I’ve stopped and started this book several times and just can’t get into the story. The romance aspects, dialogue, characters all fell flat for me. I really wanted more of a thrilling sci fi adventure than what I got.

4.5 stars

Finally, after a long slump of mediocre books, something great! This book was was so refreshing and charming while still being hard-hitting thematically. I also haven't read much sci-fi and was a little nervous tackling this book, but it was awesome. It was pretty easy to follow along with everything even if it felt a little overwhelming at first. The science aspects involved discussions of geology, parisitology, and technology for the most part.

The premise is that the galaxy is controlled by several major families who are rulers of different sectors (agriculture, mining, technology, etc.) and several life-sustaining planets have died after the mining began there. In this world, human consciousness can be stored, so if a human dies they can essentially be resurrected in a new body (called a "print" in this universe) and the prints have special neural pathways that can be enhanced for speed, strength, cognition, etc. There are multiple POVs, but two are the most major. One follows a bookish, rock-loving man named Tarquin who is an heir to the mining family as he is on his first mining expedition to a planet. And he is determined to prove his family and their mining methods have nothing to do with the dying worlds. The other main POV is a woman named Naira who wakes up in a strange print in dire circumstances. She used to be the bodyguard for Tarquin's father for years before she defected and accused his mining practices of causing the planets' deaths. She was captured, put on trial, and Tarquin took the stand to argue against her points and seal her fate of her consciousness being "iced". As these two are thrown together, lies, deception, and blooming romance follow.

By far one of my favorite aspects of this book was the subversion of common tropes. The FMC is a skilled bodyguard and has to protect the MMC from threats. She is also fiercely intelligent, quick-witted, and stands for what she believes in even if it means uncomfortable deception. Meanwhile, the MMC is the scholarly, more uncertain type who is figuring out who he is and what he believes in. I just loved how both characters have flaws and make mistakes but they're still both charming and likeable in their own ways. Both use their strengths to their advantage and are strong people independent of one another. It was refreshing to see the common bodyguard-royalty trope flipped.

Another aspect I enjoyed was The Last of Us vibes it gave me since you're dealing while people trapped on a planet, dying, and strange things occurring to them and the environment around them. I can't say more without spoilers, but it was a lot of fun. Additionally, this does have the enemies-to-lovers trope (the lovers part is on the lighter end, no spice beyond kissing) and it was done well. Nothing bothers me more than when a book is marketed that way and the characters aren't even enemies. In this book, they definitely are and one of the characters seriously considers eliminating the other several times and has to overcome their own biases to appreciate the other beyond their face-value.

The romance was slow-burn and pretty mature and serious which I appreciated. These characters are in their 30s and they felt it, the romance didn't jump to insta-love and they had severe problems they had to work through. Also, the romance doesn't take the forefront at all for people who don't care for it. The characters have way worse and more concerning things to worry about the majority of the time. But, I did smile several times at the interactions between the main characters, I couldn't help but be charmed by them and their chemistry.

I could keep going but I don't want to bore anyone and this review is long enough as is. Overall, this was a fast-paced, serious-themed, and surprisingly charming sci-fi story. If you're a fantasy reader looking to ease into sci-fi, then I think this would be a good choice. Also, if you enjoyed books that subvert tropes then I definitely recommend this! I can't wait to read the sequel in the near future, the vibes were just immaculate 👌

4.5 stars

The Blighted Stars is an action-packed SciFi adventure with an incredibly compelling romance subplot and truly unnerving horror elements. This book single-handedly restored my faith in SciFi new releases.

I was immediately hooked by the unique worldbuilding and technology of this world. There is a concept in this book that involves printing bodies. A person’s self is, therefore, the neural map, stored in databases, that can be uploaded into new prints of bodies. As a result, the concepts of death and loss are very, very different in this world. The Blighted Stars does an incredible job of exploring how this technology would change a world and the moral implications of it. I am so excited to get to know more of the world in the next books.

Though I would not call this a horror book, there are some horror elements in this book that genuinely freaked me out. I will keep it vague in this review because the slow reveal that something is very, very wrong is what makes the horror elements so effective. The implications of the threat introduced in this book are incredibly stressful and O’Keefe does an excellent job building the sense of urgency and doom throughout the story. I particularly loved the sentient ship interlude chapters.

Tarquin and Naira are compelling main characters. Both characters experience a lot of growth while trapped on the dead planet and I loved how they played off each other. The banter is top tier and I am incredibly invested in the romance. I love the badass woman x slightly pathetic (but he’s working on it) man relationship dynamic.

I do think the book unravels a bit towards the end. The story becomes clunky and repetitive with multiple scenes that achieve the same point for the story or character development. It started to feel like I was getting hit over the head with the point of the book.

I almost wish this book had ended 50 pages earlier than it did. There was definitely a natural stopping point before the official end of the book—though it would have led to a slight cliffhanger. We could have then had the final action scenes of this book at the beginning of the second book. The ending was chaotic with some very big moments happening at the last second. These developments then felt a bit messy and rushed which was a disappointing end to a fascinating story.

The Devoured Worlds trilogy has the potential to become one of my new favorite SciFi series. I am both excited and scared to see what awaits these characters in the next two books.

The Blighted Stars (The Devoured Worlds #1) by Megan O'Keefe is a solid sci-fi series opener. It sounded like it would be 100% for me, but I'll have to admit I was kind of underwhelmed. Maybe my expectations were set far too high, I'm not sure. I wasn't familiar with this author going in to this either. It's a long book, and unfortunately it just started to lose my interest. I enjoyed getting to know the characters, but I think it the novel were shorter it would have been for the better and I could have done without the romance aspect personally. I'm not sure if I'll be back for the sequel.

The Blighted Stars by Megan O’Keefe is a mix of the horror of human expansion, the fear of limited resources, and humanity’s resolve. Her characters are engaging with conflicting motivations in a situation where they must work together. The first book in The Devoured Worlds series is full of action and small character moments that make reading the book feel fast-paced but also give the characters enough downtime to delve into who they are. The world-building of this science fiction novel is both fascinating and approachable. Underlying a plot of survival and corporate espionage is an enemies-to-lovers story that interweaves well into the main action.

The plot seems straightforward at first; on their way to Sixth Cradle, an earth-like planet on The Amaranth, a mining ship owned by the megacorporation Mercator, their sister ship, the Einkhorn, fires upon them. Tarquin Mercator, the geologist son of the company’s owner, Naira Sharp, printed into the body of an exemplar, bodyguards, and mercenaries to the corporate families collectively known as MERIT, and a handful of survivors are forced to escape to the planet below. The world-building plays an integral part in the events of Sixth Cradle, with humanity having nearly conquered death by being able to scan and map the human mind and then reproduce the mapping into bodies that are printed like 3D printing a mini figure for your tabletop game. Only a highly traumatic death of a print can crack the neural map to the point that reprinting becomes impossible. These bodies can be embedded with pathways, a type of organic circuitry that enhances particular abilities to help with different tasks and occupations. This technology is thanks to the resource relkatite, which Mercator mines from the cradle planets, including Earth. The author introduces these concepts and the backstories of characters connected with these concepts at a pace that is neither an infodump nor a slog trying to figure it out.

As the book starts, Naira Sharp, a former exemplar who defected and joined the anti-MERIT group known as the Conservators, is presumed to have the map of her mind locked away, unable to be printed after claiming Mercator’s mining process causes a spore lichen that destroys a planet’s plant life and ecosystem making it uninhabitable to anyone that they called the shroud. After testifying against Naira as a geology expert witness, Tarquin is out to go to Sixth Cradle and finally prove his family’s innocence. From the moment they crash land on Sixth Cradle, the plot hits the ground running. In order to get away from Mecator, who still owns her map, Naira is forced to work with Tarquin, the man who got her neural map put on ice, to begin with, to survive and get off the planet. Speaking of survival and how the world-building interweaves into the action, those machines that print bodies can also have technical issues just like any printer, but what it creates are misprints, deformed amalgamations of human parts that appear in multiple horrifying scenes that push the two point-of-view characters together out of necessity.

The two could not be more different, but their interactions and growing relationship are the book’s backbone. That relationship starts off with a lot of tension. Tarquin is essentially the cause of her mind being a prisoner of her ex-employer, who she believes is causing great harm to the human race. She’d probably have killed him if she didn’t need Tarquin to escape the planet. Instead, she not only has to treat him with respect but protect his life as well. Meanwhile, Tarquin is responsible for the survivors and is rapt with the mystery of why the shroud was already at Sixth Cradle before humanity arrived. Tarquin, desperate for camaraderie, tries to be a man of the people, not realizing his privileged position. By insisting he be treated like everyone else, he makes all their jobs harder because he isn’t like anyone else. Naira, with no other choice but to work with him, begins to enlighten him as the book goes on, not only why what he’s trying to do is wrong but also what being an employee of Mercator is really like. A lot of The Blighted Stars is about trust. Could Naira trust Tarquin with the truth? Could Tarquin trust his father and his family’s company about the shroud? Can the survivors of the Amaranth trust each other, or was one of them a saboteur? Between the two main point-of-view characters, O’Keefe does an excellent job of not making one seem more correct than the other, though it’s hard to disagree with Naira as Tarquin is in the dark about MERIT’s more sordid actions.

Between exploring the Sixth Cradle for clues as to what is going on and the actions they have to take, the walls between Naira and Tarquin begin to fall. She starts to understand the son, capable of empathy despite his role, is not like the father. He, too, begins to see Naira, despite her pretending to be someone else, as the complex individual in a complicated situation she is. Not only does O’Keefe use enemies-to-lover proficiently, but adds to it the trope of a romance that breaks the chain of command, even if only because of who Naira is pretending to be. Their budding romance between flirtation that breaks protocol, to lingering touches, to accidental contact will have you biting your fingers thinking oh, this is the moment when they’ll finally kiss, only for them to get interrupted by another crisis that gradually gets more severe and pressing as the secrets of the planet, Mercator, and the shroud are revealed.

More than halfway through the book, there is a twist, a reveal, that completely changes the stakes of Tarquin and Naira’s situation. Searching back into the chapters, Megan E. O’Keefe had deftly and subtly given hints of what was to come, but I had not seen it coming in the best way. I went into the book believing exposing the corruption of these families of megacorporations was the conflict at the forefront of the series, only to be blown away by how much deeper it goes. It was a reveal that let you know this wouldn’t be solved in one novel that didn’t feel tact on at the end but hooked you for the rest of the series before the first one was even done. It creates new conflict and expands upon everything the characters and the reader know about the setting of The Devoured World series.

The Blighted Stars by Megan O’Keefe quickly hooked me for more from the series using action, romance, espionage, and science fiction that is accessible and engrossing. It’s a fast read with complexity and thoughtful revelations about humanity. I need to know what happens next to Tarquin Mercator and Naira Sharp, no matter what may occur. That, in itself, is a mark of an excellent beginning to a series.

An absolutely delicious sci-fi novel. The writing is accessible and easy to follow. The pace is quick and the story pulls you in and before you know it you've just spent an afternoon reading a book from cover to cover--or maybe that's just me. Loved it. 10/10 would read again.

This book started so good! The premise is fantastic and I liked the opening chapters and the two lead characters. The story builds tension in an excellent way and the themes of technology gone awry and human consumption were worked into it seemlessly.

The book did start to drag for me in the second half, and I found the romance to be...just not very good or believable. Some of the lines were cringy, but also I just didn't buy that these two people would fall for each other. And it took up a LARGE portion of the book.

I will read the sequel!

This book was incredible! Things were very mysterious and dark and I was so invested in this plot. Each character had so much complexity, I found myself wanting to know more about everyone. Some of the best writing I've read this year.

I wasn't sure what to expect going into this book. The description had my interest piqued, but it left the door open for the story to go in a number of different ways.

In the end, this was a great story, full of action-packed drama and intrigue. Parts of the story and character development were predictable, but there were enough twists and turns to make the overall storyline gripping and mysterious.

I am anxiously awaiting the next book in the series to follow along and see how the story pans out.

I am LOVING this new era of girl power space operas and I will eat up every single one. The world, the plot, the characters, the relationships were all fantastic and I am so excited to see what Megan E O'Keefe has in store for us next. There isn't a ton more that I can say without spoiling this one, so just trust me when I say you need to pick it up!

thank you to netgalley and the publisher for providing me with a copy of this novel in exchange for an honest review.

3.5

There is a whole lot to love here unfortunately, I found the book was just a little too long for me, or maybe it was just the pacing that didn’t quite work. I loved the set up, and how O’Keefe mashed up so many different genres into this book. It’s a sci-fi with a mystery and horror elements and a really fun enemies to lovers romance. I loved the far future world with creepy fungus and AI ships and the re-printing of human minds, which makes the whole concept of death really interesting in this culture. I also love how casually accepted Tarquin’s transness was, like, please more of that in everything. I like that the enemies to lovers romance wasn’t bullying. Like yes, they had conflict that made them enemies but it was more because of ideological differences and there was active growth throughout the book that had me rooting for the to be together.

That being said, there were certain elements that I kind of just stop paying attention to because they didn’t make sense and I was having a hard time wrapping my brain around what was being described to me. I expected some explanation to come along, but never really got one at least not in this book. I also found that the second quarter of the book kind of dragged for me. It did pick up but I think if I had stopped reading hit some point around the 30% mark I might have struggled to pick the book back up. Though I did like the twists and turns in the second half of the book.

The sequel very shortly and I’ll probably pick it up though this book kind of ends in a satisfying place for a standalone. I am definitely excited to go back to O’Keefe’s first trilogy though!

Naira Sharpe is a a revolutionary and a spy trying to take down the Mercator family, who she believes is responsible for destroying hospitable planets as soon as they are found. Taking the form of a Mercator employee she finds herself trying to sabotage the latest mission. What she was not counting on was to be trapped on a dying planet with the Mercator heir Tarquin. Tarquin may be the heir but all he wants is to study rocks and prove his family is not the cause of the planets dying. They must both trust each other to survive, and discover what is truly behind the destructions.

Books like these are the reason I love Scifi so much. The banter between the characters was so well done. It had good world building, great action and plot, and the characters really delivered. I cannot wait to see what else comes from this series.

The Blighted Stars is the first book in a space opera trilogy and it is off to a great start. The book starts off with a mining mission on a Mercator ship. The Mercator family business, led by Acaelus, is going to Sixth Cradle, an earth-like planet that contains a precious mineral called relkatite. Unfortunately, one of the effects of mining of relkatite is a fungal blight that destroys the planet and makes it uninhabitable.

Things go sideways right away on this mission as the lead mining ship is fired upon by the other Mercator ship on the mission. As the ship is being attacked, Tarquin Mercator, the reluctant geologist son, takes the survivors along with Ex. Lockhart, one of the elite bodyguards, to the planet. Only the bodyguard is actually Naira Sharp, Acaelus' former bodyguard and now rebel working against the Mercators, in another body. When they get to the planet, Tarquin and Naira have to work together to survive and solve the mystery of what is killing these planets. How did the blight get to Sixth Cradle if Mercator just arrived?

This is a long book but it moves pretty quickly with plenty of fun banter between Tarquin, Naira, and the other survivors. Unlike some space operas who broaden the scope to cover multiple points of view across the galaxies, this book is pretty focused on just a few characters. It is a slow burn at times with the Tarquin/Naira relationship but there are several twists in this book, usually just when you are getting comfortable with the state of events.

I really enjoyed this book--the balance of funny banter, will they/won't they hints of romance, weird sci-fi mystery, and darker "how are they going to get out of this" scenes was perfect. Even better was a note at the end saying that the author had finished the entire trilogy so hopefully the other two books will be released in a relatively short window. Highly recommended for space opera fans.

3.5 stars rounded up.

The first half was a solid 4.5 stars, but then it dragged on and on, so I couldn't help but to knock it down a star. If about a quarter of the novel were chopped off, and certain plotlines were tightened up, then it would've been one of my favorite August reads.

One thing I really loved was the audiobook narrator, Ciaran Saward. He was amazing with the voices, accents, and personalities. You could really tell each character apart. I'm pretty excited to hear more from him!

So the novel... I loved how the first half was basically a sci-fi thriller with a romantic "will they? won't they?" subplot tease. It was everything I ever wanted from this genre. There are creepy zombie-like human misprints and humans stranded on an unexplored planet. Loved the creepy, ominous atmosphere.

I also loved the FMC, Naira, even though she's a typical badass female character with a chip on her shoulder. But I'll excuse the author, because in this case, it really worked out. Hell, I even liked the MMC/love interest since he actually underwent a lot of character growth throughout the course of the novel. I was totally rooting for them and I'm not even the type of person who likes romantic subplots. I guess my favorite romance trope now is bodyguard/client.

The second half of the novel though... Everything became tropey and stereotypical. The plot twist wasn't all that surprising. It read like every other sci-fi story with infected humans. I zoned out a lot after the midpoint because it was so predictable.

But despite that, I'm still excited to pick up the sequel. The story was entertaining and pretty immersive. I can't wait to read more from the author.

Thank you to Orbit and NetGalley for this arc.

The Blighted Stars by Megan E. O'Keefe is a fantastic sci-fi story with enough mystery and enough action to please any fans of the genre. It's such an interesting take on humanity's journey into the stars. I have never read anything quite like it. It's easy to follow and the science isn't hard to suspend disbelief for. The characters.play off of each other so well and the dialogue feels natural, even for a book set so far into the future. It's my favorite sci Fi book of the year. Highly recommended

The Blighted Stars by Megan E. O'Keefe delivers an exhilarating new space opera that’s loaded with political intrigue and complex, compelling characters.

The story center around:

- Naira: an environmentalist revolutionary who mysteriously wakes up inside of a different body aboard an enemy ship.

- Tarquin: The heir to the powerful Mercator family who is sent to oversee to the mining operations of a newly discovered planet and whom Naira pretends to act as a bodyguard for.

However, when they arrive on the mining planet, to their surprise, it’s already dead—choked of life—by a strange fungal blight, and the two of them must work together to investigate what happened.

For me, my favorite part of the book had to be the concept of “reprints,”—where, for a price, people can be reprinted out of biomatrix if they die and have their neural pathways/memories transferred into that new body. The wealthy can also have augmentations and enhancements added to their bodies and people in combat-like roles (such as Exemplars) are forced to go through the pain and trauma dying over and over again. Think of it as 3-D printing for humans and it reminded me of Altered Carbon in the best possible way.

I enjoyed this novel immensely. The story jumps. right in and lets you get to know the world as you read. The aspect of prints and neural maps was interesting and unique. I enjoyed the evil fungi element. The romance was great - lots of swoon-y lines that had me kicking my feet. I think the author did a good job. of building it up slowly and making it believable. I wasn't a huge fan of what happened at the end with the romance, but I'll hope it's resolved in book two.

The Blighted Stars is a creepy, relatable, and incredibly immersive journey with exciting reveals and harrowing choices. And, if you don't like romance in your space opera to leave you properly conflicted, what are you even doing? O'Keefe's The Blighted Stars collides at the intersection of science-fiction and horror with such vicious brilliance it's a gamechanger for genre-bending. *9/10 you damn right I *recommend.

This is that good good. I went in not knowing what to expect and got more than I could have anticipated. I really enjoyed the expansion on the threat, the character development and this very neat take on The Last of Us but make it a space opera. I don't want to say much in case of spoilers, but this was some damn good soup. Can't wait to pick up the sequel.


4.5

A long book that never felt long to me, as the pacing was fast, the protagonists likeable, and the action was frequent, bringing danger, horror, and a bit of romance.

Megan O'Keefe sets this start to her "Devoured Worlds" trilogy in a time of a few powerful families, know collectively as MERIT, who run vast corporations, funding space exploration and scientific research. The Mercator family have a lock on mining the precious mineral relkatite, which is integral to many technologies, and in particular the mind maps and neural pathways that give people abilities, such as extra strength, speed, analysis, etc. The corporate families all have these embedded pathways, and staff who have pledged loyalty to the families are also granted this tech. Paired with this tech, people have the ability to print out human bodies into which one's mind map and pathways are then printed into. This gives the powerful the ability to keep printing themselves into new bodies. There is a caveat, though. A sufficiently traumatic and/or violent death will "crack" a mind map so that it can no longer be printed into a new body, and that person is now dead.

The head of the Mercator family and his geologist son Tarquin are on a mission to a new planet purportedly rich with relkatite. Things go drastically, and fatally wrong as soon as they arrive in orbit:
-Their ship is fired upon by the second ship on the mission,
-Misshapen people are printed from the ship's printers and begin attacking crew,
-A former high-level, highly trained and deadly security officer, and now revolutionary, is also printed into a new body. This shouldn't be possible as Naira Sharp's map was kept locked up and off any network, and
-Tarquin, along with Naira and some survivors, crash a shuttle on the planet below.

The survivors think their worst problem will be a lack of food before they can get rescued. Naira must pretend to be another Mercator security officer, while dealing with her rage that Tarquin, who testified against her when she blew the whistle on the Mercator practices, has survived the crash. Even worse, she must protect him to preserve her disguise. Tarquin must deal with revelation after revelation about his father, and the MERIT families in general, as Naira reveals much that she knows about them, all while continuing to pretend to be someone else. And weird, deadly stuff begins happening on the planet around them.

This was really good. I loved the idea of porting oneself from one body to the next while mostly preserving memories and capabilities; it's awful and interesting at the same time. O'Keefe also deals with the consequences of our overconsumption of planetary resources and drive to always find the next, big thing, regardless of the cost.

O'Keefe also builds a nice sense of disgust at the injustice baked into humanity in this period, as well as the horrors she gradually reveals about the costs of technological progress.

Naira was an outstanding character, with her compassion and sense of justice wedded to her heightened ability to cause death and destruction. Tarquin comes off as callow and insensitive initially, but he grows terrifically, as a result of being willing to listen and change his behaviour. That the two develop feelings for one another was inevitable, but O'Keefe doesn't make it easy for them to fly off into the sunset together, as she throws obstacle after, in some cases, terrifying obstacle before them, revealing much that is ugly and awful about their society's cultural and technological infrastructure, and the disparities between the MERIT families and everyone else.

Am I reading the next book? Definitely.

Thank you to Netgalley and to Orbit Books for this ARC in exchange for my review.