Dee 📖 (book aspect) reviewed These Burning Stars by Bethany Jacobs
Good space opera
4 stars
This has all the elements that make good space opera: extensively detailed world, with a variety of places and a variety of cultures; an overbearing, dystopian empire, with complex internal politics; characters who are unreasonably competent in their villainy; space pirates; space hackers; space sapphic romance.
Some of the plot twists feel a bit too twisty, but are more palpable given the context of the general vibe the setting has (which is established in a satisfactory manner). At times, the main characters feel a bit too constantly competent, often relegating other characters to the roles of bumbling fools, or passing redshirts. The book works as the kind where that happens, but given the quality of worldbuilding otherwise, it would have been nice to have more nuance in this area.