Radiant Star by Ann Leckie Format: eARC
Source: supplied by publisher via Edelweiss
Formats available: hardcover, ebook, audiobook
Genres: science fiction, space opera
Series: Imperial Radch
Pages: 360
Published by Orbit on May 12, 2026
Purchasing Info: Author's Website, Publisher's Website, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Bookshop.org, Better World Books
Goodreads
Ann Leckie returns to the world of the Imperial Radch in this standalone.
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 one last concession: One last man will be allowed to join the mummified bodies in the temporal location to become a "living saint".
But this one 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 zer comfortable life upended, and a young man sold into servitude will find unlikely escape.
My Review:
If you’re wondering where this fits into the chronology of the Imperial Radch, well, so was I. If you’ve not read the Imperial Radch series that begins so marvelously, with Ancillary Justice, you might want to go back and do that. Because DAMN but that opening trilogy (Ancillary Justice, Ancillary Sword and Ancillary Mercy) is AWESOME.
Also it’s the record of events elsewhere in the Radch, the events that are causing so many difficulties on Ooioiaa, the tiny, remote, mostly disregarded and still in the process of being colonized by the Radchaai, the planet on which this story about colonization, colonialism and collateral damage takes place.
In other words, Radiant Star is a bit of a side story to the main action of the series. Or, at least it is from the perspective of the Radchaai governor, her staff and all the functionaries with her on Ooioiaa.
But only until Governor Charak concludes that the weeks she has been entirely cut off from communication and resupply from the vast bureaucratic empire of the Imperial Radch represents, not a mere technical glitch, but a disaster of such epic proportions that multiple gates in the empire’s vast travel and communications network are offline – AT THE SAME TIME.
She knows something terrible must have happened – but she doesn’t have any information to tell her precisely what and how bad the disaster might be.
Without access to the resources that keep both the economy AND, more importantly, the FOOD SUPPLY on Ooioiaa stable, and without the ability to call in “the cavalry” if that stability becomes UNstable, Governor Charak knows that her mission is in trouble.
Not that she doesn’t have enough personnel and especially ancillaries from her ship, Justice of Albis, because if she is willing to be bloody-minded about it she can put down any rebellion on the part of the population. But her mission is to govern these people, not conquer them. Killing a wide swath of those people – if it can be prevented – is against her mandate.
However, between the truly weird planetary conditions on Ooioiaa, the lack of imports from well, anywhere at all to supplement the food supply, a little bit of human stupidity and a whole lot of human greed, the native food supply on Ooioiaa can’t cope with the number of people it is currently supporting.
Inflation and food shortages are not enemies that Charak can negotiate with. She can use the ancillaries to guard what’s left, but her attempts to increase that food supply don’t just fail, they make the situation catastrophically worse.
People are starving on the streets. Well, nearly all of them. If Charak’s attempt to add to the food supply marks the human stupidity that fuels this mess – and it does – then the greed of the local officials who are hoarding food and stealing the little bit that does manage to come in through bribery and outright corruption – turns the whole thing catastrophic.
Fortunately for Charak, the rank corruption of the local officials stinks so badly that a lot of the population’s ire will be turned on them instead of her, once the crisis is over. If it doesn’t end in a planet of graves.
Escape Rating A: This was a LOT. Not necessarily in pages, but in density. There’s a lot going on on Ooioiaa and there’s a lot of story to tell and a lot to think about as that story gets told. Something which was definitely true in the original Imperial Radch trilogy. I think you could start here, because this is very much a side show to the main action of the trilogy. But, but, but, Ancillary Justice sets up this universe in a way that is a bit more focused because it’s filtered through one viewpoint, from a character who is very much learning how things work as they go, so the reader gets to learn along with them.
This story, while it’s to the side of the main one, is absolutely complete unto itself – but it relies on that prior knowledge – even if that prior knowledge isn’t exactly new – to allow the reader to immerse themselves in the story. So you could start here and the story here would work but I know I’d feel the missing-to-me bits floating around the edges and it would drive me bananas. (Your reading mileage may vary on this. I fully admit to being a completist.)
I absolutely did immerse myself fully in this story. This was a one-evening – well, one evening and night – read for me. I fell under its spell in the first chapter and didn’t emerge until I was done after midnight.
Radiant Star is science fiction of the type that Lois McMaster Bujold once described as “the romance of political agency”. While this is certainly about colonialism and colonization, those themes are explored through the people and the political machinations of those people on both sides of the equation. That Ooioiaa is a planet with its own long history, that it has been established and populated for millennia means that its people understand that this is what the Radch is and it’s what the Radchaai do and that they do not have the means to stop any of it. All they can do is attempt to preserve their culture and heritage for a few more generations.
The Radchaai, on the other hand, see the Ooioiaans as mostly civilized but not quite civilized enough. That the Ooioiaan religion includes a LOT of beliefs that the Radchaai find anathema (and vice versa) doesn’t exactly help this situation. That the Ooioiaan religious hierarchy is corrupt down to its bone marrow and fighting amongst its own factions doesn’t exactly make either side more tolerant of the other – but Charak has the power to force the issue. She can’t make the Ooioiaans worship the Radchaai god, but she can co-opt the Ooioiaan religion. That’s ALSO what the Radchaai are good at.
As much as I’ve talked about the situation, because it is fascinating and the workings – and non-workings – of the levers of power fascinate me, the story is told through its characters. After all, the reader can’t FEEL for a system – however intricate – but absolutely can feel for the people being jerked around BY that system. And of course, boo and hiss at the people who are being the jerks.
Which we do. Because there are plenty of both.
One of the fascinating things that we don’t see very often in SF or Fantasy is that a lot of this story centers around the religious practices of the Ooioiaans along with the machinations of their clergy in order to maintain and expand their secular power. Admittedly, the machinations we see plenty of in SF/F, but the actual practices, not so much. In that part of the story, Radiant Star brought to mind The Cemeteries of Amalo sequel subseries for The Goblin Emperor, both because The Goblin Emperor is an SF story, although with a fantasy feel to it, that is very much about political agency and political power, and because The Cemeteries of Amalo series which begins with The Witness for the Dead, views that world through the eyes of one of the members of its religious orders, someone who is themself a true, righteous believer but sees their superiors for the humans they are and their jockeying for power and positions as the distractions from faith that they have become.
The ending of this story tied the whole thing up in a bright, shiny bow that also looped in EVERYTHING that happened in the original trilogy AND swept up all the religious and political loose ends in a way that was the best kind of deus ex machina. Because the machina isn’t deus at all – it just has really excellent timing. Bringing this fascinating epic to a grand AND hopeful conclusion.
Just as hopefully, I hope that this is not the end of the Imperial Radch sequels. Because the three we have so far, Provenance, Translation State and now Radiant Star, have all been VERY worthy successors to that landmark (maybe that should be spacemark?) award-winning series and I would love to have MORE!
This week has been a LOT around here, and most of it unplanned. The simple, bookish part of that unplanning was that the book I intended to close out the week with won’t be published until the end of the month. So my review of 
Current Giveaways:
Blog Recap:
Coming This Week:
Palaces of the Crow by 
I picked this up expecting more of 
Escape Rating A+: I picked this up for the author, and that’s a good thing, because it’s both not what I expected and frankly not a story that any of the blurbs are having any luck summarizing. It’s also NOT, as some of the sites have it, in any way science fictional. It’s even dubious whether it is even in the realm of speculative fiction at all.
But that bleakness fits the characters, the setting and the perspective of the whole story. Because this story is not told from a Western point of view. World War II, as seen from the U.S., was a distant thing, a righteous quest for glory – whether it actually was or not. The war wasn’t HERE (except for the Aleutian Islands and the lower 48 still have a difficult time seeing any parts of Alaska as ‘here’) Even for Britain, there were lots of bombs and they suffered a terrible loss of life, but they weren’t invaded. France was invaded, but it wasn’t starving frozen as it was in Belarus. It was war and it was horrifying, but it wasn’t the frozen bleakness of Belarus and the stories of it are just different (
Platform Decay (The Murderbot Diaries, #8) by 
After the events of 
Escape Rating A: This series is officially titled 
L. Ron Hubbard Presents Writers of the Future Volume 42: Illustrated Edition Featuring the Next Generation of Science Fiction & Fantasy by 
This is now my fourth review of the annual 
“The Triceratops Effect” by S.J. Stevenson, illustrated by Art Ikuta
But it’s also VERY much our world in the way that humans are gonna human – and be litigious – especially towards large, predatory animals that might be dangerous. So the last dragon is chained in the Bronx Zoo for decades, his only champion one young girl who believes in his magic and campaigns her entire life to get poor Ash unchained. It’s told from her perspective in a series of letters and letters to the editor of various newspapers and newspaper reports and ‘tweets’ and other social media posts. But the message is one that no one wants to hear because the powers-that-be have decided that Ash is dangerous and that he might hurt someone and that he needs to be chained for everyone else’s own good even if it is literally killing him. Which is when his lone champion, looking at the waning years of her own life, decides to stage a jailbreak – and find the land of Honah Lee that she’s been searching for all of her life. Escape Rating A+ and a fitting end to the collection.
The Vampyre Client: An Irregular Detective Mystery, Book 4 by 
Unlike his mentor, the Great Detective himself, former Baker Street Irregular and now grown-up detective Timothy Badger reads WAY too many ‘penny dreadfuls’ and believes a bit too much in everything he reads. Or is just a bit too gullible when it comes to ghosts and ghoulies and things that go “Boo!” in the night.
Escape Rating A-: This series has been oodles of Sherlock-adjacent fun from the very beginning in 
And that following Sherlock Holmes’ methods is the key to Badger and Watson’s success, but running off half-cocked in pursuit of wild rumors is the road to failure and a return to poverty.
For Better or Murder (A Holy Terrors Mystery, 4) by 
It feels like this latest book in the 
Of course, the place is haunted. Or so the proprietors claim. Of course the atmosphere is beyond spooky and Mother Nature seems determined to whip the dramatic pauses and power failures up to eleven. Of course, the wedding party is a motley crew filled with hidden agendas and open resentments.
Ishmael Jones series actually works a little better because there’s an SFnal element in Ishmael’s background that allows some of the ends to be supernatural or extra-terrestrial and have that work. OTOH, Ishmael and Penny can’t really reach a happy ending – for other factors in Ishmael’s origin – but Alistair and Diana can. And quite possibly do at the end of THIS book.
Blog Recap:
Coming This Week:
