The Stars Are Legion

By Kameron Hurley

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. For generations, a war for control of the Legion has been waged, with no clear resolution. As worlds continue to die, a desperate plan is put into motion.

Zan wakes with no memory, prisoner of a people who say they 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 Zan's new family is not the only one desperate to gain control of the prized ship. Zan must choose sides in a genocidal campaign that will take her from the edges of the Legion's gravity well to the very belly of the world. Zan will soon learn that she carries the seeds of the Legion's destruction -­ and its possible salvation.

File Under: Science Fiction [ Armies in the Darkness | Over the Edge | Total Recall | She Is Legion ]

• Language: English
• Publisher: Random House Publishing Group
• Release date: Feb 7, 2017
• ISBN: 9780857666628

Kameron Hurley

Kameron Hurley is the acclaimed author of the novels God’s 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.

Reviews for The Stars Are Legion

[antao-3 · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

The lack of recognition for female SF writers appears to be particularly acute for what's known as 'hard science fiction', i.e. science fiction that pays fairly close attention to scientific plausibility, and that seeks to break as few physical laws as possible (in an ideal universe, perhaps, none). Other subdomains of SF have a better acceptance of female authorship -- for example, Lois McMaster Bujold has made wonderful inroads into space opera with her Vorkosigan series, and it's hard to think about time-travel fiction without bringing to mind Connie Willis' books exploring the London Blitz through time travel. And yet there's still the idea around that women don't, or can't, or shouldn't write hard SF, which is a nonsense. I've started actively seeking out hard SF by female writers, and there's some tremendously good stuff there.For a literature of the future, SF still has some fairly reactionary attitudes at times.The problem I have with stories like "Stars are legion" is the use of superhuman powers to achieve goals. Although they may help to highlight problems in society they don't actually indicate any solution, as the likelihood of getting these powers is nil.Although SF is ostensibly outward looking in its imagination of alternative societies, it is blinkered in seeing these new worlds only in terms of western society, taking their cue from either our capitalist or feudal experience. There are or have been many other societies around the world that are completely different. Although many are now 'corrupted' by contact with the all conquering western society, anthropologists have recorded societies with more or less complete sexual equality (if not matriarchal) and strongly egalitarian. Yet nobody wants to explore a future where humanity re-orders society to bring these basic human drives back into play.However, dystopian novels win prizes, utopian novels are remaindered.Narrative-wise, the book felt like an uphill climb. All those crooked mother, pregnancy metaphors... I didn't care about the plot, about the so-called metaphors and while there were bits of Zan's Journey "From the Centre of the Earth" that were mildly interesting, I just didn't care. I hate it when writers have an agenda. I don't want an agenda rammed in my face. I want Story. At heart it's just a somewhat traditional journey where Zan picks up various party members who are at varying levels of sanity, knowledgeability, and trustworthiness, and who agree to help her reach the surface of the planet so she can complete her mission. In a nutshell, that's what you'll get. All crap and sundry, imaginably run by the idea that every experience has some amazing extant point which by juxtaposition to metaphor would add more than a thousand yet unknown words to common vocabulary adding in new contexts to the more extraordinary of imagining past historic events more glorified and opportune than near say scribes whose pen they love but paper they mourn.What is “Science Fiction” anyway? One of the genre’s greatest (IMHO) authors, Harlan Ellison, could not abide the term. He proposed “Speculative Fiction” instead (and Heinlein before him). And it’s the term I prefer myself. Of course; you may feel that all fiction is, by its very nature, “speculative”, in that it did not really happen. Or, did it? Harlan is utterly mad. He's also right. Speculative fiction is the term we should be using to describe all books that ask "What if?" For example, what if Vikings had actually settled North America permanently instead of giving up after a few years? You'd now have the world's largest socialist democracy and Prime Minister Olafsson of Vinland. And Swedish would be one of the world's dominant languages. Maybe I can get Kim Stanley Robinson interested in this idea. I shall expect only 50% of the book royalties and income from film rights in return for giving him an idea he could have easily thought of on his own.Anyway! I’m a quasi-bald-headed white male, who has forgotten whatever point he was trying to make. Ta ta.NB: I just wish this book had been written by Tiptree or Le Guin. And because I don’t want you to say I’m only fond of deceased female SF writers, how about Maureen F. McHugh? “After the Apocalypse” and “China Mountain Zhang”. Does this ring a bell for anyone? I’m sure it doesn’t. No one reads worthwhile SF writers, male or female…SF = Speculative Fiction.

[strider66_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Pros: very unique world, interesting characters, intrigue Cons: body horror Years ago Zan and Jayd came up with a plot to save the worlds from their inevitable slow decline. When Zan wakes up from her most recent attempt to retake their neighbouring world, Mokshi, she has no memory of who she is. Again. Jayd’s manipulations are getting them closer to achieving their goal, but her betrayals are catching up to her and others aren’t playing their roles the way she expected. This is a very unique novel. I have never read of a world, or rather a series of worlds, so… bizarre. They’re things of flesh, orbiting a sun and populated solely by women who birth the components the world (ships?) require. While each world is unique, the lords of some of the worlds discovered that they could prolong the lives of their worlds by sharing flesh, though this causes other problems. I was a little concerned going into the book as I heard it was body horror. While there’s some disturbing imagery around birth, cannibalism, flesh, etc., it wasn’t as bad as I feared. The narrative is told from the viewpoints of Jayd, who knows what’s going on but isn’t very forthcoming, and Zan who’s trying to navigate situations she no longer understands. It’s clear that she can’t necessarily trust Jayd, though it’s also clear that she loved Jayd deeply at one point. The plot is fairly straightforward, despite it’s being drawn out. The book itself is a quick read as you’re anxious to find out who Zan really is, what Jayd’s plan is, and why the Mokshi is so important. If you’re looking for a good book outside the ordinary and you have a strong stomach, give this a try.

[ellegato · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

I literally want to scream about how much I loved this book.

It is so unapologetically GROSS and I love that so much...blood and fluids and ichor and gore and worlds made of bodies (or bodies made into worlds?) and everything is organic and moist and disgusting and I LOVE IT because it's never played for shock value but it just IS. This is the world inhabited by the characters and the grossness of it becomes integral to the story without consuming it and I love that.

IT IS ALSO ABOUT WOMEN ONLY WOMEN THERE ARE ONLY WOMEN.

And the women are allowed to be SO MANY THINGS they are allowed to be petty, spiteful, immensely cruel, violent, desperate, loving, loyal, determined, devoted, selfish, vicious...OFTEN AT THE SAME TIME like the characters are all so well rounded, so fleshed out (pun intended), so complex and so achingly human you find yourself rooting for them even when they're doing horrible things.

I loved Zan. I loved Zan's crew of misfits as they climb the levels of their world in all the grossness, all the muck and mire and gore, all the organic rotting splendor. I love how no one is reduced to a caricature, how none of the characters feel expendable. I love how the author doesn't commit violence against her characters for violence's sake; this book probably has more blood and guts than all the Song of Ice and Fire books combined yet you never feel like the author is exploiting her characters, torture porn-ing them just for the hell of it.

This was so good I'm sobbing and now I want to read everything else Hurley has ever written

[aspirit-1 · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

I really wanted to like this novel and considered rating it with three stars to recognize the risks it took. My rating is two and a half going on five stars.

The story moves brilliant moments, quite a bit of complexity, and interesting concepts. Like other reviewers have said, this novel is different than any I've read before. My issue is the lingering feelings of disappointment and disgust. (Was the disgust intended?) Too many times, I thought, This could be great, if only....

From talk online, I'd expected a space opera / military science fiction with a strong romance between the main characters. The reality is, maybe, political Body Horror on a global scale. There's a disregard for both self and life in general that is hard to stomach.

The tagline of "Lesbians in Space" suggested romance, or at least of talk about characters' sexuality. Love in this story isn't romantic, the rare bits of romance are sickening (read: abusive), and since men are nonexistent, sexual orientation is irrelevant.

What carried me through the story was the setting, specifically how everything works together. My disappointment comes from how every bit of world-building invited unanswered questions. (Was that intentional?)

The characters are hard to like, as their thoughts are repetitive and their motivations are vague. Their war felt like a sidestory, especially when each character came across as a bigger threat to herself than any of her enemies were.

By the end, I'd expected to feel more about the characters or to understand more about The Legion.

[shrike58 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

I'm not quite sure what I think of this novel but I think I like it...somewhat. To my reading what we have here is what feels like a utopian generation ship project gone very badly wrong, thus spawning a war being waged over the scraps for survival. The question which the plot poses is whether there is a way out of the whole destructive cycle and I'll leave it to the reader to discover what that might be. Maybe call this an exemplar of the bio-funk revolution which never quite happened.

[schufman · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

strange, gross, amazing, weird, and emotional. loved it.

[pwaites_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

The Stars Are Legion is quintessentially Kameron Hurley: violent and feminist. This stand alone science fiction novel is as dark as I’ve come to expect from Hurley, but it has an optimistic heart.Zan wakes with no memory of who she is. She’s told that she’s a great general and the only person capable of boarding the Mokshi, the mysterious world ship that’s capable of leaving the legion of artificial planets. She knows there’s a lot she’s not being told, especially by Jyn, a woman who claims to be her sister.The Stars Are Legion has one of the most creative science fiction settings I’ve ever read. The Legion is a fleet of planet sized, organic bio-ships that surround an artificial sun. However, the Legion is dying and the world ships are at war with each other, cannibalizing other worlds for the parts they need to survive. All of the technology is organic in nature, and all of the people aboard the ships are women. These women are actually a part of the ship’s ecosystem, giving birth to ship parts and organic tech whenever deemed necessary by the ship. Obviously, this means that the cast of The Stars Are Legion is all female, making it a modern entry into the All Female Planet subgenre.Obviously, The Stars Are Legion brings in feminist issues. It’s fascinating how even in an all female book, you can still see the patriarchy in the background of the worldbuilding. Whoever originally built these world ships treated the women as no more than objects in the construction of the ships, not as people with autonomy over their own bodies.While I think The Stars Are Legion is probably the most successful of the three All Female Planet books I’ve read, it didn’t update the subgenre in the ways I’d hoped. I don’t think this should be a criticism specifically of The Stars Are Legion, but I would have liked to see gender treated with more complexity. Even if all the inhabitants of a planet have similar biology (uteri and XX chromosomes for instance), they wouldn’t all necessarily identify as women, and someday I want to read a story that doesn’t exclude the existence of transgender identities. However, as I said, I think this is more a criticism of the subgenre as a whole rather than just The Stars Are Legion.As I mentioned at the start of the review, you should expect a Kameron Hurley novel to be R rated. This one in particular is not for the squeemish – the organic nature of the tech means there’s a lot of gushing fluids and body parts involved. A scene early in the book involves Zan making repairs to an interplanetary machine by cutting an intestine out of a dead woman’s body to use as a fuel pipe.The Stars Are Legion alternates between two different first person POV characters, Zan and Jyn. Between the two, I far preferred Zan. She has much more empathy for others, which Jyn herself admits. Jyn was fascinating though – she managed to be brutal but still sympathetic. Kameron Hurley excels at creating anti-heroines.The Stars Are Legion is a wonderful new outing from acclaimed science fiction author Kameron Hurley. If you’re already a fan of hers, you won’t be disappointed. If you’re looking for a place to start with her work, I don’t think you could do better than The Stars Are Legion. After all, it has lesbians in space!Originally posted on The Illustrated Page.I received an ARC of The Stars Are Legion from the publisher through Netgalley in exchange for a free and honest review.

[tottman_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

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.

[schant-1 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

I enjoyed this more than expected. It took a long while to get a coherent story going, and even then it wasn't particularly gripping, but there was a rather good secion in the middle of a journey through the organic planet's underworld which I liked. Sort of a cross between Neal Asher's splatterpunk Polity and the dream-like world of Jeff VanderMeer's [Veniss Underground]. The ending was underwhelming, though.

[nicolewbrown · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

At the outer universe are a series of world ships that are quickly falling apart and dying due to a cancerous growth. On one of these worlds, the Katazyrna, Zan awakes with no memory of who she is only that she is a prisoner of sorts, but also is a savior as she keeps going into the Mokshi, a world that is believed to be able to leave the Legion and start anew. Jayd tells her this and Zan feels an attraction to her but also knows that she can't completely trust her. It seems if she wants her memories back she must take the Mokshi for that is where her memories are. She's very limited to where she can go on the world ship and with whom she can talk to. When Sabita talks to her Sabita gets into trouble with Jayd. The ship is a living thing that pulses and has creatures inside it that can break down and need to be repaired. To leave the ship you spray on a suit to go to the docking bay and an opening is created that sucks you out into space once you are on a high-tech version of a space motorcycle.Anat is the Lord of Katazyrna and the rest are considered her daughters, though some have a rank if they fight. Zan was found around the Mokshi area when Jayd led a group of there to try to take it and failed. Jayd brought her back to try to get her to do what no other sister has been able to do. Anat is a very impatient woman and a bit of a crazy dictator and she is fighting the Bhavajas the only other powerful group left in the Legion. They think Bhavajas are not as strong as the Katazyrna, but their leader Rasida is the creator of worlds, meaning her womb is special. The women (there are no men in this book) all get pregnant and give birth to whatever the world needs. Rarely is that a child. And Jayd is pregnant with one. Rasida wants to marry Jayd and possess her. Jayd seeks to end the war by joining the two worlds with their marriage and then she can get what she needs from Rasida and take the metal arm that Anat wears on her arm and take the Mokshi with it. It's the only way to take Mokshi. But she's the only one who knows that. Zan doesn't remember and she can't tell Zan the plan because she might remember the truth and the truth is pretty ugly and Zan might not go along with the plan if she remembers everything so she just tells her that she will bring her the world. What she doesn't count on is Rasida being as bad as Anat and harder to manipulate.The Bhavajas double cross the Katazyrnas and attack the wedding party on the way back to their world while they are also attacking their world. Jayd is unaware of this. She was given something to put her to sleep and she woke up in Bhavja when Rasida returns with Anat's arm. Zan, meanwhile survives the space onslaught only to go down at the last stand on the ship. All the bodies are thrown in the recycler. The recycler is many levels down and has quite a few large scary creatures that devour the bodies that are sent there. Zan is still alive, though badly wounded. She meets up with an old woman who has been living there for who knows how long named Das Muni. After she heals up enough she vows to get out of there no matter that Das Muni says that there is no way out. Eventually, they come across a young woman who has climbed down a rope to scavenge named Casamir who comes from a tribe of engineers. They believe Zan to be crazy when she tells them about her world in space and all the things that go along with it. Casamir agrees to take Zan to the next level though because as an engineer she must take a trek and bring something back and this is a good time to do it.While Zan goes on her long trek to try to get back to her world she meets many interesting women who help her and runs into lots of trouble. Jayd, meanwhile, will wonder if she can trust the resistance movement that is growing on Katazyrna and on Bhavja and Sabita who has managed to survive and is given to her as a maid. This is an incredible book with such a creative world structure and I'm not just talking about the fact that it only has women in it. There's the world of the Legion in space and the world of the ground and both are so drastically different and neither knows of the other and yet both are dying. Will everyone make it out alive? Will the Mokshi be the saving grace it's supposed to be? Will Zan get her memories back? You'll have to read it to find out and it is definitely worth reading.Quotes 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-Kameron Hurley (The Stars Are Legion p 3)The common people don’t want war. Better to broker for peace, and break it, so they are willing to fight for what they have lost, than pretend that spilling cold blood will warm weary hearts.-Lord Mokshi, Annals of the Legion-Kameron Hurley (The Stars Are Legion p 72)The heart is a vital organ. Control the heart and you control the flesh it feeds. We all have weaknesses. The heart is mine. Once you have the heart take the head.- Lord Mokshi, Annals of the Legion-Kameron Hurley (The Stars Are Legion p 79, 89)I don’t know why desire has to be so complicated. I know what I need and what I want, and there is a place where those two things intersect, but it is a dangerous place. I want it nonetheless.-Kameron Hurley (The Stars Are Legion p 86)True power is the ability to make those who fear you desperate to love you.-Lord Mokshi, Annals of the Legion-Kameron Hurley (The Stars Are Legion p 114)What is love anyway but a hunger than no meal can satisfy.-Kameron Hurley (The Stars Are Legion p 115)Be careful what you pretend to be. It’s far too easy to become what you pretend.- Lord Mokshi, Annals of the Legion-Kameron Hurley (The Stars Are Legion p 199)When you understand what the world is, you have two choices: Become a part of that world and perpetuate that system forever and ever, unto the next generation. Or fight it, and break it, and build something new. The former is safer, and easier. The latter is scarier, because who is to say what you build will be any better.-Kameron Hurley (The Stars Are Legion p 204)The secret to leadership is not to be a particularly intelligent person. It is to surround oneself with those far smarter than oneself, and try not to kill them.-Lord Mokshi, Annals of the Legion-Kameron Hurley (The Stars Are Legion p 256)If you cannot kill what you love, make best friends with it.- Lord Mokshi, Annals of the Legion-Kameron Hurley (The Stars Are Legion p 333)

[kinwolf · Rating: 1 out of 5 stars]

I got this book because it's advertised as a huge space opera. Well, it's not huge, it's almost claustrophobic, and it's no space opera. Some of the weakest points: - In the first tier of the book, everyone in the Katazyma seem to plot and hate their leader Anat. Why, I don't know because she gets killed pretty easily by their enemy.- Everyone is plotting against everyone, friends and foes alike,and everyone keeps secrets. Damn I hate those kind of books, they feel sooooo depressing.- Totally unbelievable world building as far as I'm concerned. So you have those huge world ship. But at one point, Zan hides "behind" a world. Must not be that big to be close enough to her own world to see the attack against it. - The first person view. You get very little talking and plot, and alot of the character thoughts. Thing is, they are always the same stuff, over and over and over and over and over. ("will she remember? Will she forgive me? What have I done?" ) And most conversations are never finished.Bored out of my mind reading this. Even the ending was not satisfying. What is the purpose of the Legion, what's in the Core? Why did Zan wanted to leave the Core? No real answers.

[crdf-1 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

4,5/5I really like starting a read and not knowing what to expect. However, the first 70 or so pages were a bit of a struggle. I could however appreciate the unique world-building so I couldn't stop reading. It was shortly after we start reading Jayd's perspective that the books grew from an amazing and imaginative work of fiction to one that also has a lot of emotional impact for me.I liked the all-female world that Kameron has built. While it is a brutal world (not so because of the femaleness) I feel it would have been a completely different book if it had male characters. In a way a reveled in the lack of maleness. (do worlds have gender?) I can see how this novel can grow into series and would definitely read any follow-ups to the story. Also some parts of the book reminded me a bit of Hull Zero Three. Maybe because this book - labeled by some "space opera" (which I don't think it is) - is actually a grand personal adventure. One of survival for the characters, but also more. We are reading about people that go to great length and sacrifices to change the way of life and hopefully save their own world.Fav quotes: "But I find soldiering false, a broken way to manage people who should be bound to you in love, not fear" #50. Jayd"What is love anyway but a hunger no meal can satisfy?" #126, Jays"But I am a great pretender, sometimes so good at it that I convince myself that what I pretend is what is truly real" #189, Jayd"Perhaps every society is a utopia when you fail to peel up all the layers and look at what's underneath". #251, Zan

[pdcread · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

The Legion is a part of a vast number of world-ships that are travelling in the seams between the stars right on the outer edge of the universe. A war has been raging for millennia in the decaying worlds. It is as yet unresolved and not likely to be anytime soon, so a last ditch plan is formed…

Zan wakes with no recollection of who she is, what she was, or who the people are who say that they are her family. She cannot quite believe that she is capable of the things that they are saying; she is the only one who can offer them a chance to leave the Legion, the only one who can gain entry to the ship called Mokshi. There are others though who want to use her skill for the same ends. She must descend with her small team of no-hopers into the very bowels of the Legion to wrestle control and confront the horrors that face them there.

This is the first of Hurley’s books that I have read, and it is a pretty tough book to start with. She must have an amazing imagination to create a world like this one, it is unlike anything that I have ever come across before with its organic world, where everything is recycled, even body parts. This is a life at its most swamp like. There is an immense amount of detail in here, sometimes almost too much, that it felt that the plot was occasionally superfluous to the intricate detail of the world ships, Zan was travelling through. I liked the female culture that she has invented too, it gives you a completely different take on the usual sci-fi space opera, with the characters. Good, but maybe not one for the squeamish!

[kardaen-358849 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Interesting premise that moves well. Sometime in the very far future that is not really explained, mankind lives among worldships that are apparently dying. The main character is played off to be an almost antagonist, but I liked her. Nice twist at the end, that I figured out before it came, but it was satisfying. I enjoyed the story.