Thomas Allogenes of The Magical Messiah has given Stargazer an in depth and positive review. Since he comes from the Gnostic point of view like me, he digs under the hood for the philosophical and esoteric meanings of the novel. Here is an excerpt:


Compare the semi-conscious mindgames of Twilight, however, with the vampires of Stargazer: predatory violence hidden behind a veneer of civilization, wanton cruelty masked by "necessity". In Miguel Conner's literary hellscape, humans are little more than talking livestock, cattle with culture. Vampires—who refer to themselves by the more romantic title of "Stargazers"—raise them on farms, herd them into slaughterhouses, and kill them in an industrialized fashion. The Stargazers took the land over by destruction: they unleashed military power on humanity and reworked the world so that it was only by their vampiric will and technology that humanity could survive at all. Sound familiar at all? Miguel Conner, in the grand tradition of Phillip K. Dick, uses weird horror, sci-fi, supernatural tropes not to pull us away from the world, but to point us back toward it. Conner's "vampires" are simply the worst elements of ourselves, of humanity, of intelligence and culture. We pretend to be civilized, but we are killers. We insist that we are unique among all of creation, and yet we behave toward one another and the other creatures of this planet no better than the lowest of beasts. And yet, there is no room for pessimism. Even if everything is terrible, if we look deeply within and bring with us the full force of both intellect and intuition, we will find a rationally workable something which, if we identify ourselves with that instead of with our animal bodies and passions will save us. And if we first can save ourselves, perhaps we can help others, too. And this time, really help them—unselfishly, not merely because it aids our own survival but because the Good demands it!


The Gnostic themes in Stargazer are thick but not heavy; if you know what to look for, they're mostly pretty obvious, although by and large they are woven into the narrative such that they don't jar you out of the action. And there is plenty of action. As a vacation read, Stargazer works: there is enough going on all the time that even without any interest in the overt Gnostic ideas, there is still plenty of story to keep the reader hooked. In fact, I passed my copy off to my father, who has no real religious leaning at all, and he's presently enjoying it as a great sci-fi romp! It is a rare novel which can facilitate the transfer of ideas while still flowing like a story should.

Thomas does mention that there are grammatical errors, as did Tessa Dick, mainly because of my betraying publisher who I broke from right as the book was coming out. It was a confusing time, but now I hope to get that handful of errors fixed by hiring a copy editor, who will also assist me in the upcoming sequel, Heretic .

But in the end, he really liked it, finishing the review with:

Fun, intense, and thought-provoking, it provides something no matter what you're looking for, even a bit of romance!


Also check out the Review by Tessa Dick
And the review by David Rankine

Purchase Stargazer before the even more disturbing and enlightening Heretic comes out this fall!