The Stars Now Unclaimed... Bad-Ass Chicks with Space Guns! (sci-fi REVIEW)

What do you get when you throw a tough fighter pilot (with her own sporty little starship); a wunderkind (who can manipulate some Seriously Big Stuff with her mind); a would-be space pirate (with a distinctly romantic side); a robot preacher (as in, clergywoman made of metal); an older, wiser space spy (somehow everything just sounds cooler when you put “space” in front of it, doesn’t it?); and a sentient spaceship (a female ship with Artificial Intelligence, who is as persnickety about keeping her surfaces spiffy-clean as she is about trying to keep her captain alive) together… then toss ‘em smack-dab in the middle of an about-to-erupt, epic space battle (see? totally cooler than just “a battle”), against a hodgepodge horde of the galaxy’s meanest hombres, who’re hellbent on destroying your worlds and adding you to their vast number, if possible (or killing you dead, if not)? 

Pure. Unadulterated. Awesomeness. (Well, duh, right?) 

Or, to put another way, you get Drew Williams’ rip-roaring debut, The Stars Now Unclaimed. 

Now, if—after reading that first ‘graph--the short-lived show “Firefly” came to mind, it's understandable. (On the other hand, if it didn’t? You may need to up your sci-fi game, ’s'all I’m sayin’.) 

And really, the parallels between this book and that show are pretty compelling. The unnamed (for about 2/3 of the book, so I won’t tell you here) fighter pilot takes cues from "Firefly's" Captain Mal Reynolds, his second-in-command, Zoe, and the rough-’n-ready Jane Cobb. Pirate (with a soft side) Javier has bits of Capt. Mal and touches of the romantically-inclined mechanic, Kaylee in his makeup. The wunderkind—Esa—is pretty much a dead ringer for the teenaged River Tam; the robotic preacher—called Preacher—though female, shares an overall world view with “Firefly’s” on-board cleric, Shepherd; and the ship, Scheherazade, well… okay, so Serenity (the show’s ship) wasn’t AI, but if you sub in the smart, plummy, sort of prissy doctor, instead? Yep, even that one kinda fits.

Then, there are the worlds, themselves… most of which have devolved to a relatively primitive state, on the heels of a phenomenon that swept through a couple hundred years earlier, zapping nearly all of the modern tech throughout the galaxy in its wake. (In “Firefly”, remember the wild-west feel, with horses, saloons, guns, and so on?)

If The Stars Now Unclaimed is just a rehash of a short-lived ‘90s TV show, then why would you want to read it? For starters, it isn't a rehash, at all. The similarities are just some basic ideas and tropes found in both; The Stars doesn’t copy anything. 

[Anyway, it’s nearly impossible to not find common themes within any genre. Decades ago, “Star Wars" gave us the ultimate devil-may-care fighter-pilot hero with a big mouth who always got into—then, somehow, back out of—scrapes, with Han Solo. And, the villains here bear resemblance to another franchise’s baddies—“Star Trek’s” hive-like Borg—further illustrating the notion that there really isn’t anything (truly) original under the sun…]

Second, Williams has crafted an absolute humdinger of a sci-fi adventure, in The Stars. This one takes off, if not at a run, at least at a very swift jog, then goes into an all-out sprint… but with the endurance required of a long-distance marathoner.

You want your space battles? The Stars has got ‘em, and how. (Dreadnaughts and frigates and fighters, oh my!) Really, really good battles, too, of the nail-biting, can’t-read-fast-enough, the-very-fate-of-the-galaxy-depends-on-our-heroes variety.   

You like a little philosophy, maybe some intelligent convos about why we behave the ways we do, and our responsibility for our actions? Check. Smart--and smart-mouthed--characters? Yep... a lot of whom are women (hallelujah!). Politics, race relations, family, love, fear, hate, and a little bit of science… they’re all present, in a perfect blend of sci-fi that winds up seeming more like reality than fantasy—talking spaceships (with their own distinct personalities), and scaly and lupine characters, aside—because the combatants all feel real, and you end up caring for them like friends and family (including the ones you don’t really like much, at all, but are nonetheless sort of stuck with). 

The Stars Now Unclaimed is the best sci-fi I’ve read in, well, I don’t even know how long. Better yet, let’s just forget about labels and say that this is story-telling done brilliantly well… and one of my favorite book picks of 2018, for its sheer fun value. 

The Stars will be released on August 21, 2018; my recommendation is to consider placing those pre-orders NOW. :)

~GlamKitty