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Imperial Radch
Radiant Star
Space opera's sharpest mind returns to the world of the Imperial Radch in this brilliant standalone from award-winning author Ann Leckie.
The Temporal Location of the Radiant Star has always been a source of both conflict and hope for the people of Ooioiaa. However, the imperial Radch see it only as an inconvenience, an antiquated religious site soon to be absorbed into their own, superior culture. But local politics is complicated, and the Radch have made a final One last man will be allowed to join the mummified bodies in the temporal location to become a “living saint”.
But this decision will ripple out to affect every part of the city. Amidst a slowly worsening food shortage, riots, and a communication blackout from the rest of the Radch Empire, a religious savant will entertain visions of his own sainthood, a socialite will discover hir comfortable life upended, and a young man sold into servitude will find unlikely escape.
The Temporal Location of the Radiant Star has always been a source of both conflict and hope for the people of Ooioiaa. However, the imperial Radch see it only as an inconvenience, an antiquated religious site soon to be absorbed into their own, superior culture. But local politics is complicated, and the Radch have made a final One last man will be allowed to join the mummified bodies in the temporal location to become a “living saint”.
But this decision will ripple out to affect every part of the city. Amidst a slowly worsening food shortage, riots, and a communication blackout from the rest of the Radch Empire, a religious savant will entertain visions of his own sainthood, a socialite will discover hir comfortable life upended, and a young man sold into servitude will find unlikely escape.
360 pages, Hardcover
First published May 12, 2026
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 629 reviews
May 24, 2026
As you may remember if you’ve read Ann Leckie’s Ancillary series, the Imperial Radch is in some disarray, various instances of its dictator Anaander Mianaai being at war with other instances of her, and as we know from events in our own world, wars damage the infrastructure that enables transportation and communications. Strait of Hormuz, interstellar gates, it’s all the same.
So Charak Svo, the military governor of an obscure Radch possession, the rock planet Aaa, hasn’t heard from her superiors in a while. Pilgrims to the shrine of the titular Radiant Star are finding it difficult to book travel home again. And shipments of food aren’t coming in. This last is particularly worrisome for a planet like Aaa, which broke free of its star untold millennia ago and has no arable surface. Its inhabitants live in the underground city of Ooioiaa, and while they do practice agriculture they subsist mainly on subterranean worms etc.; the planet doesn’t produce nearly enough food to feed itself. Charak is a reasonably well-intentioned colonial administrator — you know how it is: the natives are now citizens of the empire, but you can’t really call them fully civilized, some of their customs are abhorrent, and of course your expertise in all matters outweighs whatever it is they think they know, so — of course! of course! — your response to the problem of feeding the city will be the best one. Won’t it?
But it’s a mistake, maybe, to mention Charak first, when the moral center of “Radiant Star” is a young man (more about that in a minute) named Jonr, whose parent sold him to some distant oligarch before he was born. Jonr of course knows nothing of this; he’s only aware that, apparently for no reason, he’s a pariah among his agemates, all “boys” who will become servants to the Consorority of the Translocation, a principal religious institution on Aaa. When, aged eighteen, he learns what fate he’s intended for, he bolts in search of help.
Help is not forthcoming, and when we next encounter Jonr thirty years have passed.
Jonr, the traumatized Radchaai whose caretaker he becomes, and the Radch troopship Justice of Albis (in the form of its ancillaries) are, I think, Leckie’s favorite kind of characters: the downtrodden and unconsidered who despite all the forces arrayed against them manage to do right. (There’s a rescue scene late in the book that made me cry.)
“Radiant Star” doesn’t include a world-shattering character like Breq of the Ancillary books; rather, it’s a story about what happens in the hinterland as an empire begins to fall apart, and about how people and institutions respond to crisis. Ooioiaa has its clergy, its imperial administrators, its plutocrats, its poisonous families, its schemers, its shopkeepers, and its social climbers. Many of them get a turn in the Radiant Star’s spotlight, as point-of-view characters. They are all memorable. They all have failings, and even the colonial governor and the plutocrat have their gifts. (Notably, for example, Charak Svo doesn’t spare herself the consequences of her decisions; possibly, she even learns something.)
And now for a word about gender. In the Radch, of course, everyone is denominated “she.” In the various other polities in and around the Radch, social gender appears to have little or nothing to do with chromosomes or phenotype. Some people in “Provenance” use the e/eir pronoun string; Reet in “Translation State” is a man because he feels like a man, and if I remember rightly, the Presger Translator Qven decides on “it.” Also “it” are the sentient-citizen Radch warships and stations. People who go by “they/them” turn up everywhere. Every so often a reader will happen across a more or less nuclear family structure, but even then it won’t be obvious who, if anyone, is biologically related to anyone else, or what sex, if any, they were assigned at birth. (Also, Amaat help anyone trying to figure out the structure of Radchaai clans.)
In my review of “Translation State,” I remarked on this free-and-easy way with gendered pronouns, thus drawing the attention of a couple of Sad Puppies as well as a TERF. The former were irked because I dared to express enjoyment of Leckie’s progressive politics. The latter professed to be a fan of Leckie’s books (sureJan.gif) and informed me that I misunderstood TERFism. Can you imagine having reading comprehension skills that bad? Anyway, Ann Leckie must really like sticking it to TERF World, because “Radiant Star” is a gender free-for-all: you have never seen so many different pronouns in one book. I cackled every time a character showed up with a new one.
Thanks to Orbit and NetGalley for the ARC of this often bleak but always humane book. This review reflects my honest, entranced opinion.
And, by the way, the audiobook is performed by Adjoa Andoh!
So Charak Svo, the military governor of an obscure Radch possession, the rock planet Aaa, hasn’t heard from her superiors in a while. Pilgrims to the shrine of the titular Radiant Star are finding it difficult to book travel home again. And shipments of food aren’t coming in. This last is particularly worrisome for a planet like Aaa, which broke free of its star untold millennia ago and has no arable surface. Its inhabitants live in the underground city of Ooioiaa, and while they do practice agriculture they subsist mainly on subterranean worms etc.; the planet doesn’t produce nearly enough food to feed itself. Charak is a reasonably well-intentioned colonial administrator — you know how it is: the natives are now citizens of the empire, but you can’t really call them fully civilized, some of their customs are abhorrent, and of course your expertise in all matters outweighs whatever it is they think they know, so — of course! of course! — your response to the problem of feeding the city will be the best one. Won’t it?
But it’s a mistake, maybe, to mention Charak first, when the moral center of “Radiant Star” is a young man (more about that in a minute) named Jonr, whose parent sold him to some distant oligarch before he was born. Jonr of course knows nothing of this; he’s only aware that, apparently for no reason, he’s a pariah among his agemates, all “boys” who will become servants to the Consorority of the Translocation, a principal religious institution on Aaa. When, aged eighteen, he learns what fate he’s intended for, he bolts in search of help.
Help is not forthcoming, and when we next encounter Jonr thirty years have passed.
Jonr, the traumatized Radchaai whose caretaker he becomes, and the Radch troopship Justice of Albis (in the form of its ancillaries) are, I think, Leckie’s favorite kind of characters: the downtrodden and unconsidered who despite all the forces arrayed against them manage to do right. (There’s a rescue scene late in the book that made me cry.)
“Radiant Star” doesn’t include a world-shattering character like Breq of the Ancillary books; rather, it’s a story about what happens in the hinterland as an empire begins to fall apart, and about how people and institutions respond to crisis. Ooioiaa has its clergy, its imperial administrators, its plutocrats, its poisonous families, its schemers, its shopkeepers, and its social climbers. Many of them get a turn in the Radiant Star’s spotlight, as point-of-view characters. They are all memorable. They all have failings, and even the colonial governor and the plutocrat have their gifts. (Notably, for example, Charak Svo doesn’t spare herself the consequences of her decisions; possibly, she even learns something.)
And now for a word about gender. In the Radch, of course, everyone is denominated “she.” In the various other polities in and around the Radch, social gender appears to have little or nothing to do with chromosomes or phenotype. Some people in “Provenance” use the e/eir pronoun string; Reet in “Translation State” is a man because he feels like a man, and if I remember rightly, the Presger Translator Qven decides on “it.” Also “it” are the sentient-citizen Radch warships and stations. People who go by “they/them” turn up everywhere. Every so often a reader will happen across a more or less nuclear family structure, but even then it won’t be obvious who, if anyone, is biologically related to anyone else, or what sex, if any, they were assigned at birth. (Also, Amaat help anyone trying to figure out the structure of Radchaai clans.)
In my review of “Translation State,” I remarked on this free-and-easy way with gendered pronouns, thus drawing the attention of a couple of Sad Puppies as well as a TERF. The former were irked because I dared to express enjoyment of Leckie’s progressive politics. The latter professed to be a fan of Leckie’s books (sureJan.gif) and informed me that I misunderstood TERFism. Can you imagine having reading comprehension skills that bad? Anyway, Ann Leckie must really like sticking it to TERF World, because “Radiant Star” is a gender free-for-all: you have never seen so many different pronouns in one book. I cackled every time a character showed up with a new one.
Thanks to Orbit and NetGalley for the ARC of this often bleak but always humane book. This review reflects my honest, entranced opinion.
And, by the way, the audiobook is performed by Adjoa Andoh!
May 15, 2026
This was fine. Radiant Star is fine. I want to start this way because I want to ground myself in the actual experience of this book and not succumb to temptation to laud it because of Ann Leckie’s name being attached to it. If you go into this expecting something with the same epic scope as the Imperial Radch trilogy or the deep exploration of alien identity of
Translation State
, I think you’ll be disappointed. But if you look at this as an interesting, intersecting set of stories that happen to take place on an alien world on the edges of the crumbling Radch, then you will probably enjoy it. I received an eARC from NetGalley and Orbit in return for a review.
The people of Ooioiaa worship at a place called the Temporal Location of the Radiant Star. When events elsewhere (you know the ones) cut the planet off from the rest of the Radch, the people in power jockey for position and for survival. Radiant Star follows several characters, including the Radchaai governor of the colony, a lowly consoror who was raised to be sent away by his consorority, and an ungrateful heir and his scheming wife, and a priest who might become a saint. As their stories intertwine and their goals flow together or against one another, the situation on Ooioiaa worsens, and the drama unfolds.
Leckie uses an omniscient narrator here, which is such an interesting choice. Limited third person is all the rage these days, and even when that limited perspective head-hops, it usually happens across chapter breaks or section breaks. This narrator is truly omniscient, albeit personified as an unnamed author (presumably Ooioiaan) writing about this time from an unspecified point in the future. Their tone is dry, sardonic, yet also a little scholarly. Nevertheless, they provide access to the thoughts and motives of almost every character we meet.
The challenge with an omniscient narrator is that it can make your characters feel flat. When every character is explained to us, when all their thoughts and feelings are lain bare, they become less interesting. There is a power to the mystery created by a more limited perspective. Radiant Star lacks a sense of true danger because we never get close enough to any of the characters. Some are more sympathetic than others, of course. But at the end of the day, the arm’s length nature of the narration means I definitely felt more like I was reading a historical treatise than an intense story following a few characters.
On the other hand, the omniscient narrator gives Leckie more licence when it comes to the scope of the story. I love how each of these standalone Radch novels introduces us to new and interesting cultures on the fringes of Radch society. The frequent shifts between personal pronouns for the same character, depending on which perspective we’re tracking, signals this overtly. As always, I love how Leckie plays with ideas of gender as social construct. But more importantly in Radiant Star is the idea of food as both status and cultural symbol.
Radiant Star is in many ways a novel about the fall of empire from the perspective of a farflung province. Instead of a dramatic rebellion, we see a quiet devolution of power. The supply lines dry up. Famine ensues, unrest, martial law. The governor ponders what to do. All the while, Ooioians who know and care nothing for the wider Radch ponder power and jockey for their own positions within this particular society, and it’s fascinating.
As always, Leckie is so skilled at creating a memorable society that feels both alien and human at the same time. This story does not have the same intense personal and political scope as the first trilogy, and I also didn’t enjoy it as much as some of the other standalones we’ve seen. But that isn’t to say you should sleep on this one if you’ve enjoyed the others.
Originally posted on Kara.Reviews.
The people of Ooioiaa worship at a place called the Temporal Location of the Radiant Star. When events elsewhere (you know the ones) cut the planet off from the rest of the Radch, the people in power jockey for position and for survival. Radiant Star follows several characters, including the Radchaai governor of the colony, a lowly consoror who was raised to be sent away by his consorority, and an ungrateful heir and his scheming wife, and a priest who might become a saint. As their stories intertwine and their goals flow together or against one another, the situation on Ooioiaa worsens, and the drama unfolds.
Leckie uses an omniscient narrator here, which is such an interesting choice. Limited third person is all the rage these days, and even when that limited perspective head-hops, it usually happens across chapter breaks or section breaks. This narrator is truly omniscient, albeit personified as an unnamed author (presumably Ooioiaan) writing about this time from an unspecified point in the future. Their tone is dry, sardonic, yet also a little scholarly. Nevertheless, they provide access to the thoughts and motives of almost every character we meet.
The challenge with an omniscient narrator is that it can make your characters feel flat. When every character is explained to us, when all their thoughts and feelings are lain bare, they become less interesting. There is a power to the mystery created by a more limited perspective. Radiant Star lacks a sense of true danger because we never get close enough to any of the characters. Some are more sympathetic than others, of course. But at the end of the day, the arm’s length nature of the narration means I definitely felt more like I was reading a historical treatise than an intense story following a few characters.
On the other hand, the omniscient narrator gives Leckie more licence when it comes to the scope of the story. I love how each of these standalone Radch novels introduces us to new and interesting cultures on the fringes of Radch society. The frequent shifts between personal pronouns for the same character, depending on which perspective we’re tracking, signals this overtly. As always, I love how Leckie plays with ideas of gender as social construct. But more importantly in Radiant Star is the idea of food as both status and cultural symbol.
Radiant Star is in many ways a novel about the fall of empire from the perspective of a farflung province. Instead of a dramatic rebellion, we see a quiet devolution of power. The supply lines dry up. Famine ensues, unrest, martial law. The governor ponders what to do. All the while, Ooioians who know and care nothing for the wider Radch ponder power and jockey for their own positions within this particular society, and it’s fascinating.
As always, Leckie is so skilled at creating a memorable society that feels both alien and human at the same time. This story does not have the same intense personal and political scope as the first trilogy, and I also didn’t enjoy it as much as some of the other standalones we’ve seen. But that isn’t to say you should sleep on this one if you’ve enjoyed the others.
Originally posted on Kara.Reviews.
Read
May 17, 20263.5 Stars
As a big fan of Ancillary Justice and its direct sequels, I was excited to read another book set in the same universe. I enjoyed references to the previously established worldbuilding.
As is often the case with companion series, I enjoyed returning back to the world but I didn't find the story as impactful or memorable as the original story. I didn't find these characters as compelling as the previous protagonist and the stakes just don't feel as high.
All that being said, I still enjoyed spending time with this installment and would recommend to other fans of Imperial Radch universe. Ann Leckie is an excellent writer with solid prose and a clear love of the genre.
Disclaimer I received a copy of this book from the publisher.
As a big fan of Ancillary Justice and its direct sequels, I was excited to read another book set in the same universe. I enjoyed references to the previously established worldbuilding.
As is often the case with companion series, I enjoyed returning back to the world but I didn't find the story as impactful or memorable as the original story. I didn't find these characters as compelling as the previous protagonist and the stakes just don't feel as high.
All that being said, I still enjoyed spending time with this installment and would recommend to other fans of Imperial Radch universe. Ann Leckie is an excellent writer with solid prose and a clear love of the genre.
Disclaimer I received a copy of this book from the publisher.
Want to Read
August 13, 2025A NEW ANN LECKIE BOOK AND IT IS SET IN THE UNIVERSE OF THE IMPERIAL RADCH????? MAY 2026 CAN'T COME SOON ENOUGH
February 22, 2026
Ann Leckie is SO back! This is by far my favorite extended Radch-verse novel outside of the main Ancillary ___ trilogy. 4.5
An ensemble cast gives you a look into a city in crisis at the fringes of the dissolving Radchaai empire. Seemingly small-scale household dramas, political machinations, religious disputes, and urban planning are somehow are somehow all woven together in a way that somehow make a compelling story. Although the decentralized plot and larger cast of characters took a while to get going, the second half of the book made me stay up until 12:30 am to finish.
So glad I got to read this ARC and definitely recommend to others once it’s published!
An ensemble cast gives you a look into a city in crisis at the fringes of the dissolving Radchaai empire. Seemingly small-scale household dramas, political machinations, religious disputes, and urban planning are somehow are somehow all woven together in a way that somehow make a compelling story. Although the decentralized plot and larger cast of characters took a while to get going, the second half of the book made me stay up until 12:30 am to finish.
So glad I got to read this ARC and definitely recommend to others once it’s published!
Review of advance copy received from NetGalley
The good: Large cast of characters supporting this fairly standalone tale in the Ancillary universe. It picks up on the consequences of the original trilogy.
More than anything, it shows the true consequences, the tragedies, and specifically, starvation. Religion and politics be damned.
The bad: I was frankly bored in the first half of the novel. The small amounts of intrigue and social injustice was rather just a small portion and the rest just circled religious politics. As for the characters, I felt rather disconnected and just kept praying for something exciting to happen.
It does, later, kinda, but starvation is hard to read about, let alone experience, and it was hard.
Others might get more out of this, but for me? I started imagining that Leckie was going through some hard times and it really shone through the text. I wanted to help her more than I wanted to get through the novel.
Maybe that's just me, but it is what I felt.
More than anything, it shows the true consequences, the tragedies, and specifically, starvation. Religion and politics be damned.
The bad: I was frankly bored in the first half of the novel. The small amounts of intrigue and social injustice was rather just a small portion and the rest just circled religious politics. As for the characters, I felt rather disconnected and just kept praying for something exciting to happen.
It does, later, kinda, but starvation is hard to read about, let alone experience, and it was hard.
Others might get more out of this, but for me? I started imagining that Leckie was going through some hard times and it really shone through the text. I wanted to help her more than I wanted to get through the novel.
Maybe that's just me, but it is what I felt.
Read
March 24, 2026The writing style is impersonal. There's many characters, and I never felt close to any of them. The narration always keeps you at a maximum distance.
It always felt like this book was expecting me to laugh at the satire of bureaucracy before me, but I didn't find it funny. I found it boring.
Thanks to Netgalley and the publisher for a copy of this book. All opinions are my own.
It always felt like this book was expecting me to laugh at the satire of bureaucracy before me, but I didn't find it funny. I found it boring.
Thanks to Netgalley and the publisher for a copy of this book. All opinions are my own.
March 14, 2026
I’d never read Ann Leckie before and I’ve always wanted to. Radiant Star is a standalone set in the same universe as her Radch series. I enjoyed the read but I suspect I would have gotten more out of it if I’d read the series first.
I loved Radiant Star and kept finding myself reading late just to race through it! The bureaucracy of colonizing a conquered planet is a constant presence throughout the book. I know this sounds impossible but it wasn’t boring!!!! I found myself crazy invested in the systems of religion & local government. I wanted every detail about the water treatment plant, the food shipped in from off world and how the military was utilized to control the local population.
Leckie is clearly highly intelligent. There’s so much to think about it could take a masters thesis to pull it all apart. It felt like it was all background to the story. The details contributed directly to understanding our characters, none of it felt unnecessary. I wish I’d read it with a book club and could spend an hour talking through it!
I loved Radiant Star and kept finding myself reading late just to race through it! The bureaucracy of colonizing a conquered planet is a constant presence throughout the book. I know this sounds impossible but it wasn’t boring!!!! I found myself crazy invested in the systems of religion & local government. I wanted every detail about the water treatment plant, the food shipped in from off world and how the military was utilized to control the local population.
Leckie is clearly highly intelligent. There’s so much to think about it could take a masters thesis to pull it all apart. It felt like it was all background to the story. The details contributed directly to understanding our characters, none of it felt unnecessary. I wish I’d read it with a book club and could spend an hour talking through it!
June 14, 2026
I think I might be done with the Imperial Radch series (if there are any more books to come). I love the original trilogy but I have been less and less interested in each book outside of that main series. I just didn’t care about this story to be honest. It was too far removed from the characters and the omniscient narrator killed the tension while also distracting from the story. With the change in narrator and the direct to reader lines, my mind kept wandering as I wondered at the identity of the narrator. And yet that never went anywhere which was frustrating.
There is something interesting about exploring the ripple effects of the Radch conflict that took center stage in books 1-3. But with this being the third book of that I’m just bored.
There is something interesting about exploring the ripple effects of the Radch conflict that took center stage in books 1-3. But with this being the third book of that I’m just bored.
February 18, 2026
I am delighted to read a standalone Radch book that I unequivocally enjoyed with no caveats! I loved the initial Radch trilogy, did not care for Provenance, and really enjoyed Translation State with a couple of sizeable "buts." Outside the Radch universe, I really enjoyed Raven Tower and Leckie's short fiction collection, Lake of Souls.
This book takes place during the events of the first trilogy but on a sunless ice planet far from the Radch civil war. Leckie does an excellent job of pacing the rising tension of the book--and there's a surprising amount, given that the book isn't particularly action-heavy. Themes of the relativity of cultural norms and practices will be familiar to anyone who has read Leckie before, but this book also does some nice deep dives into the personal, and how the shifting slipperiness of the stories we tell ourselves allows us to reckon (or avoid reckoning altogether) with things we have done.
Jonr and his charge were my favorite human characters in the book--I would be so happy to read more stories about them--and Justice of Albis was a total delight.
This book has politics without wandering into the weeds or getting mired in intrigue, characters it's easy to care about but that left me wanting to know more (in a good way), and high stakes for a planet without losing sight of the personal stories that made the outcomes matter. The macro and the micro were well-balanced and the pacing was excellent. Honestly, no notes.
This is a smaller, quieter story than the Radch trilogy*--the struggles and dramas are on a smaller scale--but it is very good and I'm so glad I got to read it. Netgalley and Orbit Books provided an ARC in exchange for an honest review, and I'm too fussy about books to give any other kind.
*It couldn't very well be otherwise, being so far from the center of the action... and honestly, not every story can have a supreme ruler of a systems-spanning empire going to war with iterations of themselves.
This book takes place during the events of the first trilogy but on a sunless ice planet far from the Radch civil war. Leckie does an excellent job of pacing the rising tension of the book--and there's a surprising amount, given that the book isn't particularly action-heavy. Themes of the relativity of cultural norms and practices will be familiar to anyone who has read Leckie before, but this book also does some nice deep dives into the personal, and how the shifting slipperiness of the stories we tell ourselves allows us to reckon (or avoid reckoning altogether) with things we have done.
Jonr and his charge were my favorite human characters in the book--I would be so happy to read more stories about them--and Justice of Albis was a total delight.
This book has politics without wandering into the weeds or getting mired in intrigue, characters it's easy to care about but that left me wanting to know more (in a good way), and high stakes for a planet without losing sight of the personal stories that made the outcomes matter. The macro and the micro were well-balanced and the pacing was excellent. Honestly, no notes.
This is a smaller, quieter story than the Radch trilogy*--the struggles and dramas are on a smaller scale--but it is very good and I'm so glad I got to read it. Netgalley and Orbit Books provided an ARC in exchange for an honest review, and I'm too fussy about books to give any other kind.
*It couldn't very well be otherwise, being so far from the center of the action... and honestly, not every story can have a supreme ruler of a systems-spanning empire going to war with iterations of themselves.
September 7, 2026
Sparkling with clever wit and insight, this is a delightful addition to the Imperial Radch universe. The idea behind it is very clever, because there is the very real question of just what would happen in some out of the way places when travel and communications come to a standstill after the events that conclude the first book in the trilogy. As I have come to expect the writing is insightful and a real pleasure to read. While written in an omniscient third-person narration, it is framed as a book, allowing the author to directly address her readers, which makes the story inviting and also allows an extra layer of commentary, which is smart and effective. Plus, it allows for Leckie to give some background information about the events of the other series, not a complete summary or an info dump but a way to situate where this story is happening in time and space, without feeling intrusive.
This world is alive with engaging characters, complicated politics, fervent faith, and mundane bureaucracy. It does build upon the goodwill of the world-building in the original trilogy but by introducing a whole new planet, with its own customs and religions and traditions, it feels like it is filling out the larger world in an exciting way. The complications of this world are really what is serving as a plot, because the narrative is more a popular history than a character’s journey. We bounce across a handful of different characters and follow their individual, intersecting storylines as the planet responds to the events of the larger universe. Some of the individual characters have arcs, but it the story is more a mélange, exploring what is happening across relationships at a city-wide level.
This is a strength, it makes the story constantly move and it shows how interconnected small communities are. It also, though, makes the story less intimate than the previous trilogy. Those followed one central character (with a few ancillary diversions, here and there), which gave a sense of an emotional connection that is missing here. This story is more observational, and commentarial, at times, than it is internal. We move across characters so quickly, and this really is more of a “slice-of-life” of each character than any particular inner journey, which keeps the reader a bit at a remove. This isn’t a bad thing, necessarily, it is just a different type of storytelling and a different type of relationship between the readers and the characters than in the original books. If the interior journey, mapping Breq’s complicated internal landscape, was the highlight of the series for you, then this may not hit all the same marks. Once I recognized that the tone and approach were different, though, I was able to really be swept away by the writing and the entire cast of characters.
This novel is bursting with ideas and social commentary. There is again a meaningful exploration of gender, more so than the last two books, matching and maybe even exceeding the first. The intersections of religion, class, and politics are prominent and fun knots to untangle. The whole idea of colonization (annexation) hangs over the story, infecting all the characters thoughts and actions, in both subtle and blatant ways. In addition, there are explorations of piety, honesty, love and devotion, duplicity, wealth, service, and more. I especially appreciate the way almost every character firmly believes that they have nothing but the best intentions, but self-cherishing and desire blind them to their own hypocrisies while also making them hyper-suspicious of others, in some ways creating self-fulfilling prophecies. The story interrogates how much we actually know of ourselves, the distance between our wants and needs, and what part of our decency and humanity hold up under genuine pressure.
This world is alive with engaging characters, complicated politics, fervent faith, and mundane bureaucracy. It does build upon the goodwill of the world-building in the original trilogy but by introducing a whole new planet, with its own customs and religions and traditions, it feels like it is filling out the larger world in an exciting way. The complications of this world are really what is serving as a plot, because the narrative is more a popular history than a character’s journey. We bounce across a handful of different characters and follow their individual, intersecting storylines as the planet responds to the events of the larger universe. Some of the individual characters have arcs, but it the story is more a mélange, exploring what is happening across relationships at a city-wide level.
This is a strength, it makes the story constantly move and it shows how interconnected small communities are. It also, though, makes the story less intimate than the previous trilogy. Those followed one central character (with a few ancillary diversions, here and there), which gave a sense of an emotional connection that is missing here. This story is more observational, and commentarial, at times, than it is internal. We move across characters so quickly, and this really is more of a “slice-of-life” of each character than any particular inner journey, which keeps the reader a bit at a remove. This isn’t a bad thing, necessarily, it is just a different type of storytelling and a different type of relationship between the readers and the characters than in the original books. If the interior journey, mapping Breq’s complicated internal landscape, was the highlight of the series for you, then this may not hit all the same marks. Once I recognized that the tone and approach were different, though, I was able to really be swept away by the writing and the entire cast of characters.
This novel is bursting with ideas and social commentary. There is again a meaningful exploration of gender, more so than the last two books, matching and maybe even exceeding the first. The intersections of religion, class, and politics are prominent and fun knots to untangle. The whole idea of colonization (annexation) hangs over the story, infecting all the characters thoughts and actions, in both subtle and blatant ways. In addition, there are explorations of piety, honesty, love and devotion, duplicity, wealth, service, and more. I especially appreciate the way almost every character firmly believes that they have nothing but the best intentions, but self-cherishing and desire blind them to their own hypocrisies while also making them hyper-suspicious of others, in some ways creating self-fulfilling prophecies. The story interrogates how much we actually know of ourselves, the distance between our wants and needs, and what part of our decency and humanity hold up under genuine pressure.
Read
June 6, 2026Da ne ulazimo sad previše u detalje dok mi je sve još ovako sveže, niti u spojlere ovako brzo nakon pojavljivanja romana, ali:
- na jednom određenom, čisto SF nivou (idejni koncepti, prikazana kultura) ovo mi je posle prve knjige možda i najbolja stavka u serijalu o Radžu;
- pripovedački glas je čisto uživanje, En Leki ume i voli da menja narativne pristupe (The Raven Tower je tu bio fenomenalan primer) i savršeno kontroliše taj aspekt romana;
- minusi su slični kao u prvoj trilogiji, naime zaplet je možda malko naddeterminisan... ako je to pravi domaći termin... ko se seća savršenog trenutka da se jezero provali iz drugog dela serijala, znaće na šta mislim;
- ali meni lično je u ovom trenutku leglo savršeno, i tu ne mislim samo na suvi humor sveznajućeg pripovedača već i na krug ključnih tema od kojih bih izdvojila dve: pokušaj pojedinca da nađe svoje mesto u okviru zvanične religije kojoj pripada (i iskušenje da pređe u neku drugu u kojoj bi mu bilo lakše) & napori pojedinca da u kriznim situacijama ILI postupi ispravno (po visoku cenu) ILI da se samo dovoljno uspešno obmane kako je to i učinio. Ovo drugo naročito.
- na jednom određenom, čisto SF nivou (idejni koncepti, prikazana kultura) ovo mi je posle prve knjige možda i najbolja stavka u serijalu o Radžu;
- pripovedački glas je čisto uživanje, En Leki ume i voli da menja narativne pristupe (The Raven Tower je tu bio fenomenalan primer) i savršeno kontroliše taj aspekt romana;
- minusi su slični kao u prvoj trilogiji, naime zaplet je možda malko naddeterminisan... ako je to pravi domaći termin... ko se seća savršenog trenutka da se jezero provali iz drugog dela serijala, znaće na šta mislim;
- ali meni lično je u ovom trenutku leglo savršeno, i tu ne mislim samo na suvi humor sveznajućeg pripovedača već i na krug ključnih tema od kojih bih izdvojila dve: pokušaj pojedinca da nađe svoje mesto u okviru zvanične religije kojoj pripada (i iskušenje da pređe u neku drugu u kojoj bi mu bilo lakše) & napori pojedinca da u kriznim situacijama ILI postupi ispravno (po visoku cenu) ILI da se samo dovoljno uspešno obmane kako je to i učinio. Ovo drugo naročito.
Did Not Finish
July 16, 2026I found this oddly stressful to read, largely because if you strip away the religious worldbuilding, this is actually a modern novel, complete with its coterie of shitty people doing shitty things in stressful circumstances. And the thing is, Leckie is good at portraying and understanding these people, making us empathize with them and then showing us how and why they fuck up, and I. Do not want that at this time. But I did really enjoy the first part of it. It's just not for me.
August 9, 2026
The first chapter is amazing, and if the book focused more on this particular storyline, it might have been 5 stars. As it is, most of the story focuses on characters that I did not like very much, and it was often slow. The world and its religion are interesting, though, and the pace does pick up in the second half. I just wish we had spent more time with Jonr, his consoror, and Justice of Albis.
September 8, 2026
This is the latest book set in Leckie’s broader Imperial Radch universe, though it itself is a stand-alone story without (so far as I can tell) any characters or locations from previous stories. I grabbed it because I’ve generally liked (though rarely loved) Leckie’s stuff, and because the synopsis sounded interestingly overstuffed. It probably was, but it absolutely worked for me – this was much less of a traditional narrative than most books in the setting in a way that made it a very pleasant surprise.
Ooioiaa is the solitary (and subterranean) city of an orphaned planet hurtling through deep space, entirely reliant on geothermal heat and artificial light to be anything like habitable. It hosts a tremendously important holy site for several religions and is an interstellar pilgrimage centre, to the annoyance of the Radchaai empire who have been occupying it for the last 30 years. Conquered as basically an afterthought, it’s a dead-end posting for a minimal garrison that was never really integrated into the wider empire. Which means that, when one of the major religious sects preparing to entomb the first saint in generations sets off a wave of tension and intrigue just as a civil war breaks out in the heart of the empire and plunges galactic commerce into anarchy, not only is there no help coming but no one even bothers letting the governor know what’s happened. From there things begin spiralling out of control with clockwork inevitability.
This is a novel about a lot of things, but it is first and foremost the story of how decades of poor management and sudden shocks to the supply chain cascade into collapsing infrastructure and an acute humanitarian crisis. I have no idea what Leckie’s inspirations for it actually were, but I would guess it involves regularly watching the news. The details of how the crisis unfolds and how each step makes things worse are well thought-out and fascinating to read, and (beyond the initial set-up of a subterranean city with precarious logistics and persistent under-investment in infrastructure) it rarely feels like the dice have been loaded to keep things getting worse. Speaking as someone who enjoys learning about civic infrastructure and how complex systems fall apart in my spare time anyway, a book where a pivotal plot point involves adding new chemicals to the water filtration system without enough testing beforehand was a real delight.
The book’s cast is vast and sprawling, with some of the most important characters only having incidental or indirect connections to each other. While there are a few characters that are privileged in terms of time spent on their interiority and development, there’s no one you can single out as the book’s protagonist. Despite the extremely limited space spent on each of them, every character the narrative spends any time in the head of is fairly vividly drawn and instantly distinct from the others (no mean feat, but Leckie is really very good at what she does).
The combination of those two qualities puts the book in a (for me) exclusive and exalted category – a story that, given the conceits of the setting and inciting incident, manages to feel like nonfiction from a different universe. By which I mean there’s no set of characters who are coincidentally pivotal to (or at least present at) every important event, no wild contrivances to keep the plot on a smooth trajectory, no clean division of characters or institutions into heroes and villains. Pulling it off while still telling a satisfying story is a rare feat (both because it’s difficult and because most people don’t seem to particularly enjoy it) – the other two examples that spring to mind are Cherryh’s Downbelow Station and Tchaikovsky’s City of Last Chances – and so a rare pleasure for me to find one.
Aiding that impression is the incredibly opinionated (and entertaining) narrative voice. The story is almost written as an in-universe popular history, with numerous digressions and analogies to help explain things to the (fictional) reader or explain the wider cause of this or that imminent crisis. At a basic level this is just a very elegant way to tell an ostensibly stand-alone story whose plot requires regular bursts of exposition about the interstellar conflicts and revolutions that were the plots of previous books in the series to explain the reverberations ruining everyone in this story’s day. But the effect is far more than just functional – the narration oozes with character, with a distant and sardonic (at times outright callous) tone that provides about 90% of the book’s comedy and does an excellent job knitting together all of the disparate plot threads.
Aside from civic infrastructure and its discontents, the book is very interested in – community? Culture, maybe, or just generally the traditions and assumptions that structure a life and shape one’s sense of belonging and of what choices are conceivable to make. Insofar as it has theses about these things it’s that are exist beneath and before rational thought or considered opinion – formal doctrine is really a minor facet of religion as it’s experienced, and we certainly don’t get to consciously decide how deep the hooks their family has in them are – and that anyone who thinks they’re free of them is delusional. Both of which integrate very well into a plot that’s to a large degree driven by casual thoughtlessness and oversights. The book’s thoughts on gender are similar, and (while I’m still a bit nonplussed at how little the series as a whole has to say about gender compared to its general reception) special credit to this book for being I think being the first story to actually dwell on the gender system and stereotypes of a non-Radchaai society literally at all.
Speaking of the Radch – it’s not as if the book portrays the conquering empire as universally benevolent and correct or anything. But I did find it kind of interesting how much time is spent establishing narrative empathy for the Radch governor, ‘citizen adviser’ and garrison and establishing them all as – presumptuous, high-handed, ruthless if needed and altogether flawed, of course, but – basically reasonable people who spend most of the book trying to keep the city from starving to death or falling apart. By which I mean it is interesting in contrast to how the native elites and local notables of the city are portrayed as at least as presumptuous, high-handed, etc, more personally unpleasant to boot, and most importantly most of whom spend the entire narrative exclusively making things worse as they squabble for petty advantage and cause problems for more sympathetic characters. The book’s political worldview ends up feeling very ‘the barons are worse than the crown’.
Very fun read, and an interesting stylistic departure from the rest of the series. Worth picking up if you’re a fan of Leckie or if the concept sounds intriguing.
Ooioiaa is the solitary (and subterranean) city of an orphaned planet hurtling through deep space, entirely reliant on geothermal heat and artificial light to be anything like habitable. It hosts a tremendously important holy site for several religions and is an interstellar pilgrimage centre, to the annoyance of the Radchaai empire who have been occupying it for the last 30 years. Conquered as basically an afterthought, it’s a dead-end posting for a minimal garrison that was never really integrated into the wider empire. Which means that, when one of the major religious sects preparing to entomb the first saint in generations sets off a wave of tension and intrigue just as a civil war breaks out in the heart of the empire and plunges galactic commerce into anarchy, not only is there no help coming but no one even bothers letting the governor know what’s happened. From there things begin spiralling out of control with clockwork inevitability.
This is a novel about a lot of things, but it is first and foremost the story of how decades of poor management and sudden shocks to the supply chain cascade into collapsing infrastructure and an acute humanitarian crisis. I have no idea what Leckie’s inspirations for it actually were, but I would guess it involves regularly watching the news. The details of how the crisis unfolds and how each step makes things worse are well thought-out and fascinating to read, and (beyond the initial set-up of a subterranean city with precarious logistics and persistent under-investment in infrastructure) it rarely feels like the dice have been loaded to keep things getting worse. Speaking as someone who enjoys learning about civic infrastructure and how complex systems fall apart in my spare time anyway, a book where a pivotal plot point involves adding new chemicals to the water filtration system without enough testing beforehand was a real delight.
The book’s cast is vast and sprawling, with some of the most important characters only having incidental or indirect connections to each other. While there are a few characters that are privileged in terms of time spent on their interiority and development, there’s no one you can single out as the book’s protagonist. Despite the extremely limited space spent on each of them, every character the narrative spends any time in the head of is fairly vividly drawn and instantly distinct from the others (no mean feat, but Leckie is really very good at what she does).
The combination of those two qualities puts the book in a (for me) exclusive and exalted category – a story that, given the conceits of the setting and inciting incident, manages to feel like nonfiction from a different universe. By which I mean there’s no set of characters who are coincidentally pivotal to (or at least present at) every important event, no wild contrivances to keep the plot on a smooth trajectory, no clean division of characters or institutions into heroes and villains. Pulling it off while still telling a satisfying story is a rare feat (both because it’s difficult and because most people don’t seem to particularly enjoy it) – the other two examples that spring to mind are Cherryh’s Downbelow Station and Tchaikovsky’s City of Last Chances – and so a rare pleasure for me to find one.
Aiding that impression is the incredibly opinionated (and entertaining) narrative voice. The story is almost written as an in-universe popular history, with numerous digressions and analogies to help explain things to the (fictional) reader or explain the wider cause of this or that imminent crisis. At a basic level this is just a very elegant way to tell an ostensibly stand-alone story whose plot requires regular bursts of exposition about the interstellar conflicts and revolutions that were the plots of previous books in the series to explain the reverberations ruining everyone in this story’s day. But the effect is far more than just functional – the narration oozes with character, with a distant and sardonic (at times outright callous) tone that provides about 90% of the book’s comedy and does an excellent job knitting together all of the disparate plot threads.
Aside from civic infrastructure and its discontents, the book is very interested in – community? Culture, maybe, or just generally the traditions and assumptions that structure a life and shape one’s sense of belonging and of what choices are conceivable to make. Insofar as it has theses about these things it’s that are exist beneath and before rational thought or considered opinion – formal doctrine is really a minor facet of religion as it’s experienced, and we certainly don’t get to consciously decide how deep the hooks their family has in them are – and that anyone who thinks they’re free of them is delusional. Both of which integrate very well into a plot that’s to a large degree driven by casual thoughtlessness and oversights. The book’s thoughts on gender are similar, and (while I’m still a bit nonplussed at how little the series as a whole has to say about gender compared to its general reception) special credit to this book for being I think being the first story to actually dwell on the gender system and stereotypes of a non-Radchaai society literally at all.
Speaking of the Radch – it’s not as if the book portrays the conquering empire as universally benevolent and correct or anything. But I did find it kind of interesting how much time is spent establishing narrative empathy for the Radch governor, ‘citizen adviser’ and garrison and establishing them all as – presumptuous, high-handed, ruthless if needed and altogether flawed, of course, but – basically reasonable people who spend most of the book trying to keep the city from starving to death or falling apart. By which I mean it is interesting in contrast to how the native elites and local notables of the city are portrayed as at least as presumptuous, high-handed, etc, more personally unpleasant to boot, and most importantly most of whom spend the entire narrative exclusively making things worse as they squabble for petty advantage and cause problems for more sympathetic characters. The book’s political worldview ends up feeling very ‘the barons are worse than the crown’.
Very fun read, and an interesting stylistic departure from the rest of the series. Worth picking up if you’re a fan of Leckie or if the concept sounds intriguing.
May 17, 2026
A disappointing tale from one of my favorite authors. Too many points of view, a very small scale of locations, and almost everything that happens is entirely out of the control of the characters involved.
Read
June 21, 2026‘Radiant Star’ is a standalone novel set in Ann Leckie’s Imperial Radch universe. The other Imperial Radch books, ‘Ancillary Justice’,, ‘Ancillary Sword’, ‘Ancillary Mercy’ and ‘Provenance’ are some of my favourite Science Fiction. love both Ann Leckie’s engaging prose and complex, thoughtful world-building, especially when they’re enhanced by Adjoa Andoh’s calm but powerful narration, so I had high hopes for ‘Radiant Star’.
Sadly, it surprised me for all the wrong reasons. Initially, I was impressed by the novel’s bold mix of theology, politics, faith and physics. That’s the sort of thing I normally enjoy; I was looking forward to a complex conflict between an Imperial administration under stress and a cynically opportunistic theocracy, neither of which had a mindset capable of understanding or accommodating the truth behind the Radiant Star.
Sadly, I ended up setting the book aside at 25%.
Why?
Because I couldn’t get engaged with the characters or the ideas. Listening to the book at night, I found myself falling asleep while waiting for something that mattered to happen. That’s never been my experience with either Ann Leckie or Adjoa Andoh.
‘Radiant Star’ didn’t work for me. The pace was glacial. The storytelling style was oddly distant. The authorial voice resembled a slightly smug anthropologist commenting on the failure of cultures to understand one another. There was no character whose fate I could bring myself to care about. There was a great deal of telling and very little engagement with the actors. I realised that I was not looking forward to listening to more of the book because I was bored.
Maybe the book explodes into action at the 30% mark. I’ll never know. I do know that I’m very disappointed with my experience of this book.
Sadly, it surprised me for all the wrong reasons. Initially, I was impressed by the novel’s bold mix of theology, politics, faith and physics. That’s the sort of thing I normally enjoy; I was looking forward to a complex conflict between an Imperial administration under stress and a cynically opportunistic theocracy, neither of which had a mindset capable of understanding or accommodating the truth behind the Radiant Star.
Sadly, I ended up setting the book aside at 25%.
Why?
Because I couldn’t get engaged with the characters or the ideas. Listening to the book at night, I found myself falling asleep while waiting for something that mattered to happen. That’s never been my experience with either Ann Leckie or Adjoa Andoh.
‘Radiant Star’ didn’t work for me. The pace was glacial. The storytelling style was oddly distant. The authorial voice resembled a slightly smug anthropologist commenting on the failure of cultures to understand one another. There was no character whose fate I could bring myself to care about. There was a great deal of telling and very little engagement with the actors. I realised that I was not looking forward to listening to more of the book because I was bored.
Maybe the book explodes into action at the 30% mark. I’ll never know. I do know that I’m very disappointed with my experience of this book.
Did Not Finish
August 17, 2026DNF @ 23%. I'm a big fan of the main trilogy but unfortunately could not get into this one. I really wasn't invested in the plot or the characters. I also wasn't a fan of the narrative voice since it took me out of the story a little bit (i.e., directly speaking to/addressing the reader).
Thank you to Orbit and Netgalley for the ARC.
Thank you to Orbit and Netgalley for the ARC.
January 28, 2026
The latest book in the Imperial Radch series is an intriguing, thought provoking, and, at times, cheeky stand alone entry in this long standing series. This book is set just after the original trilogy (Ancillary Justice, Ancillary Sword & Ancillary Mercy) in the timeline, but focuses on the politics and religions of a small, isolated world that is almost entirely cut off from the rest of the Radch universe and, therefore, the plots of all the other books in this series. Despite this fact, however, this is a book best read after you’ve enjoyed the rest of the series.
As with all Ann Leckie novels, this book follows the stories of multiple characters through a series of politically heavy events. The characters grow throughout the tale and their stories eventually weave together through the narrative, even if some characters never meet. I find Ann Leckie’s books almost impossible to describe except to say that if you like your SciFi on the thinking side, you’re sure to enjoy her complex world building and examination of unique alien and planetary premises. No two books are alike and Ann Leckie is truly a master of creating alien beings and cultures that somehow are never alienating to the reader. These are the books to read when you want to see and feel the commonality and humanness even in the other. Radiant Star is no exception and any fan of Ann Leckie or thought provoking SciFi is sure to love both this series and this newest entry.
Thank you to NetGalley and Ann Leckie for an ARC of this book.
As with all Ann Leckie novels, this book follows the stories of multiple characters through a series of politically heavy events. The characters grow throughout the tale and their stories eventually weave together through the narrative, even if some characters never meet. I find Ann Leckie’s books almost impossible to describe except to say that if you like your SciFi on the thinking side, you’re sure to enjoy her complex world building and examination of unique alien and planetary premises. No two books are alike and Ann Leckie is truly a master of creating alien beings and cultures that somehow are never alienating to the reader. These are the books to read when you want to see and feel the commonality and humanness even in the other. Radiant Star is no exception and any fan of Ann Leckie or thought provoking SciFi is sure to love both this series and this newest entry.
Thank you to NetGalley and Ann Leckie for an ARC of this book.
June 28, 2026
in radch space there's no meal quite so comfortable and consoling as a bowl of skel and a cup of tea. it just goes to show how much habit and history inform our tastes. or perhaps it's merely proof that the radchaai are all insane. I will leave the reader to draw what conclusions seem most plausible.
here we have the radchaai observed from an uneasy distant closeness—radiant star is set in the farthest reaches of the empire on the recently colonized planet of ooioiaa (and, by the way, how glad I am that leckie went the route of describing ooioiaa's people and their precise high society in the way of a comedy of manners first before revealing anything about their geographic and...religiomaterial realities), whose inhabitants are not, unfortunately, privy to the events at the end of the imperial radch trilogy, although the novel's narrator certainly is. ann leckie does a futuremodern take on direct address à la the 18th and 19th centuries in order to explore mores and morality and the conflict/s therebetween and all, of course, on the outskirts of a dying empire; very fun. occasionally wonderfully biting and brittle.
we all make mistakes. which is absolutely true, and should our subsequent lives be determined by mistakes we might have made when young and foolish? who among us has not sold a child away for some extra money[...]?
indeed, probably the funniest book I've ever read about famine (I was ROLLING at the idea of someone not noticing ongoing and very blatant food shortages due to their own religious fasting), not that there's a lot of competition.
"we have a situation." [...]
"it's been nothing but situation for weeks."
radiant star also shares with literary progenitors like austen and gaskell a keen observational eye (which, by the by, I learned recently from jane austen's bookshelf was actually NOT always initially a lauded trait: many early female novelists were derided for being too realistic and therefore lacking in imagination rather than Romantic as in Fantastical! imagine that!); see, for example, the wry noting that a character has learned better than when he was a child, "but having learned better, he could not now admit to himself how things had really been" in his cruel youth. see also, similarly:
it was the sort of crisis that I hope, dear reader, you have never encountered: that moment one realizes that the worst has happened, that indeed one has done that worst oneself, and there is no changing or avoiding it. the pain of that moment—psychological pain, which I assure you is very real—is so intense that a person will do anything to escape it, to see themselves again as a worthy person who does only good things. vastly simplified, there are two courses available in such a situation: one is to recognize that one has indeed erred, and having recognized this, having admitted it, to strive to do better in the future, because the past, sadly, is unchangeable. the other is to deny the fact of the wrongdoing, to insist that one's actions were the only ones available, or if not they were in the end the best course one could have taken—even the most virtuous. I am sorry to say that serque iono, after those few moments of intense distress, adopted the latter course.
in the context in which this novel was written, it's hard for me not to read great swathes of the book as a commentary on the united states in particular, even though the US empire is very different from the radch, which is much more obviously inspired by, say, elements of the height of the british empire, for example. so maybe that's me projecting my own context. but I will say that ann leckie and I are both living in the same dying empire while she writes about the other about which I read.
no one involved was stupid, or malicious; they were merely, sadly, entirely human, used to things going the way they had always gone, assuming that things would work forever the way they always had.
I listened to the audiobook because I will do basically anything to listen to adjoa andoh to read me whatever she likes; any errors in transcription (particularly in punctuation) of this beautiful little gutpunch of a book, in which terrible things happen and life goes on anyway, are my own.
jonr's chest ached: not the clench of tears or heartbreak, but the knife of broken ribs.
May 31, 2026
The latest novel set in Leckie's Imperial Radch concerns an obscure and environmentally hostile planet named Aaa at the edge of the empire and how it coped with the Radch's collapse. I did wonder from the outset why the Radch bothered to rule Ooioiaa, apparently the only city on the planet, as it seems to mostly export religious relics and saints. Also trained servants, so potentially the labour force appeared useful. Anyway, the Radchaai governor has to deal with the politics of two competing religious orders, both of which use the same sacred site: The Temporal Location of the Radiant Star. This dynamic between politics and religion is neatly shown.
Despite the perils that inhabitants of Ooioiaa experience, Radiant Star is not as exciting as the Ancillary trilogy. Nonetheless it is neatly plotted and full of thoughtful world-building. As ever with Leckie's fiction, the plot proceeds via discussions and formal meetings. The narration is a little different to the other Radch novels, as the omniscient narrator takes a rather superior tone. The protagonists only begin taking the initiative quite late on, after providing interesting but essentially passive perspectives on events.
I found the depiction of food shortages and religious conflict notable highlights. On the other hand, I was struck by the relative absence of capital-P politics. There was plenty of wrangling and resentment concerning resource access and individual influence, but a surprising lack of principled resistance to Radch occupation and control. This does accord with the principles of Radiant Star worship: equanimity, beneficence, obedience, prayerfulness, fortitude, and patience. Still, the Radch invasion occurred thirty years prior to the events of the book, well within living memory, and it is unclear what material advantages (if any) forcible incorporation into the empire brought. Colonisation definitely created ongoing disruption to religious traditions and the Radch are evidently resented as outsiders. I could not help but think that their status on Ooioiaa at the end of the book was highly unstable. Surely it wasn't just a question of whether the governor wanted to remain there, but whether her position was tenable without an empire behind her? I found all this interesting to think about. While I was certainly not indifferent to the fates of the main characters, the wider world was of greater interest.
One specific mystery still needles me.
I had fun reading Radiant Star, although it doesn't reach the heights of the Ancillary trilogy. I found it to be another intriguing expansion of the Radch world and examination of the seismic impact of the empire's fall. The peculiar underground world of Ooioiaa is full of memorable details, such as food, garments, and manners. Physical descriptions of the characters are lacking (also characteristic of Leckie), however the total absence of any daylight led me to suppose they're all rather pallid.
Despite the perils that inhabitants of Ooioiaa experience, Radiant Star is not as exciting as the Ancillary trilogy. Nonetheless it is neatly plotted and full of thoughtful world-building. As ever with Leckie's fiction, the plot proceeds via discussions and formal meetings. The narration is a little different to the other Radch novels, as the omniscient narrator takes a rather superior tone. The protagonists only begin taking the initiative quite late on, after providing interesting but essentially passive perspectives on events.
I found the depiction of food shortages and religious conflict notable highlights. On the other hand, I was struck by the relative absence of capital-P politics. There was plenty of wrangling and resentment concerning resource access and individual influence, but a surprising lack of principled resistance to Radch occupation and control. This does accord with the principles of Radiant Star worship: equanimity, beneficence, obedience, prayerfulness, fortitude, and patience. Still, the Radch invasion occurred thirty years prior to the events of the book, well within living memory, and it is unclear what material advantages (if any) forcible incorporation into the empire brought. Colonisation definitely created ongoing disruption to religious traditions and the Radch are evidently resented as outsiders. I could not help but think that their status on Ooioiaa at the end of the book was highly unstable. Surely it wasn't just a question of whether the governor wanted to remain there, but whether her position was tenable without an empire behind her? I found all this interesting to think about. While I was certainly not indifferent to the fates of the main characters, the wider world was of greater interest.
One specific mystery still needles me.
I had fun reading Radiant Star, although it doesn't reach the heights of the Ancillary trilogy. I found it to be another intriguing expansion of the Radch world and examination of the seismic impact of the empire's fall. The peculiar underground world of Ooioiaa is full of memorable details, such as food, garments, and manners. Physical descriptions of the characters are lacking (also characteristic of Leckie), however the total absence of any daylight led me to suppose they're all rather pallid.
Did Not Finish
August 2, 2026DNF@35%
The first chapter was an absolute five-star banger about an outcast in this fascinating Ooioiaa planet (a wandering planet! amazing! a weirdly gendered society with a creepy religion! cool!).
But then it turned into a political drama that I truly cared nothing about, and with no end in sight it felt like time to move on.
The first chapter was an absolute five-star banger about an outcast in this fascinating Ooioiaa planet (a wandering planet! amazing! a weirdly gendered society with a creepy religion! cool!).
But then it turned into a political drama that I truly cared nothing about, and with no end in sight it felt like time to move on.
August 18, 2026
This is another novel by Ann Leckie set in her Imperial Radch universe. I read it as part of the monthly reading for August 2026 at SFF Hot from Printers: New Releases group. This novel was first published in 2026 and can be nominated for next year’s SFF awards.
This story is set on a planet Aaa. The planet is, as the original Latin meaning of the word suggests, a wanderer, namely moving across the universe at a pace just enough to be captured by a star in a few millennia. Despite the freezing-cold surface (and I guess here the author underestimated how cold it is), there are under-ice oceans and a single underground city, Ooioiaa. Why people are still there it is hard to tell, but there are horrid places on our Earth today and people there still try to cope. Of course, such a situation led to the birth of a special religion (which by mood only reminded me of some Buddhist priesthood, even if there aren’t direct links) of a Radiant Star, a final destination of the planet.
The story starts with the Consorority of the Translocation, where all “the children are boys, whatever their personal inclinations. Unlike other families, on reaching adulthood those boys are sorted by the family’s matriarch into those who will become women, and hence consorors, and those who will become men.” Once again Leckie plays gender as a cultural concept and while I’m a bit tired of the fact that this theme is used in modern SFF much more often than a lot of other, no less interesting themes (I blame US politics), she does it well. One of the consorors returns to the planet heavily pregnant (a scandal!) because a wealthy offworlder offered her a lot of money for one of the Consorority boys. In due time she gives birth to Jonr, a shy, lonely boy, who should be treated like everyone else, but caretakers know about his future fate and other kids feel it, so beatings and other problems are the norm. However, the moment when his mom announces to him his fate just before sending him offworld, the Radchaai dropped out of gate-space and began their occupation of Ooioiaa.
Janr is one of the characters, but far from the only one. The story is told by an omniscient, apparently future-historical narrator who knows the thoughts and motivations of multiple characters and occasionally addresses the reader directly. The voice calls readers not to judge this or that character too harshly, like a plotline about a wealthy dying industrialist seeking sainthood, his resentful son, who forges his final will, or religious officials, who while being devout are also interested in industrialist funds.
The story shows a small, distant world about which no one cares in a grand plane of things, which is caught in a calamity of the Radchaai civil war as described in the award-winning initial trilogy.
This story is set on a planet Aaa. The planet is, as the original Latin meaning of the word suggests, a wanderer, namely moving across the universe at a pace just enough to be captured by a star in a few millennia. Despite the freezing-cold surface (and I guess here the author underestimated how cold it is), there are under-ice oceans and a single underground city, Ooioiaa. Why people are still there it is hard to tell, but there are horrid places on our Earth today and people there still try to cope. Of course, such a situation led to the birth of a special religion (which by mood only reminded me of some Buddhist priesthood, even if there aren’t direct links) of a Radiant Star, a final destination of the planet.
The story starts with the Consorority of the Translocation, where all “the children are boys, whatever their personal inclinations. Unlike other families, on reaching adulthood those boys are sorted by the family’s matriarch into those who will become women, and hence consorors, and those who will become men.” Once again Leckie plays gender as a cultural concept and while I’m a bit tired of the fact that this theme is used in modern SFF much more often than a lot of other, no less interesting themes (I blame US politics), she does it well. One of the consorors returns to the planet heavily pregnant (a scandal!) because a wealthy offworlder offered her a lot of money for one of the Consorority boys. In due time she gives birth to Jonr, a shy, lonely boy, who should be treated like everyone else, but caretakers know about his future fate and other kids feel it, so beatings and other problems are the norm. However, the moment when his mom announces to him his fate just before sending him offworld, the Radchaai dropped out of gate-space and began their occupation of Ooioiaa.
Janr is one of the characters, but far from the only one. The story is told by an omniscient, apparently future-historical narrator who knows the thoughts and motivations of multiple characters and occasionally addresses the reader directly. The voice calls readers not to judge this or that character too harshly, like a plotline about a wealthy dying industrialist seeking sainthood, his resentful son, who forges his final will, or religious officials, who while being devout are also interested in industrialist funds.
The story shows a small, distant world about which no one cares in a grand plane of things, which is caught in a calamity of the Radchaai civil war as described in the award-winning initial trilogy.
May 3, 2026
I did not realize this was part of a larger series. As a standalone yes, but I was so very lost. I think if I’d read the series this book is attached to, I would have been fine. This is a very certain type of sci fi. The beginning grabbed my attention, however after a 30-year time hop, it was deep into political drama and lots and lots of details. It’s incredibly written, don’t get me wrong, but I think this is “a right time and right place” kind of read. Neither of which I was in. I think I want to go read the foundational series and come back to this one.
Radiant Star hits shelves May 12.
Thank you to Orbit Books and Netgalley for the eARc and opportunity to read and review this title. All opinions are my own.
Radiant Star hits shelves May 12.
Thank you to Orbit Books and Netgalley for the eARc and opportunity to read and review this title. All opinions are my own.
May 26, 2026
While I enjoyed the Ancillary trilogy so much that I read it twice, this is the second standalone Leckie novel set in the Imperial Radch universe that is not my cup of tea (Radch pun intended). [The other was Provenance.] I do not recommend Radiant Star, and I fear this is the last Leckie novel I will read.
June 7, 2026
Ann Leckie's SF is always dense, but Radiant Star is on another level from her Ancillary Justice trilogy and
Translation State:
it's deliberately framed as a chronicle written by a quasi-anthropological observer. The isolated city-state of Ooioiaa is the only inhabited place on an icy planet on the edges of the Radch empire. Cut off from wider power politics due to the Radch civil war detailed in the original trilogy, Radiant Star follows a series of characters positioned to give us insights into the social structure of Ooioiaa life and allow us to witness what happens when it crumbles. A number of them serve different religious institutions. Jonr is a member of a consorority who was sold away from his brothers at birth; Savant Keemat is part of a different sect and believes they are destined for sainthood (which has a very specific, creepy and characteristically Leckian meaning in this world); their supposed superior Hierarch Niranhin is both devout and too concerned with worldly interests. Other secular characters include Serque Iono, patriarch of an important business; his consort Shtel; and the Radchaai currently stationed on the planet, especially the military governor Charak Svo, who has to deal with the impending social collapse, and the ship Justice of Albis with its cohort of enslaved ancillaries. I appreciated the complexity of the connections Radiant Star explores, and the way in which there are few outright black hats in this novel (although Iono comes close). The flip-side to this complexity, however, is that it wasn't until I was almost halfway through that I felt I was past the introduction to this world and its characters. When Leckie finally starts to knock down dominos, the pace really picks up, but it's a slog to get there.
A more important criticism, maybe: despite Leckie's obvious commitment, throughout her fiction, to exploring alien thought-worlds, I'd like to see her push this a bit further. The treatment of religion here is great, but other identities fall a bit short. As usual in SF (Becky Chambers is one of the worst offenders here) stereotypes about chronological age are annoyingly constant: eighteen-year-old Jonr's problems are written off by the narrator in direct address, for example. 'Reader, have you ever been eighteen? Do you remember the pressing sense of urgency... How would you ever become a competent adult, when all the universe seemed to be against you?... I hope that you are older than eighteen... and that your concerns at eighteen now seem so insignificant that you can barely remember why they were so pressing.' This would be a lot of rubbish even if Leckie were talking about a present-day eighteen-year-old in the Global North. (Personally, I've found that 'my concerns at eighteen' were spot-on; I correctly worried about exactly the things that would turn out to be the big problems of my life.) But this approach really is unforgivable in this kind of SF, which ought to be thinking about how we might understand age differently in a totally different world. To a lesser extent, Leckie's treatment of class and even gender suffer from the same problems. Class signifiers disappointingly operate very similarly in Ooioiaa to modern Britain (there's a digression about how Iono can get away with serving tea in old cups, whereas someone further down the social hierarchy has to use proper crockery). As for gender, Leckie clearly enjoys playing with pronouns, but while there are some indications that these aren't just a matter of personal choice on Ooioiaa and are linked to limiting gender norms, we don't learn very much about what those norms are. This isn't a bad novel, but it's definitely my least favourite Leckie to date. 3.5 stars.
I received a free proof copy of this novel from the publisher for review.
A more important criticism, maybe: despite Leckie's obvious commitment, throughout her fiction, to exploring alien thought-worlds, I'd like to see her push this a bit further. The treatment of religion here is great, but other identities fall a bit short. As usual in SF (Becky Chambers is one of the worst offenders here) stereotypes about chronological age are annoyingly constant: eighteen-year-old Jonr's problems are written off by the narrator in direct address, for example. 'Reader, have you ever been eighteen? Do you remember the pressing sense of urgency... How would you ever become a competent adult, when all the universe seemed to be against you?... I hope that you are older than eighteen... and that your concerns at eighteen now seem so insignificant that you can barely remember why they were so pressing.' This would be a lot of rubbish even if Leckie were talking about a present-day eighteen-year-old in the Global North. (Personally, I've found that 'my concerns at eighteen' were spot-on; I correctly worried about exactly the things that would turn out to be the big problems of my life.) But this approach really is unforgivable in this kind of SF, which ought to be thinking about how we might understand age differently in a totally different world. To a lesser extent, Leckie's treatment of class and even gender suffer from the same problems. Class signifiers disappointingly operate very similarly in Ooioiaa to modern Britain (there's a digression about how Iono can get away with serving tea in old cups, whereas someone further down the social hierarchy has to use proper crockery). As for gender, Leckie clearly enjoys playing with pronouns, but while there are some indications that these aren't just a matter of personal choice on Ooioiaa and are linked to limiting gender norms, we don't learn very much about what those norms are. This isn't a bad novel, but it's definitely my least favourite Leckie to date. 3.5 stars.
I received a free proof copy of this novel from the publisher for review.
Review of advance copy received from Netgalley
Ann Leckie’s Imperial Radch series was one of the first major series in the contemporary “space opera about empire and gender” SF movement of the past decade, and while those books featured giant warships and lasers and Imperial politicking, it was clear that Leckie’s heart was more interested in the quieter moments, quirks of character and the cascade of small decisions. Since that initial trilogy, Leckie has returned to her galactic setting three times, each for standalone books focused primarily on other locations interacting with the Radch. Radiant Star is the third and latest of this endeavor, and it’s a bit of an odd one.
Radiant Star is entirely set on the planet Ooioiaa, an ossifying, isolated world whose inhabitants live beneath its frozen outer shell, ruled by three squabbling sects of a faith focused on the prophesied return of the eponymous Radiant Star, a star that supposed once warmed the planet but has since left on its interstellar journey. Near the beginning of the book, the planet is conquered by the Radch, who have little tolerance for their strange faith, chiefly targeting their tradition of turning a celebrated few into “living” saints, kept perpetually in a near-death catatonic state and sealed in a tomb to wake the return of the Star. A series of self-serving political machinations lead to a pillar of the community being selected to become a Saint - the last one tolerated by their new Radch overlords. This small concession sets into motion a chaotic series of power grabs, honest mistakes, and embarrassing overreaches that threatens to destroy Ooioiaa.
That summary might lead you to believe that this is a novel filled with dramatic betrayals, action setpieces, and melodramatic scheming, but Radiant Star doesn’t feel like that at all. The book features an anonymous narrator describing the events of this tense moment with something of a jovial, mid-century British comedic voice. It’s not like Fire and Blood, the in-universe historic text of the A Song of Ice and Fire/Game of Thrones world. But it does keep something of a remove from its characters, despite telling us their anxieties and plans.
The strongest part of the book is the carefully orchestrated series of events, each one stemming from some small decision or personal foible, each one fairly innocuous in the moment, but together, catastrophic. Leckie is fascinated with the ways societies and systems fail, the way each individual piece thinks they’re making rational, self-interested decisions while failing to see what fresh horrors await them.
But personally, there’s something lacking here. The Imperial Radch series’ contribution to the recent SF gender discussion was the empire’s lack of gender and universal use of she/her pronouns for everyone. In these subsequent standalone books, the narrative focus is on other planets and cultures, all of which have used some form of neopronouns. I’m supportive of this idea - more science fiction and fantasy should explore alternative genders and ways of being - but their use here feels perfunctory. Leckie rarely describes the physical appearances of her characters; perhaps this is to further alienate readers from assigning our gender roles to them, but combined with the liberal use of neopronouns without any meaningful cultural distinctions, they don’t signify anything at all. I’m a very visual reader, and need to have some image in my head to really connect with fiction. Without any physical or gendered markers at all to the characters, coupled with Leckie’s sparse and distant voice, it’s hard to connect emotionally with any of the characters, and with the story at large. Without going into spoilers, the way the story wraps up also feels quite anticlimactic, and left me wondering what was the point of the whole endeavor.
All that being said, Leckie is clearly one of the preeminent voices in contemporary SF right now, and the Rube Goldberg machinery of Radiant Star’s plot was always compelling, even if I was held at a remove.
Thanks to NetGalley for the advance copy in exchange for an honest review. All thoughts expressed are my own.
Read more of my reviews at https://terrasomni.substack.com
Radiant Star is entirely set on the planet Ooioiaa, an ossifying, isolated world whose inhabitants live beneath its frozen outer shell, ruled by three squabbling sects of a faith focused on the prophesied return of the eponymous Radiant Star, a star that supposed once warmed the planet but has since left on its interstellar journey. Near the beginning of the book, the planet is conquered by the Radch, who have little tolerance for their strange faith, chiefly targeting their tradition of turning a celebrated few into “living” saints, kept perpetually in a near-death catatonic state and sealed in a tomb to wake the return of the Star. A series of self-serving political machinations lead to a pillar of the community being selected to become a Saint - the last one tolerated by their new Radch overlords. This small concession sets into motion a chaotic series of power grabs, honest mistakes, and embarrassing overreaches that threatens to destroy Ooioiaa.
That summary might lead you to believe that this is a novel filled with dramatic betrayals, action setpieces, and melodramatic scheming, but Radiant Star doesn’t feel like that at all. The book features an anonymous narrator describing the events of this tense moment with something of a jovial, mid-century British comedic voice. It’s not like Fire and Blood, the in-universe historic text of the A Song of Ice and Fire/Game of Thrones world. But it does keep something of a remove from its characters, despite telling us their anxieties and plans.
The strongest part of the book is the carefully orchestrated series of events, each one stemming from some small decision or personal foible, each one fairly innocuous in the moment, but together, catastrophic. Leckie is fascinated with the ways societies and systems fail, the way each individual piece thinks they’re making rational, self-interested decisions while failing to see what fresh horrors await them.
But personally, there’s something lacking here. The Imperial Radch series’ contribution to the recent SF gender discussion was the empire’s lack of gender and universal use of she/her pronouns for everyone. In these subsequent standalone books, the narrative focus is on other planets and cultures, all of which have used some form of neopronouns. I’m supportive of this idea - more science fiction and fantasy should explore alternative genders and ways of being - but their use here feels perfunctory. Leckie rarely describes the physical appearances of her characters; perhaps this is to further alienate readers from assigning our gender roles to them, but combined with the liberal use of neopronouns without any meaningful cultural distinctions, they don’t signify anything at all. I’m a very visual reader, and need to have some image in my head to really connect with fiction. Without any physical or gendered markers at all to the characters, coupled with Leckie’s sparse and distant voice, it’s hard to connect emotionally with any of the characters, and with the story at large. Without going into spoilers, the way the story wraps up also feels quite anticlimactic, and left me wondering what was the point of the whole endeavor.
All that being said, Leckie is clearly one of the preeminent voices in contemporary SF right now, and the Rube Goldberg machinery of Radiant Star’s plot was always compelling, even if I was held at a remove.
Thanks to NetGalley for the advance copy in exchange for an honest review. All thoughts expressed are my own.
Read more of my reviews at https://terrasomni.substack.com
June 13, 2026
I love ann leckie but this book was not good
No likeable characters
No character development
No surprises
9/10ths of this book is a very cynical thought experiment in what happens to a fringe colony when its empire disappears, in which everyone acts out their social positions in the most self interested and uninspiring and predictable way, and the most interesting characters are some deus ex machina invasive plants
And 1/10ths a gripping short story of a boy who's that should have stood alone
This has all of ann leckie's understatement and reserved characters without ... anything else. To understate you must have something powerful to understate. Therein lies the poignancy. There is no poignancy to multiple leaders of multiple sects one dimensionally grasping for power.
Also, two characters have mysterious back stories that we never learn! I assume this is either some statement against trauma pirn or that their stories have been told / will be told elsewhere in the Raadchai universe, but the hope that Keemat's evil past or the consoror's traumatizing one would lend their characters some base level of complexity missing from all the others is all that had me hanging on.
I say all this as a deep ann leckie fan. I hope she gets her groove back.
No likeable characters
No character development
No surprises
9/10ths of this book is a very cynical thought experiment in what happens to a fringe colony when its empire disappears, in which everyone acts out their social positions in the most self interested and uninspiring and predictable way, and the most interesting characters are some deus ex machina invasive plants
And 1/10ths a gripping short story of a boy who's that should have stood alone
This has all of ann leckie's understatement and reserved characters without ... anything else. To understate you must have something powerful to understate. Therein lies the poignancy. There is no poignancy to multiple leaders of multiple sects one dimensionally grasping for power.
Also, two characters have mysterious back stories that we never learn! I assume this is either some statement against trauma pirn or that their stories have been told / will be told elsewhere in the Raadchai universe, but the hope that Keemat's evil past or the consoror's traumatizing one would lend their characters some base level of complexity missing from all the others is all that had me hanging on.
I say all this as a deep ann leckie fan. I hope she gets her groove back.
October 9, 2026
Like many, I greatly enjoyed the original Imperial Radch series. The first two were great! So I was looking forward to this return to that setting, in a small, cold peripheral world that got caught up in the turmoil of the Radch civil war.
Well. Radiant Star is a pretty good book. But not up to her best. This one is slow moving, complex, confusing, and not very plausible. But a solid read. I lucked into a $2 Kindle sale copy, and got well over my money’s worth. For me this was a 3.25 star read, good but not great. I’m cautiously recommending it, if you are an Imperial Radch fan. Don’t start the series here! I recommend taking a look at what your GR friends have to say about this one. Not a book I’m likely to reread.
Well. Radiant Star is a pretty good book. But not up to her best. This one is slow moving, complex, confusing, and not very plausible. But a solid read. I lucked into a $2 Kindle sale copy, and got well over my money’s worth. For me this was a 3.25 star read, good but not great. I’m cautiously recommending it, if you are an Imperial Radch fan. Don’t start the series here! I recommend taking a look at what your GR friends have to say about this one. Not a book I’m likely to reread.
September 14, 2026
The ending made up for the rest of the book somewhat, and granted, I went in with high expectations, but ultimately this book left me disappointed.
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