacher. The idea of a robot preacher is exciting and new, but there's the Firefly connection. Pretty obvious really. A lot of the story is. Schaz is awesome. A ship that is AI and can converse and have a role that is more than just flying around is pretty new and interesting. I loved it.

I would recommend this book to SF enthusiasts. I would recommend it to my students, but with the caveat that things can drag a little bit. I think that Williams is on to something with the world he has built and I'm very interested in the next journey he unveils, but I just hope there is more story to the story and not just all action/fighting sequences (to be fair it wasn't all action/fighting, but it felt like it sometimes, sort of like the Battle of Blackwater... awesome, but sooooo long).

I would like to thank NetGalley for providing me with a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

This book has three things I adore:

Snarky characters
Space battles
A group who becomes a family despite the odds.

Needless to say I LOVED this book.

It starts out with a soldier looking for one of many children who can stop the evil hypocritical fascists called the Pax.

There was an incident called the pulse that knocked out most of this verse's technology.

There are some really cool characters and some things that surprised me, which I found delightful!

There are only two complaints about this book I have:

I felt there could have been more cool alien species

This book comes out in about a week, which means it will probably take a year for the next one to come out.

Bummer.

(A more in-depth review can be found at
https://youtu.be/QRmAFMrSovw on August 14th at 6am pst)

The entire galaxy has been settled and is prosperous. Only problem? The entire galaxy has divided up into numerous factions and each is at war with one or more of the others. Millions are dying, the tragedy epic. Until a mysterious radiation "pulse" spreads across the galaxy, and, in its wake, technology ceases to function. Civilization rewinds to a pre-tech, pre-space existence. Isolated and out of communication, planetary populations struggle to survive. The only silver lining is the mass killing has stopped. But, not all planets are not affected equally. Some still have space flight and some amount of tech. In particular, the Pax now see an opportunity to subjugate the galaxy to their idea of an enforced peace without factions but also without individuality and where the strong rule and the weak serve. The Justified take up the challenge to stop them. The fight is on, and it can only be a matter of time before events lead to a do-or-die confrontation that could decide the fate of the galaxy.

This was a great story and is a definite addition to my must-follow series list.

I haven’t read a great deal of science fiction, especially space operas, in recent years and from the description felt this novel was a good opportunity to rectify that. Extra bonus for having a kick-ass woman as its narrator. It proved an exciting ride with nonstop action and well crafted battles as well as close-up fights. The galaxy building was good without getting weighed down. Hopefully this is the first in a planned series as so many opportunities beckon at its final pages.

There was a degree of dark humour with quips exchanged that brought a smile to my face even while feeling rushes of adrenaline as I was drawn vicariously into the action. A strong debut novel and an author to watch in coming years.

For sheer enjoyment I am happy to give it 5 stars.

Great summer read as it is full of non-stop battles so it is easy to pick up and down. It has a great premise of the "meant to be good but has unintended life altering consequences" device named the Pulse but at times seems more of a movie script than sci-fi novel.

Rip-roaring space opera adventure, with a strong emphasis on adventure.

From the blurb: Jane Kamali is an agent for the Justified. Her mission: to recruit children with miraculous gifts in the hope that they might prevent the Pulse from once again sending countless worlds back to the dark ages.

Hot on her trail is the Pax--a collection of fascist zealots who believe they are the rightful rulers of the galaxy and who remain untouched by the Pulse.

Jane is nameless through the first half, but since the blurb offers it right up, just know that there’s a reason she doesn’t share her name until way past the midpoint of her first person narrative.

This narrative is breezily profane in the way of soldiers in the field, demonstrating up close and personal awareness of weaponry, close in tactics as well as long-term strategy. The big scenes are all (but one, a fractious council meeting) battles, so know that going in. If you like big space opera battle, along with mysterious powers and the world not quite as cut and dried as people think, which I do, then you should enjoy this series.

I do hope the final product gets a better proofing, and toward the end the constantly italicized words began to distract me like fleabites, but even past all that I really liked teenaged Esa, the AI Preacher, and Marus the green guy, and especially Jane and Javi.

Looking forward to more in this series.

What do you get when you throw a tough fighter pilot (with her own sporty little starship); a wunderkind (who can manipulate some Seriously Big Stuff with her mind); a would-be space pirate (with a distinctly romantic side); a robot preacher (as in, clergywoman made of metal); an older, wiser space spy (somehow everything just sounds cooler when you put “space” in front of it, doesn’t it?); and a sentient spaceship (a female ship with Artificial Intelligence, who is as persnickety about keeping her surfaces spiffy-clean as she is about trying to keep her captain alive) together… then toss ‘em smack-dab in the middle of an about-to-erupt, epic space battle (see? totally cooler than just “a battle”) against a hodgepodge horde of the galaxy’s meanest hombres, who’re hellbent on destroying your worlds and adding you to their vast number, if possible (or killing you dead, if not)?

Pure. Unadulterated. Awesomeness. (Well, duh, right?)

Or, to put another way, you get Drew Williams’ rip-roaring debut, The Stars Now Unclaimed.

Now, if—after reading that first ‘graph--the short-lived show “Firefly” came to mind, it's understandable. (On the other hand, if it didn’t? You may need to up your sci-fi game, ’s'all I’m sayin’.)
And really, the parallels between this book and that show are pretty compelling. The unnamed (for about 2/3 of the book, so I won’t tell you here) fighter pilot takes cues from "Firefly's" Captain Mal Reynolds, his second-in-command, Zoe, and the rough-’n-ready Jane Cobb. Pirate (with a soft side) Javier has bits of Capt. Mal and touches of the romantically-inclined mechanic, Kaylee in his makeup. The wunderkind—Esa—is pretty much a dead ringer for the teenaged River Tam; the robotic preacher—called Preacher—though female, shares an overall world view with “Firefly’s” on-board cleric, Shepherd; and the ship, Scheherazade, well… okay, so Serenity (the show’s ship) wasn’t AI, but if you sub in the smart, plummy, sort of prissy doctor, instead? Yep, even that one kinda fits.

Then, there are the worlds, themselves… most of which have devolved to a relatively primitive state, on the heels of a phenomenon that swept through a couple hundred years earlier, zapping nearly all of the modern tech throughout the galaxy in its wake. (In “Firefly”, remember the wild-west feel, with horses, saloons, guns, and so on?)

If The Stars Now Unclaimed is just a rehash of a short-lived ‘90s TV show, then why would you want to read it? For starters, it isn't a rehash, at all. The similarities are just some basic ideas and tropes found in both; The Stars doesn’t copy anything.

[Anyway, it’s nearly impossible to not find common themes within any genre. Decades ago, “Star Wars" gave us the ultimate devil-may-care fighter-pilot hero with a big mouth who always got into—then, somehow, back out of—scrapes, with Han Solo. And, the villains here bear resemblance to another franchise’s baddies—“Star Trek’s” hive-like Borg—further illustrating the notion that there really isn’t anything (truly) original under the sun…]

Second, Williams has crafted an absolute humdinger of a sci-fi adventure, in The Stars. This one takes off, if not at a run, at least at a very swift jog, then goes into an all-out sprint… but with the endurance required of a long-distance marathoner.

You want your space battles? The Stars has got ‘em, and how. (Dreadnaughts and frigates and fighters, oh my!) Really, really good battles, too, of the nail-biting, can’t-read-fast-enough, the-very-fate-of-the-galaxy-depends-on-our-heroes variety.

You like a little philosophy, maybe some intelligent convos about why we behave the ways we do, and our responsibility for our actions? Check. Smart--and smart-mouthed--characters? Yep... a lot of whom are women (hallelujah!). Politics, race relations, family, love, fear, hate, and a little bit of science… they’re all present, in a perfect blend of sci-fi that winds up seeming more like reality than fantasy—talking spaceships (with their own distinct personalities), and scaly and lupine characters, aside—because the combatants all feel real, and you end up caring for them like friends and family (including the ones you don’t really like much, at all, but are nonetheless sort of stuck with).

The Stars Now Unclaimed is the best sci-fi I’ve read in, well, I don’t even know how long. Better yet, let’s just forget about labels and say that this is story-telling done brilliantly well… and one of my favorite book picks of 2018, for its sheer fun value.

The Stars will be released on August 21, 2018; my recommendation is to consider placing those pre-orders NOW. :)

~GlamKitty

While I liked the storyline, the mix of the causal and the complex was not quite to my liking and the language was a bit much for me. There was a bit of Hitchhiker's Guide meets Deadpool here. Also, perhaps because I like my storylines to be a bit less gritty, I found the rawness of the characters and their responses a tad off-putting. I am not sure people who keep biting each other's heads off would still work together.

All that being said, the complexities of the tale make the work intriguing. Good action and nice discussion of larger ethical issues offer some redemption to the narrative.

A fun twist on the idea of immortality being held by whoever holds your heart. Does that mean you cannot fall in love? What if you do anyway? With the one you were supposed to kill for *their* heart? Oh, what a twisted web these two weave, as they fight each other and their feelings.

4 solid (unclaimed) stars for this one.

The reasons why the book didn't get a full 5 stars from me were:
1. Esa was criminally underused, I was so looking forward to getting awesome telekinesis scenes from her; I have a soft spot for telekinesis, it's my favourite super power and the one I wish I had the most (that, and telepathy)
2. The fact that the plot consisted of fight scene after fight scene grew tiring after a while, plus...
3. ...How every single one of Jane's Batman Gambits paid off nicely, she took risk after risk and basically no one got hurt by them (well, no one we knew, right? Cheers if you get the reference)
4. **SPOILER**Jane acting like she was going to die at the end was a bit melodramatic, it was pretty obvious that nothing would happen to the the POV protagonist, especially since we know that the book is the first of a series.**END SPOILER**
5. A personal pet peeve of mine is fight scenes of our protagonists VS something monstrous and mindless that comes in hordes, so they can just shoot and hit stuff to look cool, and there was a section of the book revolving around this.
6. Jane's big "name reveal" scene wasn't that big, we already knew her name from the blurb?

And what did I like? Everything else.

I don't usually go for sci-fi fantasy books, but I do pick one once in a while, and I was so very pleasantly surprised by this! I liked the characters, the humor, the worldbuilding, the writing. Preacher was my favourite, and I couldn't help but picture her like Danger from X-Men. (I'm 85% sure that Drew Williams has read Joss Whedon's run of Astonishing X-Men; not only was Preacher similar to Danger, but the very last scene in the fusion reactor was simiar to the one in the ending of the "Unstoppable" arc. I'd be surprised if there is no connection)

Also, I adored reading about the details of the different species of the world.

I'm not gonna lie, I just flat out started the book because it has the word "telekinetic" on the blurb. Sadly, the book didn't deliver much on that front, but I'm pretty sure we'll be meeting other superpowered kids in the next book(s). There's a lot of stuff that the author can explore in the next installment (for example: Jane's mysterious mentor that is cryptically mentioned a few times throughout, or Jane's mysterious past in general, or the other children of the Justified, etc)

I'm very interested to see what happens next!

There are so many good things about this novel that one might believe that it sprouted from the mind of an experienced author branching out into a new series. As a lover of sci-fi, I thoroughly enjoyed this tale of the future.

The world-building started early and continued throughout the entire book. Truthfully, it was more galaxy-building, as author Drew Williams deftly juggled the different races, introducing them to us at a pace that managed to inform me without being a confusing jumble. Throughout the book, we learned more about the history of the galaxy, its planets and inhabitants, and its politics. Mr. Williams primarily used conversations to inform us, thus lessening the feel of receiving “information dumps.” Creation of a universe for the characters to travel in is the author’s five-star achievement.

Characters were fleshed out, making it easy for me to identify with them. Jane, of course, is the most easily understood, as she relates the story. While she is intelligent and can be humorous, she falls well short of the snarky female we see ad nauseam in many of today’s stories. Her companions are interesting, to say the least. Mr. Williams entertains us with aliens, a teenager who is blessed with telekinetic gifts, and an AI who is angry because her “race” can no longer reproduce and is threatened with extinction.

The storyline is good, and the action is reminiscent of an Indiana Jones or a Han Solo, other heroes who strive to accomplish the near impossible and usually succeed. I thought the battle scenes were some of the best I have read in a long time. Not too technical and never diving into the minutiae of what was happening, the action continually moved forward. For those who are adrenaline junkies, the small battles to outright war scenes encompass a good part of the book.

This is a book that could be read by adults as well as younger readers. I say could, because the profanity occurs more frequently than necessary. In most instances, I felt it did nothing to enhance the story or the characters, thus only serving to reduce the number of potential readers. I don’t usually reduce stars for excessive/unnecessary profanity, and I include this as an fyi to those who prefer to steer clear of f-bombs and the like.

Overall, a fun, entertaining read with a clear ending and only a hint that the author might expand his universe with a second book. Recommended for those who enjoy sci-fi or love a lot of adventure and action. Four stars.

My thanks to MacMillan Tor/Forge and Tor Books for an advance complimentary copy of this book.

I'd never heard of the author, but then not so long ago I'd never heard of Becky Chambers either, so SF with an enthusiastic blurb from her? Yeah, that's worth a look. And in a sense I can see the similarity to the Wayfarers series - this is old-school spacefaring SF, 17 largely compatible species spread over an RPG-friendly variety of planetary environments, now left at various different tech levels by a misfiring attempt at bringing peace to the galaxy. For which, wouldn't you know it, our hero* is partly responsible. But it's all much more dour than the fundamentally optimistic Chambers cosmos, as witness the way intergalactic fascists the Pax are the only ones who seem to have escaped the Pulse unscathed. The real problem, though, is that where Wayfarers always has enough of a twist to make the familiar new, here everything just feels, well, familiar. I kept on trying for a while, even after this became apparent, because it certainly wasn't terrible. Also, because this is only the second book for which I've been approved on Netgalley by a publisher much of whose stuff I love, and I wasn't too keen on the first one either, and... Well, you don't lie on account of such considerations; that would be wrong. But like being mates with the writer, they can incline you to take a kinder perspective, can't they? Still, there comes a time to face facts, and for all that I like a lot of what Tor put out, I'm just not enjoying this.

*Some people would use 'hero' gender-neutrally, sometimes including me. Here, it's mainly because the protagonist was such a central casting 'drifter with a past' that I could only ever picture them as a knock-off Clint Eastwood, even when I was reading a sentence which reminded me that the character was female. Yes, sometimes going back through a story and flipping a character's gender can work, and heavens know I'm not after the 'she breasted, boobily' atrocities which male writers sometimes employ to remind us their protagonist is female...but this, this I just didn't buy at all.

This epic sci-fi novel is set in a galaxy ravaged by the pulse, a phenomenon that sent countless worlds back to the ages before space flight or even electricity. In this universe, agent Jane Kamali is sent out to find a girl with powers that might save everyone. On her quest, she finds old and new friends and together they have to try to defend their home from enemies much stronger than anticipated.

It's hard to believe that The Stars Now Unclaimed is the author's debut novel. It's a fast-paced space adventure set in such a vast, diverse and interesting world that I'm quite bummed out there aren't already many more stories about it. The premise is quite original and even though some elements are found in many sci-fi adventures they are strung together in an interesting and fun way and the book is enjoyable from start to finish.

You have a number of species interacting, bickering AIs with strong personalities, a complicated romance, very contradicting characters and lots of people that need to learn how to deal with a terrible situation. And all this while being on some sort of road trip escape from space pirates / a sect. Fun!

My only complaint is that the space fights were incredibly long which made an otherwise fast-paced story drag quite a bit and the stakes, especially for Jane, never felt very high.

In general, though, I absolutely enjoyed this book and I would love to read more of this author.

It's hard to believe this fast-paced space adventure is a first novel. If you demand fully-drawn characters in the style of Becky Chambers' Wayfarers and appreciate wisecracking robots/AI straight out of Martha Wells' Murderbot Diaries, The Stars Now Unclaimed will scratch your itch for page-turning space opera.

Think big guns, smugglers, epic space battles, and a telekinetic girl with all the gifts.

The Stars Now Unclaimed is Firefly meets more Firefly, but still feels new and exciting as a futuristic space adventure. There are space pirates, mysterious interplanetary organizations, children with almost supernatural powers, a will-they-won’t-they romance, a spaceship with it’s own personality, interplanetary battles for freedom...and much, much more. The world-building is intricate and detailed, the characters are complicated, and the plot moved so quickly it was hard to put down. I won’t say more because I don’t want to spoil how the story unfolds, but put this on your to-read list if you like exciting sci fi. I really enjoyed this and didn’t want it to end.