The Starfishers Trilogy

Starfishers #1-3

by Glen Cook

Centuries ago, a private army’s deadly strike freed human slaves from their cruel Sangaree masters. A single Sangaree alien survived—and swore vengeance on the Storm family and their soldiers. Generations later, his carefully mapped revenge scheme explodes as the armies of the galaxies collide along a strange burning planet’s Shadowline.

In the war’s deadly aftermath, Mouse Storm makes his way towards Stars’ End, a mysterious planet bristling with deadly automated weapons systems, programmed to slaughter anyone foolish enough to approach. Mouse and fellow Confederation agent Moyshe benRabi are pursuing Starfishers, Sangaree harvestships that protect the Starfish; creatures of pure fusion energy that produce the priceless ambergris that makes travel between the stars possible.

But who built Stars’ End, and why so close to the drifting Starfish? In the midst of the Sangaree wars, a far more sinister enemy approaches, coming from the depths of the galaxy, in hordes larger than a solar system.

From Glen Cook, the master of modern heroic fantasy, comes his landmark space opera, a seamless blend of ancient myth, political intrigue, and scintillating space combat.

Genres: Science Fiction

584 pages, Paperback

First published March 28, 2017

About the author

Glen Cook was born in New York City, lived in southern Indiana as a small child, then grew up in Northern California. After high school he served in the U.S. Navy and attended the University of Missouri. He worked for General Motors for 33 years, retiring some years ago. He started writing short stories in 7th grade, had several published in a high school literary magazine. He began writing with malicious intent to publish in 1968, eventually producing 51 books and a number of short fiction pieces.
He met his wife of 43 years while attending the Clarion Writer's Workshop in 1970. He has three sons (army officer, architect, orchestral musician) and numerous grandchildren, all of whom but one are female. He is best known for his Black Company series, which has appeared in 20+ languages worldwide. His other series include Dread Empire and and the Garrett, P.I. series. His latest work is Working God’s Mischief, fourth in the Instrumentalities of the Night series.
http://us.macmillan.com/author/glencook

Reviews

[Pavlo Tverdokhlib · Rating 4 out of 5]

Glen Cook does Space Opera. And it starts out pretty epic, with the first novel in a trilogy basically taking the Norse Ragnarok and transporting it into a space-faring future. Only except for gods of Asgard you have the Storms- a clan of mercenaries who fight proxy wars on behalf of corporations. And instead of Giants you have humanoid aliens Sangaree who seek to undermine humanity by supplying it with super-addictive recreational drugs for the ultimate purpose of enslaving them. The Human-Sangaree wars are a long and established part of history, and several vendettas arose from them. One such vendetta is now in the process of tearing the storm clan apart.

"Shadowline" (book 1) is a bit predictable in its plot, because hey, It's Ragnarok. We know how that ends. That being said, it is no less epic because of that. Take Cook's imagination and talent for military fiction, combine it with the mythical outine, and you get Hel as an icy planetoid controlled by an AI that is is a digitized version of one of Storm's kidnapped daughters. Guarded by a zombie T-Rex. The Odin, Thor, Loki, Freya and all the other archetypes are all here, in a full-blown space opera, on a collision course for mutual destruction-but a spectacular one at that. And the book delivers in spades.

What feels like a set-up to an absolutely massive conflict ends up being...something very different. In a dramatic shift of gears, Book 2 is actually more of a spy fiction as 2 Earth security officers try to infiltrate a vessel of the Starfishers- an isolationist faction that holds a monopoly on the material used to fuel interstellar travel. The book follows Masato Storm and his friend Moyshe BenRabi (one of the many names he's had to assume in his line of work, each with a hypnotic personality implant), as they try to cope with the strange culture they find themselves in. The tonal shift from Epic Space Opera to low-key spy fiction was pretty shocking, but overall, Cook pulls it off. There's a lot of psychological mumbo-jumbo involved, but the overall story is still pretty spectacular, setting up high expectations for the 3rd installment.

And here's a bit of a problem, similar to Neal Asher's "Owners" trilogy. After making an astounding genre shift between Books 1 and 2, "Starfishers".. doesn't really do that again. Instead Book 3 is a direct sequel to 2, and then things turn a bit "Manchurian candidate gone awry". There's some meta-plot space opera bit introduced to make the thing more cohesive, but the way it all tries to (kinda) tie back to "Shadowline" feels awkward, and not at all living up to the hype created by the first novel.

Individually, "Shadowline" is a kick-ass "Ragnarok but in Space", while "Starfishers" and "Star's End" form a pretty neat space spy story. However, as a single whole, as a trilogy, they don't really click. It's an interesting experiment, but one that left me overall with a sense of disappointment.

[Malquiviades · Rating 4 out of 5]

Nice trilogy. It was tough for me getting through the first book as so many time-jumps tends to annoy me. Even if I acknowledge they were needed for the plot's shake, I wonder if there was not a better way to do it. Nevertheless, it was ok.
I consider the main character of the other two books quite interesting and together with the deep plot in the third, finally brought up my opinion of this trilogy.
Quite nice, indeed.

[Kevin Goff · Rating 4 out of 5]

I read this in one book as the trilogy. The first book was tough to get through, and after finishing the trilogy, it seemed the first book didn't really go with the other two. All this effort was put into building up Mouse Storm in book one, then they give him a sorta back seat in the other two books. Other then the fracture between books one and two, I did enjoy the story.

[Sean McGrath · Rating 3 out of 5]

I enjoyed the first book the most. It seemed like Cook totally changed course on where he thought the series was going in the next two books. Mouse was set up to have this big arc as the leader of his mercenary group after the first book, but ended up just being a side character. Ending of the trilogy seemed very abrupt and anticlimactic.

[Allison · Rating 4 out of 5]

I'd really like to know what happened in the interim between books one and two

[Brandon · Rating 3 out of 5]

An decent series that really felt like a prequel and a two book series.