I love this world and these characters. The universe building, the politics, the character growth; it is all wonderful. Sisters of the Forsaken Stars is an excellent follow up to the first in the series, and it makes me want to read more.

FTC after pub date.I received this ARC from NetGalley for an honest review

I enjoyed this, but wasn't swept off my feet in the same way I was by Sisters of the Vast Black. This story is a very direct follow up, reconnecting with the sisters not long after their defiance of Earth Central Government's attempts to suppress outsystem independence using biological warfare. This story follows both the remaining crew of the original ship, as well as Gemma, who broke away from the sect to be with the woman she loved. While both storylines were engaging, they felt very disparat...

In a Standard Sci-Fi Setting, a Four-Woman Band of nuns, members of a mendicant order, travel from struggling, colony to colony in a Living Ship while avoiding the attention of the forces of the Vestigial Empire whose ire they have aroused in the previous book. Second book in a continuing series. Pod of Wild Space Whales in the Fourth System My dead pixels edition was a short 192 pages. It had a US copyright of 2022.Lina Rather is an American science fiction author of short stories. She ha...

'Sisters Of The Forsaken Stars' continues the story that was started in ‘Sisters Of The Vast Black’, a book that Lina Rather described as being about ‘Nuns living in a giant slug in outer-space’. When we met the Sisters of the Order of Saint Rita in the first book, they were a small community of nuns travelling in their convent, Our Lady of Impossible Constellations, a vast, genetically engineered mollusc called a Liveship, to tend to the sick and carry out marriages and baptisms in

Nuns. Living, space-faring ships. Revolution. 4.75 StarsOh my. Where are my words?A direct sequel to the first book. Thoughtful, heartfelt, fascinating. These can be attributed equally to the various threads of plot: sisterhood, service, faith, science, truth. I'm impressed, and touched by these wonderful novellas.I want to read more by this author! They are very likely to make it to my favorites authors list alongside such luminaries as Becky Chambers, Emma Newman, Martha Wells, Lois McMaster B...

I didn’t enjoy this one as much as the previous book. The Sister’s banter was sparse. Although we did get to see more of Gemma in her new life.

I was going to say something about how this mostly feels like a thoughtful character study, with a little bit of plot thrown in, until I was halfway through my next read, Seven Down, which could technically be described the same way but is a vastly inferior book (I'll hasten to qualify that I am clearly a sci-fi fan, and I venture into literary fiction with the same enthusiasm I approach vegan lasagna). At any rate, Forsaken arrived at the right mood and time (thanks, Netgalley!) and proved an e...

Sisters of the Forsaken Stars is a solid followup to, and direct continuation of the excellent Sisters of the Vast Black. Although there is certainly quite a bit of tension and suspense to keep one engaged, the scope is not quite as epic or staggering. The crux of the story centers around the sisters' struggles to square the great horrors they witnessed with their faith, and to find a new path for themselves, now independent from Rome after the fallout of earlier events. The setting in a future

If you don't remember the first book, basically it's decades after the first war where Earth tried to exert itself over its colonies across the four systems. A living spaceship inhabited by Catholic nuns of the Order of Saint Rita got in the way of a secret Earth government project to infect the outer colonies with a deadly plague. The nuns succeeded in stopping the plague but at the cost of their ship and everyone involved becoming fugitives.In this book, in the third system, the remaining nuns...

Sisters of the Vast Black was a fascinating introduction to this new world and group of Sisters and I knew I would be continuing to read the series. And this second installment turned to be equally compelling if a bit different.The sisters are now struggling a bit, feeling unmoored after the events at the end of the first book and trying to find a new purpose for their group independent of the Church. They may not all agree with each other, and Mother Lucia is especially tormented because her fa...

As soon as I heard about a series that follows nuns in a living spaceship — that also has a sapphic main character — I had to pick it up.The series begins slowly, introducing each of the sisters, who all have their own reasons for being aboard the ship. Not all of them are devout, and most have some sort of secret they left behind in order to start this new life. While this is a sci fi story, of course, it feels very grounded. Details like having to sift through spam on their communications arra...

Lina Rather is a Creative Genius.  I devoured SISTERS OF THE VAST BLACK during 2020's Space O0era September and adored it, longing for a sequel.  SISTERS OF THE FORSAKEN STARS is equally fantastic! Now although it can be read as a standalone, do yourself a favor and read both books, in order, to perceive the true flavor of character evolution and unfolding plot issues. This Series,  while Feminist Science Fiction with an LGBTQ+ rep, is also metaphysical,  philosophical,  classical,  and pacifist...

Sisters of the Vast Black was one of my favourite reads of 2019 (a decade ago it feels) so I was thrilled to see that Rather had written a sequel - I hit pre-order with nary a second thought. Pleasingly, I was also approved for an ARC. The series is set in a distant future, where four systems have slowly been colonised by humans, in a society still recovering from a terrible war between the insidious, destructive control of Earth and the colonies who strike out for their uneasy and uncertain ind...

(I received an advance copy of this book for review from the publisher).A delightful follow-up to Sisters of the Vast Black. The premise of the series alone is enough to make me love it: nuns in space fighting fascism. But the stories, the characters, the depth & history & secrets, all packed into these bitty novellas, are so engaging. I'm really excited to see where the series continues to go.

I really liked the first book and even though it was contemplative, there was still plot and character development. This book took the contemplative aspect too far for me and lost any sense of progressive or plot. New issues and people were introduced but very superficially that it was hard to connect to much. I enjoyed the exploration of faith, but it needed structure around it. At the same time, I think this book would have done better with more of a resolution at the end and this bit of the p...

I found that I was a bit bored throughout this one. There were two different storylines and it felt difficult to really enjoy either of them because the book was so short. I don't know how many books there are meant to be in this series, but it definitely felt like it was just moving things along rather than having a strong plot arc.Thank you to the publisher for the gifted ARC!

An enjoyable continuation of the story of a small group of nuns in space aboard a living ship, trying to do a little good while also hiding from the consequences of what they did in the previous book and trying to decide what to do next. Because of how things turned out some are left with a little more doubt than perhaps they’d had before, and are more prone to distrust. So how do you balance those feelings with the desire to do good, while also trying to remain free so you actually can do some

Read this review and other Science Fiction/Fantasy book reviews at The Quill to LiveBack in the olden times of just over two years ago, I read Sisters of the Vast Black, a charming novella about a small convent of nuns in outer space. Lina Rather’s debut in the novella scene captured my imagination and heart and left me wanting more. Fortunately, Rather has decided to continue the story of this small order, who are now on the run in Sisters of the Forsaken Stars.Picking up some time after their

Forsaken Stars depends much too heavily on the groundwork laid by Vast Black, where we got the foundations of a corrupt future (duh, it's humanity), the pervasiveness of religion beyond the bounds of Earth's atmosphere, and the fortitude of humanity everywhere and anywhere they find themselves. We also got a group of complex women, who all became nuns for very different reasons and have different understandings of faith and humanity and the Church and the government and everything else under any...