The Stars Undying

I was taken in by the cover of this book the first time I saw it and how could I resist a space opera reimagining of the story of Cleopatra and Julius Caesar. I was also very excited because this is the first physical arc I got from Orbit US and that makes it very special. And turns out it was unlike anything I've read in a while.

Seeing that it's a space opera featuring a queen in (almost) exile wanting to get it back, and trying to get help from the commander of a huge empire for that purpose, I definitely expected this to be an action packed novel about war. Turns out it's not. It took me only a few chapters to realize that I might have to recalibrate my expectations and then it was an unusual but fun read. The writing was beautiful and poetic, with lots of lingering conversations which were worded in one way but totally meant something else. This layered writing style is not something I'm used to and it took a while for me to get comfortable with it, and I still don't know if I understood all the underlying meanings. The world building is also just too vast with so many planets as part of the empire - so many names, their languages and cultures - I don't think I remember most of them even now after finishing the book, I just went along with it. The story was also very slow paced, with some exciting moments at the beginning and the end, but it was very slice of life for a lot of it in the middle where it felt like nothing was happening - except lots of discussions and musings on philosophy, empire, immortality, religion, god and more which I kinda enjoyed thinking about myself.

Even after reading this almost 500 page book I don't know what I can tell you about our main characters Gracia and Ceirran. They are unreliable narrators for sure, particularly Gracia who keeps telling us that. The story is told in first person POV but as if the protagonists are narrating their story to someone (and us), and the lying was not visible at first, until the book proceeded a bit. But come what may, I still can't deign what their motivations were and what they actually wanted. Just having an empire and ruling over it seemed like small things which they would never aspire it, but I still didn't understand what it is they wanted, both from the world and each other. I don't know much about Roman history and definitely very little about Caesar, but this book felt like I was getting a close look at the kind of relationship he shared with Cleopatra and Mark Anthony. Mark's analogous here is Anita whose presence is limited but very vivid and she turned out to be another enigma I wished to know more about.

It might feel like I'm rambling but I'm truly at a loss how to review this book. If you like Roman history as well as space operas, you'll probably enjoy this book, and maybe even understand it to the fullest extent. If you like your sci-fi books to be a slow burn thesis about the philosophy of empire and religion, then this will be right up your alley. But if you are looking for lots of fast paced action and war, you'll end up disappointed. I still can't say if I love it completely but I was definitely impressed, and though this almost works as a standalone, I will surely read the sequel and would love to reread this book before that.

My interest in Cleopatra is generally peripheral to my interest in all things Ancient Egyptian - an interest that waned when I learned about more ancient queens like Hatshepsut. Still, Cleopatra (the VII, as there were other Cleopatras before her) is probably the most famous ancient Egyptian queen, especially when you???re talking about mainstream pop culture. 

Which means, of course, I had to check this book out, not least because it promised to be retelling of the story of Cleopatra, Caesar, and Antony but set against a space opera backdrop. And it certainly delivered on that part - but not quite in the way I hoped.

See, I think this novel hews just a little TOO close to history for my liking. It TRIES to get away with it, but when your space Caesar is named ???Ceirran??? and your space Antony is named ???Anita??? or ???Ana??? (depends) and your space Cleopatra has the epithet ???Patramata??? and your space Octavian is Ot??vio, well– You see what I mean? And it???s not just the names: it???s the worldbuilding too. Szayet does not sound like Egypt, but it sure is described as a kind of inverse Egypt where there is too much water instead of too little. Ceiao does not sound like Rome, but it certainly is described that way, with all the names switched out for Spanish- and Portuguese-esque sounding names and terms. Madinabia sounds adjacent to Britannia, and the description of the people there certainly aligns with the Britons the Romans encountered when Caesar (Ceirran?) went a-conquering. And all this before pointing out that, as a retelling, the beats of the plot very, VERY closely align with actual history.

What this means is that it was easy to get pulled out of immersion while I was reading this novel, because there would be moments where I would recognize this character or that location and align it with the historical equivalent. I couldn???t really sink into this world the author was weaving (and it really is quite a fantastic world!) because I???d read about a character and suddenly think ???Oh hey, this is Cicero??? and I???d be pulled out of the story yet again. The recognition???s supposed to be part of the fun of reading these sorts of stories, but it???s fun only insofar as it lets me stay IN the world of the story and not constantly pulling me out of it. Makes me wonder if this wouldn???t have been better as a straight-up historical novel, but then maybe it wouldn???t have stood out from the herd of other historical novels set in the same time period and around the same characters? 

That being said, this story???s got its good qualities too. The prose is really very lovely, and really is what kept me reading to the end. There???s also a lot of clever worldbuilding going on in there too, despite it hewing too closely to actual history as I said earlier, and I rather wish the author had done something else with the ideas and not used them in this retelling. The themes are also intriguing: questions of power and empire are of course very prominent, but there are also questions around immortality and godhood that got brought up. All those themes were touched upon, but further exploration will have to come in the second book.

So overall, this wasn???t an entirely bad read! I just think that it could???ve been better if it hadn???t stuck as close as it did to the source material, as it were. May get the second book when it comes out, just to see if this???ll end the way I think it will based on how the actual history went.