I wasn’t really looking for something dark and twisty, but I fell into listening to Ciaran Saward narrate Megan E. O’Keefe’s The Blighted Stars and it was exactly what I wanted. I knew nothing going in, so I’m going to try to say as little as possible while also getting you interested enough to go listen.
Tarquin Mercator is a space Prince, the only son of one of the universe’s ruling families. He is an academic, a geologist, who has mostly not been involved in the family business – mining, or its politics. Until now. He is on the mission to Sixth Cradle to prove that his family’s mining methods are not at fault for the planetary collapse seen on other cradle planets. You know that the rich mining family is involved, but I assure you that it’s not so simple.
Naira Sharp is a former Mercator family exemplar (bodyguard) whose mind map was iced after she accused the Mercator mining process of causing economic-collapse and then turned terrorist (eco-rebel). She wakes up to the smell of burning ship in a body that isn’t hers and wonders if she has finally escaped the Mercator family. No such luck. She and Tarquin (who thinks she is Exemplar Lockhart) must band together to save the remaining ship’s crew and figure out why this planet is already dead.
It’s an environmental mystery and a scifi thriller. There are zombies, people in bodies that are not their own, other people on the planet that should definitely be uninhabited, an alien enemy, and multiple conspiracies. For all the scifi world building, The Blighted Stars is character centered and character driven. By the time Tarquin and Naira are getting off Sixth Cradle, everything they thought they knew has been thrown into question. They have become a team, and might even be falling in love. But, when Naira’s mind map is reprinted into her own preferred body, she doesn’t remember any of what happened and has returned to hating Tarquin. But still, they have to work together and Tarquin must mourn the version of Naira he fell in love with.
Part of what I loved was Ciaran Saward’s narration. He did a great job of keeping me absolutely engrossed. I loved that he voiced multiple female characters without doing that very common high pitched breathy voice.
I can’t wait to get the next book, The Fractured Dark, in my ears. I expect this series to get very twisty before it’s resolved.