The Stars Are Legion by Kameron Hurley (English) Hardcover Book

Description: The Stars Are Legion by Kameron Hurley "Set within a system of decaying world-ships travelling through deep space ... follows a pair of sisters who must wrest control of their war-torn legion of worldships --and may have to destroy everything they know in order to survive"-- FORMAT Hardcover LANGUAGE English CONDITION Brand New Publisher Description A Kirkus Reviews Best Science Fiction and Fantasy Selection of 2017 "[A] thought-provoking space opera." --Kirkus Reviews "One of the most unusual and powerfully disturbing space operas were likely to see this year." --Chicago Tribune Set within a system of decaying world-ships travelling through deep space, this breakout novel of epic science fiction follows a pair of sisters who must wrest control of their war-torn legion of worlds--and may have to destroy everything they know in order to survive. Somewhere on the outer rim of the universe, a mass of decaying world-ships known as the Legion is traveling in the seams between the stars. Here in the darkness, a war for control of the Legion has been waged for generations, with no clear resolution. Zan wakes with no memory, prisoner of a people who say there are her family. She is told she is their salvation, the only person capable of boarding the Mokshi, a world-ship with the power to leave the Legion. But Zans new family is not the only one desperate to gain control of the prized ship. Zan finds that she must choose sides in a genocidal campaign that will take her from the edges of the Legions gravity well to the very belly of the world. In the tradition of Iain M. Bankss Culture novels and Roger Zelaznys Chronicles of Amber, Kameron Hurley has created an epic and thrilling tale about tragic love, revenge, and war as imagined by one of our most celebrated new writers. Author Biography Kameron Hurley is the acclaimed author of the novels Gods War, The Mirror Empire, and The Light Brigade. Hurley has been awarded two Hugo Awards, the Kitschies Award for Best Debut Novel, and has also been a finalist for the Nebula Award, the Arthur C. Clarke Award, the British Science Fiction and Fantasy Award, and the Locus Award. Visit the author online at KameronHurley.com or on Twitter at @KameronHurley. Review "The Stars Are Legion is like a magnificent storm tearing through the genre."-- "-- Popular Mechanics""The Stars Are Legion is poised to be Kameron Hurleys mainstream breakthrough, but apparently no one told her. Its unlike any space opera youve ever read--a bizarro blend of New Weird adventure, political thriller, and body horror; and an intimate examination of two deeply damaged women. Its as visceral and violently angry as anything shes ever written, a ragged scream from the heart of a broken world--but one not past mending, if there are people brave enough to build a better one."---- Joel Cunnigham ", B&N Sci-Fi & Fantasy Blog" Review Quote "With mind-bending betrayals, heart-wrenching loves, souls and bodies driven to frenetic motion by war and hope, THE STARS ARE LEGION is a profoundly moving tale of self-discovery and self-construction in a world as wondrously layered as its unforge able protagonist." Excerpt from Book The Stars Are Legion "THERE IS NOTHING I FEAR MORE THAN SOMEONE WITHOUT MEMORY. A PERSON WITHOUT MEMORY IS FREE TO DO ANYTHING SHE LIKES." --LORD MOKSHI, ANNALS OF THE LEGION 1 ZAN I remember throwing away a child. Thats the only memory I know for certain is mine. The rest is a gory blackness. All I have, then, are the things Ive been told are true: My name is Zan. I once commanded a great army. My mission was to destroy a world that does not exist. Im told my army was scattered, or eaten, or blown apart into a thousand twinkling bits of debris, and I went missing. I dont know why Id ever want to lead an army--especially a losing one--but Im told I spent my life pushing hard to get to the rank and skill I attained. And when I came back, spit out by the world or wrenched free of my own will, I came back wrong. What wrong means I dont know yet, only that its also resulted in my lack of memory. The first face I see when I wake each period in my sickbed is full-lipped and luminous, like looking into the face of some life-giving sun. The woman says her name is Jayd, and it is she who has told me all I know to be true. When I ask, now, why there is a dead body on the floor behind her, she only smiles and says, "There are many bodies on the world," and I realize the words for world and ship are nearly identical. I dont know which she used. I drift. When I wake next, the body is gone, and Jayd is bustling around me. She helps me sit up for the first time. I marvel at the dark bruises on the insides of my arms and legs. A broad scar cuts my belly in two, low near my groin, and there is something strange about my left hand; its clearly smaller than the right. When I try to make a fist, it closes only halfway, like a tortured claw. When I slide to the floor, I discover that the bottoms of my feet are mostly numb. Jayd does not give me time to examine them as she pulls a porous, draping robe over my shoulders. Its the same cut and heft as hers, only dark green to her blue. "Its time for your first debriefing," Jayd says as I try to make sense of my injuries. She takes my hand and leads me from the room, down a dark, pulsing corridor. I squint. I see that our entwined hands are the same tawny color, but her skin is much softer than mine. "You were gone for a half-dozen turns," she says, and she sits me down beside her in a room off the corridor. I stare at my palms, trying to open and close my hands. If I work at it, I can get the left to close a bit more. The room, like the corridors, is a warm, glistening space with walls that throb like a beating heart. Jayd smooths the dark hair from my brow with comforting fingers, the movement as reverent and well practiced as a prayer. "We thought you dead," she says, "recycled." "Recycled into what?" I say, but the wall blooms open, the door unfurling like a flower, and an older woman beckons us inside, and Jayd ignores my question. Jayd and I go after her and sit on a damp bench on one side of the great plain of a table. The woman sits across from us. Patterns move over the surface of the table, though whether they are writing or purely decorative or something else entirely, I dont know. The more I look at them, the more my head throbs. I touch my temple, only to find that my fingers come away sticky with viscous lubricant or salve. I trace my finger along the ridge of a long scar that runs from the edge of my left brow to the curl of my left ear. I have still not seen my own face. I have encountered no reflective surfaces. There is indeed something very wrong here, but I dont think its me. "Im Gavatra," the older woman says, her voice a low rumble. Her black hair is shorn short against her dark scalp, revealing four long scars like scratch marks on the side of her head. She wears a long, durable garment of shiny blue fabric, like something excreted from the walls. Its all held together with intricate knotted ties. She peers into my face and sighs. "Do you know who you are?" Jayd says, "Its the same as all the other times." "Other times?" I say, because how many times can one lose an army and get eaten by a ship and come back with injuries like these and live? Jayd gazes deeply into my eyes, desperately searching my face for something. She has a broad, intense face with sunken eyes, and a bold beak of nose. I feel I should know or understand something from her look, but my memory is a hot, sticky void. I intuit nothing. I flex my hands again. "Eight hundred and six of your sisters have tried to board the Mokshi," Gavatra says, tapping her fingers across the surface of the table. The patterns change, and she scrutinizes them as if scrying. "Youre the only one who ever comes out, Zan. This appears to be why Lord Katazyrna keeps sending you there, despite the fact that youve never successfully led an army inside. Only yourself." "The Mokshi," I say. "The world that doesnt exist?" "Yes," Jayd says. "You remember?" Hopeful or doubtful? I shake my head. The phrase means nothing to me. It has simply surfaced. "How many times has this happened to me?" I say. My left hand trembles, and I gaze at it as if it belongs to someone else. It occurs to me that maybe it once did, and that chills me. I want to know whats happened to my memory, and why there was a body on the floor in my sick room, and why I threw away a child. But I know they arent going to be pretty answers. "You are blessed of the War God, sister mine," Jayd says, but she is looking at Gavatra as she says it. Its like being a child again, stuck in a room with people who have a deep history between them; too deep and complicated for a child to fathom. Even more curious is that if Jayd is really my sister, then the feeling that stirs my gut when she twines her fingers in my hair is entirely wrong. I lift my gaze to Gavatra and firm my jaw. A grim purpose fills me. "I wish to know what happened to me," I say. "You can tell me or have me wrest it from you." I can make both hands into fists now. That action feels more natural than anything Ive done so far. Gavatra barks out a laugh. She swipes at the table and pulls a nest of dancing lights from its surface and into the air. I watch them tangle above her, fascinated. She swipes them back onto another part of the table. "Youre fulfilling your duty to your mother, the Lord of Katazyrna," Gavatra says, "as are we all. But perhaps Jayd is right this time. Perhaps its time we retire you." "I feel you owe me a memory," I say. "Then you must retake the Mokshi," Gavatra says. "We dont have your memory here. That ship ate it. It seems to eat it every time. You want your memory, you take the Mokshi . . . and get a squad in there with you this time." "I will go again, then," I say. "Mother cant afford to risk another squad," Jayd says, "not with the Bhavajas lying in wait for us in orbit around the Mokshi. The Bhavajas have taken another ship since youve been gone, Zan." "Whats a Bhavaja?" I say. Gavatra rolls her eyes. "These cycles get tiring," she says. "They are the greatest enemy of our family," Jayd says. "A family we have been feuding with since Mother was a child. Its only a matter of time before they take the Mokshi out from under us too. Maybe even all the Katazyrna ships." This time, I am sure she says ship and not world, because taking an entire world seems impossible. "The Mokshi has destroyed a good many people," Gavatra says. "Your mother will just steal more from some other distressed world. If Zan is ready to assault the Mokshi again, I wont deny her." Jayd slumps in her chair, defeated. Am I something to be fought over and won? "This is a foolish enterprise," Jayd says. "Its just as likely that Zan will die as it is shell retrieve her memory. Some of it comes back without you going to the Mokshi, Zan. If you stay--" "No," I say. I press my finger against the long ridge of the scar on my face again. "I would like to finish whats been started." Gavatra waves her hand over the table, and the patterns of light fade, revealing the table surface for what it is: a smooth, stitched-together canvas of human skin. I jerk up from the bench. The trembling in my arm becomes a spasm, and I lash out and smash the wall. The wall gives under my fist, as if Ive mashed it into a lung. When I pull my hand away, it is moist. My body begins to shake; my breath comes hard and fast. Jayd wraps her arms around me. "Hush, it will pass," she says. I feel as if Im watching my body from a great height, unable to contain or control it. The panic is a monstrous thing. My body is trying to fight or flee, and I cant allow it to do either until I understand whats happening here. The attack is so sudden, so consuming, that it terrifies me. Gavatra snorts and stands. "Shes going to pop again," Gavatra says, and she scratches at the scars on her head. My heart hammers loudly in my chest. A dark and twisted impulse seizes me; an uncoiling of everything I have held back while pushed and prodded in my sick room. I leap across the table and take Gavatra by the throat. We collide with the wall and fall into a tangle on the floor. Gavatra writhes Description for Library Tiring of a galactic war fought for centuries upon hundreds of world-ships, much-feared leader Anat makes a bid for peace by approaching her rival with the offer of daughter Jayd in marriage. From two-time Hugo Award winner Hurley. Details ISBN1481447939 Author Kameron Hurley Short Title STARS ARE LEGION Pages 400 Language English ISBN-10 1481447939 ISBN-13 9781481447935 Media Book Format Hardcover Year 2017 Publication Date 2017-02-07 Publisher Gallery / Saga Press Imprint Gallery / Saga Press DEWEY FIC Audience General We've got this At The Nile, if you're looking for it, we've got it. 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