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Twin Star
Two privileged but disillusioned heirs trade high society for the high frontier and learn just how far from home they’ve truly come.
Eddy Lancaster never asked for purpose. He’s content to be a gentleman of leisure, with good friends and a dedicated valet to keep him out of trouble. When a report of a vanished expedition is discovered, with the enticing possibility of a hitherto unknown alien race and the possibility of advanced technology, his eccentric adventurer uncle spirits him and his brilliant twin sister away on a quest beyond the Frontier and away from the comforts of their homeworld.
Effie Lancaster has spent her life dedicated to science but fearing that she’d never see her dreams realized. Now, she’s seizing a last, desperate chance to prove her worth—to her academic peers, her family, and most of all herself. What waits for her in the mysterious Ashvins Binary Star System is more than scientific discovery—it’s an ancient secret that can devour entire civilizations.
At the publisher's request, this title is sold without DRM (Digital Rights Management).
About the
Mike Kupari is the author of Trouble Walked In and Her Brother’s Keeper, as well as coauthor, with Larry Correia, of the best-selling Dead Six military adventure series including Dead Six, Swords of Exodus, and Alliance of Shadows. He grew up in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula and enlisted at the age of seventeen. Kupari did two tours active duty overseas with the U.S. Air Force, where he was an explosive ordnance disposal technician; now he helps launch rockets. He also served six years in the Army National Guard. Kupari has worked as a security contractor with several firms, did a tour in Southwest Asia with a private military company, and is an NRA-certified firearms instructor.
Eddy Lancaster never asked for purpose. He’s content to be a gentleman of leisure, with good friends and a dedicated valet to keep him out of trouble. When a report of a vanished expedition is discovered, with the enticing possibility of a hitherto unknown alien race and the possibility of advanced technology, his eccentric adventurer uncle spirits him and his brilliant twin sister away on a quest beyond the Frontier and away from the comforts of their homeworld.
Effie Lancaster has spent her life dedicated to science but fearing that she’d never see her dreams realized. Now, she’s seizing a last, desperate chance to prove her worth—to her academic peers, her family, and most of all herself. What waits for her in the mysterious Ashvins Binary Star System is more than scientific discovery—it’s an ancient secret that can devour entire civilizations.
At the publisher's request, this title is sold without DRM (Digital Rights Management).
About the
Mike Kupari is the author of Trouble Walked In and Her Brother’s Keeper, as well as coauthor, with Larry Correia, of the best-selling Dead Six military adventure series including Dead Six, Swords of Exodus, and Alliance of Shadows. He grew up in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula and enlisted at the age of seventeen. Kupari did two tours active duty overseas with the U.S. Air Force, where he was an explosive ordnance disposal technician; now he helps launch rockets. He also served six years in the Army National Guard. Kupari has worked as a security contractor with several firms, did a tour in Southwest Asia with a private military company, and is an NRA-certified firearms instructor.
480 pages, Paperback
Published April 7, 2026
About the author
Mike Kupari
16 books54 followersAn Explosive Ordnance Disposal Technician in the US Air Force, Mike Kupari also served six years in the Army National Guard. He grew up in Michigan's Upper Peninsula and enlisted at the age of seventeen. He has worked as a security contractor with several firms, did a tour in Southwest Asia with a private military company, and is an NRA certified firearms instructor. Mike is recently returned from his second active duty overseas with the U.S. Air Force.
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
Review of advance copy received from Publisher
A very entertaining novel, though not quite I expected based on the blurb or even on the sample chapters available from Baen (before buying the earc edition offered for sale by Baen a few months before publication, one can check a few chapters) as it is actually an ensemble novel with quite a few interesting characters, rather than only the twins Effie and Eddy Lancaster, and set in an intriguing universe that one hopes to see more of. Most notably, we have the diverse crew of the freelancer ship Vagabond hired by the twins' uncle, dealer in antiquities and secrets, Jacques Arsenault Lancaster (Jack) for the expedition to the mysterious Ashvins Binary Star System, but also Eddy's personal servant, Mason, a man of many talents and quite a few others.
While the Lancaster family is a pillar of Albion peerage, a slightly old-fashioned polity of the Interstellar Alliance with firm limits on technology that bear on some of our characters directly, Jack is actually an offworlder who married into the family, though his wife died in the same tragic accident that took the parents of Eddy and Effie years back, and the Vagabond hails from the Sentinel Stellar Union, a single system nation bordering on the (human) bad guys of the universe, the Ordered Dominion of Man (the name says it all).
The captain of the Vagabond, Vraz, particularly has a grudge against the Dominion, since his father was killed in a border skirmish with them. However its crew is quite diverse, as Aurelia, Vraz's wife and CFO of the ship is an elf - actually a Vanyar, which is the universe equivalent (genetically self-engineered human subrace with a superiority complex at least until various disasters befell them) including the pointed ears and the long lives, the navigator Nova Aziri is a very young Dominion born cosmopath (a woman with a talent for perceiving spacetime directly) and her pilot older brother Raff is an (in) famous Dominion defector, Hex the doctor is a Synth (cyborg with a human brain) with a massive battle hardened metal body, and the assistant mechanic is a Gretch, from an ancient spacefaring nomadic race, who look like 4 feet tall friendly dinosausrs so to speak.
And to top it all, the mission for which Jack hires the Vagabond and entices the twins - Effie, an astrobiology researcher whose proposed offworld expedition was denied funding by the government, and Eddy, who kind of drifts through life for reasons we find out later, but whom Jack offers to groom as his business partner and heir, is leaked by a mole in the Albion intelligence and the buyer seems to be no other than the Dominion, so outside of the unknown hazards at the destination, the possibility of Dominion interference is also real.
But the stakes are high, as there may be advanced technology, whether from the vanished Eldar race whose artifacts humanity reverse-engineered, leading to the fast and massive expansion in space, or from another highly advanced but previously unknown civilization. Not to speak of the mysterious Cepheids, a seemingly aggressive race that tried to contain humanity's expansion, but was repelled in two brutal wars, though little is really known about them either, except they originate from far away and appeared in human space only after the use of Eldar technology.
And so it goes, with a lot of interesting stuff going on, though the book truly takes off only in the second half - partly due to the numerous characters and the slowly revealing universe setting, partly to starting with a focus on the Lancaster family scions before changing its direction considerably...
The ending is very good - it finishes its particular storyline, but of course, the adventure continues, and the parameters of an expected sequel are set quite nicely.
Overall, lots of fun, and while the novel takes a little time to settle, as it seems to be a coming of age adventure, only to develop into pure space opera with all that's expected of such, I greatly enjoyed it and would love to read the (sort of) implied sequel.
While the Lancaster family is a pillar of Albion peerage, a slightly old-fashioned polity of the Interstellar Alliance with firm limits on technology that bear on some of our characters directly, Jack is actually an offworlder who married into the family, though his wife died in the same tragic accident that took the parents of Eddy and Effie years back, and the Vagabond hails from the Sentinel Stellar Union, a single system nation bordering on the (human) bad guys of the universe, the Ordered Dominion of Man (the name says it all).
The captain of the Vagabond, Vraz, particularly has a grudge against the Dominion, since his father was killed in a border skirmish with them. However its crew is quite diverse, as Aurelia, Vraz's wife and CFO of the ship is an elf - actually a Vanyar, which is the universe equivalent (genetically self-engineered human subrace with a superiority complex at least until various disasters befell them) including the pointed ears and the long lives, the navigator Nova Aziri is a very young Dominion born cosmopath (a woman with a talent for perceiving spacetime directly) and her pilot older brother Raff is an (in) famous Dominion defector, Hex the doctor is a Synth (cyborg with a human brain) with a massive battle hardened metal body, and the assistant mechanic is a Gretch, from an ancient spacefaring nomadic race, who look like 4 feet tall friendly dinosausrs so to speak.
And to top it all, the mission for which Jack hires the Vagabond and entices the twins - Effie, an astrobiology researcher whose proposed offworld expedition was denied funding by the government, and Eddy, who kind of drifts through life for reasons we find out later, but whom Jack offers to groom as his business partner and heir, is leaked by a mole in the Albion intelligence and the buyer seems to be no other than the Dominion, so outside of the unknown hazards at the destination, the possibility of Dominion interference is also real.
But the stakes are high, as there may be advanced technology, whether from the vanished Eldar race whose artifacts humanity reverse-engineered, leading to the fast and massive expansion in space, or from another highly advanced but previously unknown civilization. Not to speak of the mysterious Cepheids, a seemingly aggressive race that tried to contain humanity's expansion, but was repelled in two brutal wars, though little is really known about them either, except they originate from far away and appeared in human space only after the use of Eldar technology.
And so it goes, with a lot of interesting stuff going on, though the book truly takes off only in the second half - partly due to the numerous characters and the slowly revealing universe setting, partly to starting with a focus on the Lancaster family scions before changing its direction considerably...
The ending is very good - it finishes its particular storyline, but of course, the adventure continues, and the parameters of an expected sequel are set quite nicely.
Overall, lots of fun, and while the novel takes a little time to settle, as it seems to be a coming of age adventure, only to develop into pure space opera with all that's expected of such, I greatly enjoyed it and would love to read the (sort of) implied sequel.
May 31, 2026
Mike Kupari's tale of an expedition to a planet orbiting a Twin Star(hard from Baen) reminded me a bit of Forbidden Planet. The adventure starts on a settled world, Albion Prime,with a Victorian ethos. Twins Eddie(rich with no job) and Effie( an astrobiology graduate student) are asked by their uncle to join the expedition. An ancient survey of the planet showed intelligent life and a recent survey never returned. The Armed Expeditionary Cutter Vagabond is hired for the trip. The start of the trip is rushed because the information about the planet is leaked, but the several stops along the way are pleasant with a dash of romance. I hope this is the first book of a series because I loved the characters and the universe.
May 25, 2026
Great read!
I recommend this to anyone who loves uncomplicated, non-political sci- adventure. Hard to put down! The ending invites a sequel; we'll have to wait and see in that, I guess. Hoping see haven't seen the last of Twin Star's interesting, ominous villains.
I recommend this to anyone who loves uncomplicated, non-political sci- adventure. Hard to put down! The ending invites a sequel; we'll have to wait and see in that, I guess. Hoping see haven't seen the last of Twin Star's interesting, ominous villains.
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews