The Stars Are Legion

“[A] thought-provoking space opera.” —Kirkus Reviews
“One of the most unusual and powerfully disturbing space operas we’re 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 Zan’s 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 Legion’s gravity well to the very belly of the world.

In the tradition of Iain M. Banks’s Culture novels and Roger Zelazny’s 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.

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Published Nov 7, 2017

400 pages

Average rating: 6.33

12 RATINGS

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Community Reviews

Celia Seupel
Jun 26, 2025
1/10 star
This book just wasn't for me. I hated it and finished it only because I was listening to the audio and it kept going... There were vivid descriptions of gross and disgusting deaths. It felt like I was being tortured. I don't mind stories with violence but this stuff was gross. Plus endless inexplicable warmongering. Well, that's kind of realistic I guess, especially these days. It did seem very creative and original, but a member of our book club thought a lot of the imaginative worlds and vegetative technology in the book borrowed heavily from other (Star Wars) books. Then there was the universe of only women. An interesting concept (men just don't exist), but I didn't enjoy it. And the way the characters didn't grow or develop - boring. So overall, this "grim-dark" novel just wasn't for me.

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