Book Review: The Stars Undying by Emery Robin

Book #13 of 2023:

The Stars Undying by Emery Robin (Empire Without End #1)

[Thank you to the publisher Orbit for providing me with a free copy of this title in exchange for an honest review!]

I appreciate this debut novel as an intellectual exercise, but somewhat less as an engaging story in the moment. It’s a loose sci-fi retelling of the history / legend of Cleopatra and Julius Caesar, and while it’s fun to play spot-the-parallels — which are not exactly subtle, e.g. Anita for Mark Antony or Otávio for Octavius — that and the impressively-detailed, queer-normative worldbuilding are not quite enough to make up for the thinness of the plot.

Things start off well, with the presentation of two parallel civil wars: one spanning a massive intergalactic empire, and the other on a small sovereign planet that’s under its influence but just outside its current boundaries. Yet merely a quarter of the way through the text, both conflicts have been summarily resolved, and from then on, there’s very little in the way of significant developments, or stakes, or explicit goals, or challenges facing the two main characters until the end. I think this issue was exacerbated by how strongly the Roman-inflected space opera reminded me of Red Rising, leading me to expect much more betrayal and bloodshed and far less slow-paced political intrigue.

Mostly, though, I simply don’t understand the dynamic between the dual protagonists, who metaphorically and literally hop into bed together as soon as they meet and subsequently never seem to question one another’s loyalty or feel torn between the romance and their sense of what’s best for their respective peoples. That rings false for such ostensibly canny operators, each the head of an entire government, and makes it difficult for me to ever wholly invest in the grand tragic narrative surrounding them.

[Content warning for gore.]

★★★☆☆

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