Sisters of the Forsaken Stars

By Lina Rather

The sisters of the Order of Saint Rita navigate the far reaches of space and challenges of faith in Sisters of the Forsaken Stars, the follow-up to Lina Rather's Sisters of the Vast Black, winner of the Golden Crown Literary Society Award.

“We lit the spark, maybe we should be here for the flames.”

Not long ago, Earth’s colonies and space stations threw off the yoke of planet Earth’s tyrannical rule. Decades later, trouble is brewing in the Four Systems, and Old Earth is flexing its power in a bid to regain control over its lost territories.

The Order of Saint Rita—whose mission is to provide aid and mercy to those in need—bore witness to and defied Central Governance’s atrocities on the remote planet Phyosonga III. The sisters have been running ever since, staying under the radar while still trying to honor their calling.

Despite the sisters’ secrecy, the story of their defiance is spreading like wildfire, spearheaded by a growing anti-Earth religious movement calling for revolution. Faced with staying silent or speaking up, the Order of Saint Rita must decide the role they will play—and what hand they will have—in reshaping the galaxy.

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• Language: English
• Publisher: Macmillan Publishers
• Release date: Feb 22, 2022
• ISBN: 9781250782151

Lina Rather

Lina Rather is a speculative fiction author and graduate student living in Central New York. Her short fiction has appeared in venues including Lightspeed, Podcastle, and Shimmer. Her Tordotcom Publishing novella series, Our Lady of Endless Worlds, is about devotion, empire, and nuns living in a giant slug in outer space. When Lina isn’t writing, she likes to cook overly elaborate recipes, read history, and collect cool rocks.

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SISTER FAUSTINA WATCHED on the screen as the orbital station grew closer. She turned off the propulsion and let the ship drift into the docking bay until the skin found the airlock, connected, and made a seal. The ship jolted, and she startled, but all was well; it was still young and had a tendency to overreact to unfamiliar stimuli. Soon it would settle into itself. She restarted the gravity, and when she felt her weight again, released the moss holding her to the seat with a stroke of her hand.

The other sisters were already in the ship’s central chamber, preparing the goods they had to trade—downloads of rare serials, fresh produce from the hydroponics, assembled medical kits.

Sister Varvara was making a list of vitamin supplements they needed, but she looked up when Sister Faustina entered. Our Lady of Seven Sorrows.

I’m sorry?

For the ship. After Mary’s seven sorrows.

I’ll add it to the list.

I don’t like it. This from Sister Ewostatewos, as she counted produce and removed it from their inventory list.

Why not?

"It’s sorrowful."

There were two directions this conversation could go, one personal and one theological and neither of them good. Sister Faustina held up her hand. Add it to the list and we will discuss them all. Where is Mother Lucia?

Sister Ewostatewos pointed toward the chapel.

Sister Faustina hit the button that released the hatch between the rooms. The chapel was lit only by the lines of bioluminescent photopores grown in the ceilings of every part of the ship. They were low green currently—the ship needed more magnesium. Sister Faustina stepped quietly down the aisle between the pews. Every surface on a ship like this was soft; it was hard not to step quietly. They had chimes on all the hatches because you couldn’t knock. The moss underfoot whispered as it compressed and unfurled.

Mother Lucia knelt in front of the crucifix, her hands resting on her knees, eyes closed and mouth still. They had purchased it from a little station near a dusty, superstitious moon right after they had launched their newly mature ship from the yard where it had grown. The crucifix was not exactly a work of art. Jesus’s legs looked more like a single flipper, and the shaky-handed carver had given Him one larger eye and one smaller. But their original had been destroyed with their old ship, and they could not very well send word to the Church for another.

I’m sorry to disturb you, Sister Faustina said. Her words seemed to flutter out and then vanish, the silence undisturbed.

Mother Lucia opened her eyes. We’ve docked.

Yes.

Mother Lucia stood up, cracked her knuckles, and straightened out her wimple.

Everything is set? We’ve completed the ship’s diagnostics?

Yes. The only thing we won’t be able to get here is calcium supplements, but that supply won’t be a problem for a couple of months.

Good. Mother Lucia sighed and stepped out of the chapel. She did not smile. She had not smiled for quite a few months now. Sister Faustina had been trying to decide whether this was because she was still new at this and trying to fit into the seriousness of an abbess, or whether it was grief and fear. She had twice tried asking in carefully worded ways and had not received a satisfactory answer.

Mother, Sister Varvara said, "what do you think about Our Lady of Seven Sorrows?"

It’s on the list, Sister Faustina cut in.

Mother Lucia took the inventory list from Sister Ewostatewos and scanned it over like it might reveal to her some new secrets of the ship’s physiology. I think it sounds a bit sad.

That’s what I said. Sister Ewostatewos finished packaging the beets and carrots for transfer to the station.

It’s on the list, Sister Faustina repeated. Could we perhaps first focus on getting nutrient supplements into the ship so it lives long enough for us to name it?

Anchises Station was one of the largest stations in the third system. Thirty vendors selling everything from interactive pornography to refurbished tablets to vintage audiodramas skimmed from the databanks of scrapped colony satellites. Twenty ships a day went in and out. Before they had docked, Sister Faustina had examined every ship scheduled to arrive for three days before and after them for any Earth Central Governance subcontractors or any that had journeys originating on Earth. It was entirely possible that Central Governance was not aware of their existence. They had a new ship, for one. Their rescue mission on Phoyongsa III had been far from any of the main relay networks or inhabited belts. And everyone who knew exactly what had happened down on that moon was either dead, a professed sister of the religious life, or had a good reason to keep the secret. They had not even heard from Terret in months. But Sister Faustina was still a great believer in precaution.

* * *

Sister Varvara had a list of foodstuffs to acquire and she planned to acquire them as efficiently as possible. She aimed to do everything as efficiently as possible. She had long thought it her greatest attribute. She would never be a great orator, or possess the godly faithfulness of a saint, but her efficiency rivaled anyone she could name. Which was probably prideful to think, but it was also true.

You’re going to need more than some beets and tetanus vaccines for all this. The vendor was a potbellied man, pale like an ice chip. Sister Varvara had known he was cheap because he lit his stall only with chemical photopores so he didn’t have to pay for electricity. In the bluish light, his pale skin looked infected.

She stared him down. Have the common exchange rates for grade A fresh produce changed since we entered this planet’s orbit?

The man shrugged. You’re asking for liveship magnesium transfusions. Ours are formulated by journeyman shipwrights aboard this very station. That sort of expertise comes at a price. And we don’t see many of your kind of ship coming through. It costs me rent to keep this in stock.

Perhaps you are unaware that religious sisters swear a vow of poverty. Again, he shrugged. Quite frankly, these prices would be ruinous to the pope himself, and he has a Vatican’s worth of Earth-mined gold. Right as she said it, she bit her tongue. Too close to the bone. Too close to sentiments she should not be expressing, not out loud.

Garlic.

Garlic?

The fresh is vastly superior to the powdered and none of the fresh has come in for four months. Do you have it?

I have some preserved in oil.

What kind of oil?

Pure cold-pressed olive. Purchased from the groves on Taurus. I can ping one of my sisters to have it brought to you.

That’ll do.

I expect so. She sent a message to Sister Faustina to bring over three of their jars when she got the chance. The vendor held out his pad, to log her identity and the debt. Mother Lucia paused over it, but there was nothing for it—if she refused, he would cancel the transaction and be right to do so. The tiny needle stung; when she pulled her hand back the droplet had already disappeared into the self-sterilizing gel, recording her identity and the debt. In most parts of this system, you could get away without using these and retain relative anonymity. But a station of this size had the wealth and the data infrastructure to maintain access to the six different identity databases that covered the four systems.

She imagined the data zipping from the vendor’s pad into the station database, skipping the queue in the communications array, flying from relay to relay until it triggered an alarm on some Central Governance ship hovering invisible in a debris belt somewhere. She imagined their ship surrounded, her sisters plucked one by one out of the station’s corridors while they were separated, each headed for a different death. Her pulse clanged inside her head and she searched the vendor’s face for any hint of surprise. But the pad only chimed. She leapt to her feet; the room was suddenly too small. We’ll deliver your garlic shortly. Please have the supplements transferred to dock 6E.

Supplements acquired, vitamin D for the sisters and potassium and nitrogen for the ship. Now she would have to find someone willing to sell her three months’ worth of powdered potatoes without trying to charge her the yearly income of a small asteroid mining colony. Perhaps Sister Ewostatewos could be talked into devoting a few more feet of the hydroponics to tomatoes. Hydroponic tomatoes did not have the depth of flavor of soil-grown, but Sister Varvara had a wonderful tomato-potato soup recipe that had sustained her through many a Lenten season.

She was still thinking about soup when a young woman planted herself in the middle of the corridor. She held a tablet in her hands. One of those roving videodrama sellers hawking cheaply made VR and video entertainment for serial microtransactions undoubtedly. Sister Varvara had had a similar job when she was a teenager on a station like this, though this young woman seemed older. Surely she could see that Sister Varvara was wearing a habit, and therefore an unlikely mark for episodes of The Seventeen Loves of Serena Valdez or Escape from the Sentient Sea! Excuse me, please.

The girl did not move. "Are you one of the sisters of the Our Lady of Impossible Constellations?"

Sister Varvara stopped short. She could deny it. She could also just keep walking. She certainly did not have Sister Faustina’s knack for careful politics or Mother Lucia’s talent for gentle conversation. She looked around the corridor at the blank-faced, oblivious passersby, but she knew they would not have landed if there were any known ECG agents on board. And, as far as she was aware, there was not yet a public price on their heads. Somewhere on Old Earth an entire ministry of government officers was surely debating what to do about them. For now, though, it seemed the risk of exposing their plan to spread deadly ringeye plague across the rebellious outer systems outweighed their desire to find the nuns who had stopped it. Why do you ask?

The woman worked the tablet back and forth in her hands. She wore her hair in a single braid, and had on denim coveralls rolled up to mid-forearm. Absolutely unremarkable, both of those things. She had the look of an asteroid-child, tall and thin. Sister Varvara thought she might have some Chinese in her background, but there were a dozen primarily East Asian colonies in this system, which hardly narrowed it down.

You are, then, the young woman said. I have a letter I’ve prepared. She held out the tablet. Sister Varvara did not take it. She smiled, a drooping, flailing thing, and gripped the tablet tighter. I would like to request to become a postulant in your order.

Sister Varvara was holding a crate of beets, so she could not give that pronouncement the full physical shock it deserved. How she wished this could have happened to anyone else. A soft denial, that was what this girl needed. Why us? This is a populous station. We can’t be the first Catholic order to have passed through.

Are you still a Catholic order?

Sister Varvara stared at her. The young woman stared back.

I am asking you because you were the ones on Phoyongsa III.

Sister Varvara sighed. You had best come with me. You’ll want to speak to the mother superior.

* * *

Mother Lucia—she was trying hard to think of herself that way, even inside her own head, no matter how it felt like a costume handed down from someone much larger than herself—was meeting with a programmer about updating the ship’s communications filter. His office was in the center of the station,

Reviews for Sisters of the Forsaken Stars

[quondame · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Once more, the mechanics of the plot drive what the characters must be. Worse, new characters are introduced to do the dirty work without any inferiority. Then there's the bad monolithic government out to get the little group of nuns. Nor did the nuns share out the disease treatment or their story by way of help and deterrent, nor did the x-sister who had the cure tell what's worse. All the good world building was in the first volume, and the religious dithering in this one is thin.

[james_knupp · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

A good follow-up to Sisters of the Vast Black with more exploration of what it means to be separated from an organized structure, to be truly independent. The climax was a little awkward for me, which dropped the rating a bit. I did prefer the first book, but still enjoyed this one as a quick read.

[tuusannuuska-1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

I know four stars is a good rating for a book that I didn't enjoy all that much, but I feel like it's not the book's fault. This was well written, but not original ouside of the setting.

I feel like I would have really liked this if this was one of the first sci-fi books I read, but at this point in my reading journey, this just felt like an iteration of a story I've read a dozen times before.

However, I would recommend this to any fantasy reader who's intimidated by sci-fi but wanting to broaden their horizons.

[charon07 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

The second in the series about the Sisters of St. Rita. It’s necessary to have read the first book, as this picks up after the events of that one and no time is wasted on filling in the reader on those past events. After finishing the two novellas in this series, I see a comparison with Becky Chambers’ Wayfarers series, but rather darker. There is more evil, though most characters are essentially good, and even most of the villains are depicted as redeemable, and characters find hope, or at least comfort or meaning, even in the direst of situations. Humanity is shown as capable of great evil but also great good, it’s very suspenseful near the end, but it’s ultimately a comforting read.

[spaceandsorcery · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

It took me some time to get back to this future world in which living ships forge the vast interstellar distances and work as “traveling convents” for the nuns aboard, bringing help and comfort to those in need, but after the first few pages I felt again comfortable in this universe.

The sisters of the order of Saint Rita are dealing with the aftermath of the events from Sisters of the Vast Black, at the end of which they suffered heavy losses, both human and non-human, considering the death of their living ship-convent, named Our Lady of Impossible Constellations. Presently the nuns are traveling on a new ship, but it’s still a youngling so it needs constant care and nutrients, and since they broke any ties with the Church and Earth government funds are scarce and they have to keep a low profile and make do with what they can scrounge along the way.

Much of the story in Forsaken Stars hinges around these difficulties and the even greater threat of discovery: the nuns’ actions in revealing Earth’s responsibility in the deadly plague hitting rebellious colonies have turned them into a sort of heroic figures, taken as example and inspiration by those who are eager to shake off the yoke of Earth Governance, and they are constantly debating about how to travel the thin line separating their mission of help to those in need from the danger of becoming figureheads. The uncertainty weighing on the sisters is further enhanced by the arrival of two new people: Kristen, a young postulant asking to join the convent and Eris, the long-lost sister of Ewostatewos: the former represents the unknown factor that might unsettle the fragile balance aboard the ship, the latter is like an unwelcome spotlight shining on them because she is clearly on the run, and therefore a wanted individual.

Unlike the first book in the series, Forsaken Stars seems a little less…cohesive, for want of a better word, somewhat meandering at times, but with hindsight I can see how this uncertainty in plot is a mirror for the uncertainty plaguing the nuns who have lost their support system and have to forge a completely new way of doing things - and surviving - which might take some time before it’s ironed out into the precise mechanism it used to be with Our Lady of Impossible Constellations. Moreover, the nuns are dealing with the emotional fallout of their losses - even though not all of them are due to death, since former Sister Gemma left the convent to join her lover Vauca, an engineer on the deadship (i.e. a conventional construct) Cheng I Sao, where they try to nurture the failed shiplings in the hope of creating something new when they are not viable as future liveships.

If the plot feels a little meandering, what remains steady and strong is the sense of community among the nuns, particularly where external forces are trying to change (or co-opt) them or when personal issues threaten to intrude on their concept of faith, which here seems to be more oriented toward belief in the rightness of good works rather than adherence to dogma - and here I have to say that I appreciated how these nuns’ faith stands on the willingness to do good, to help the needy and, if possible, prevent the cruelty humans enjoy inflicting each other.

There are a few passing references to the difference between these space-faring nuns and the ones living on planets and conducting a more traditional monastic life of prayer and contemplation, references that I interpreted as respect for the kind of hands-on approach exhibited by the protagonists. It must also be said that physical distance from the Church - even before the nuns cut their ties with it and Earth - already prompted the nuns to find their own way to deal with spiritual matters, showing how doctrine cannot remain unchanged when the conditions for its applicability change due to the unpredictability of life away from humanity’s home planet.

Where the start of this second installment shows the nuns in a state of flux, the dramatic events happening toward the end of the book bring it out of the perceived middle-book syndrome and point toward a road fraught with dangers, yes, but also with great possibilities: while the short form of this novella suffers from a certain lack of development that cries out for a longer narrative span, it also leaves ample room for the expansion of the story in many possible directions. It will be interesting to see where it will lead us next….

[inquisitrix · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Sisters of the Forsaken Stars is a remarkable follow-up to Lina Rather's previous novella, Sisters of the Vast Black. I have a soft spot for stories that engage with the tensions one so often encounters in the intersections of religious faith, moral requirements, obligations to institutions, and personal dreams, desires, beliefs, and aspirations. Both novellas do so beautifully, Sisters of the Forsaken Stars building on and expanding the foundations laid in its predecessor.

If much of Sisters of the Vast Black’s focus was largely on individual choices, Sisters of the Forsaken Stars zooms out to place more consideration on the consequences choices made by both individuals and groups can have not only on those groups and individuals but on the futures of whole societies. The stakes grow ever greater for these spacefaring nuns and all the people they encounter, but Rather’s writing remains eloquently personal.

There are a lot of reasons I would recommend this novella. First of all, it is a pleasure to read, written in clear, unfussy prose that largely stays out of the story’s way without becoming dull. Its themes are immensely engaging, their particular combination of faith and queerness making for a truly captivating read. This is a deeply moving story, and the kind of thought-provoking that will keep readers thinking long after the last page is turned.

I received a free e-ARC of this title from the publisher via NetGalley in exchange for my review.