The Stars Are Legion

This one is from the category 'WTF did I just read?' It's not my first book by Kameron Hurley, the queen of zero exposition ever. You just get thrown in, and the missing exposition, in this case because of amnesia, is part of the story.

Zan is a warrior from the family Katazyrna, and apparently the only one who can conquer the Mokshi, a world-ship that has left the Legion, a group of decaying world-ships and is supposed to be the salvation, as all other world-ships are dying. But Zan loses her memory every time she comes back from the Mokshi, and along with her amnesia, just like Zan you as the reader have to figure out what exactly is happening here.

We get two PoVs in this book. Zan, who remembers nothing, and has to regain her memories, and Jayd, apparently Zan's love, daughter of the Katazyrna leaders, who gives herself away in marriage to the rival Bhavaja family, in order to fulfill the master plan she's worked out with Zan before she lost her memory.

Zan's chapters are great, Jayd's chapters I detested, just like I detested the character. What I wasn't prepared for was the amount of body horror in this book. The world-ships are organic, and this case it means very visceral and disgusting. At some point, Zan gets tossed to the bottom of the ship and has to basically claw her way back up through the bowels. It was disturbing yet also my favorite part of the book. I could easily transplant this into a Numenera roleplaying campaign, it was delightfully weird, with a group of four adventurers traveling through the world.

The main Mokshi plot left me a bit cold though. It was interesting, but not as good as Zan's story on the Katazyrna. Also a bit disturbing, if strange pregnancies might make you queasy. I should mention that this story has female characters only, and conception is sexless, as women get pregnant and birth ship parts as the world ships need them. Yeah, weird, I know. But also interesting, because female autonomy over their bodies is HUGE in this story, and should be in RL too.

Anyway, not my favorite for sure, but interesting.

This one is from the category 'WTF did I just read?' It's not my first book by Kameron Hurley, the queen of zero exposition ever. You just get thrown in, and the missing exposition, in this case because of amnesia, is part of the story.

Zan is a warrior from the family Katazyrna, and apparently the only one who can conquer the Mokshi, a world-ship that has left the Legion, a group of decaying world-ships and is supposed to be the salvation, as all other world-ships are dying. But Zan loses her memory every time she comes back from the Mokshi, and along with her amnesia, just like Zan you as the reader have to figure out what exactly is happening here.

We get two PoVs in this book. Zan, who remembers nothing, and has to regain her memories, and Jayd, apparently Zan's love, daughter of the Katazyrna leaders, who gives herself away in marriage to the rival Bhavaja family, in order to fulfill the master plan she's worked out with Zan before she lost her memory.

Zan's chapters are great, Jayd's chapters I detested, just like I detested the character. What I wasn't prepared for was the amount of body horror in this book. The world-ships are organic, and this case it means very visceral and disgusting. At some point, Zan gets tossed to the bottom of the ship and has to basically claw her way back up through the bowels. It was disturbing yet also my favorite part of the book. I could easily transplant this into a Numenera roleplaying campaign, it was delightfully weird, with a group of four adventurers traveling through the world.

The main Mokshi plot left me a bit cold though. It was interesting, but not as good as Zan's story on the Katazyrna. Also a bit disturbing, if strange pregnancies might make you queasy. I should mention that this story has female characters only, and conception is sexless, as women get pregnant and birth ship parts as the world ships need them. Yeah, weird, I know. But also interesting, because female autonomy over their bodies is HUGE in this story, and should be in RL too.

Anyway, not my favorite for sure, but interesting.

“The monsters don't live in the belly of the world like they all say. The monsters live inside of us. We make the monsters.”

The Stars Are Legion no es una lectura agradable, no solo por su estética, donde existen naves planeta que viven y se retroalimentan, de tentáculos y pistolas cefalópodas, de bestias de dientes afiladas, sino también por su historia y sus personajes.
Quizás Zan me ha parecido la más difuminada de todas las personajes, aunque sea la voz principal; las secundarias como Casimir o Das Muni, e incluso Rasida, me han llamado mucho la atención por lo marcada de sus voces y la importancia de cada una de ellas como engranaje dentro de la historia.

Esta es la primera novela de Hurley que leo (no la última, ya que tengo pendiente The Mirror Empire) y me ha gustado mucho. Con una trama de descenso a los infiernos a la superficie, quizás The Stars Are Legion se vuelve un poco previsible hacia el final, pero eso no le quita una originalidad deslumbrante y tentaculosa.

Habrá relectura, seguro.