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Star's End
Esme Coromina has always known that one day, she would run the Four Sisters, the small planet system that her father grew into a corporate empire. Raised as the pampered heir to the company, Esme lived the best years of her life at Star's End, the estate her father built on the terraformed moon where he began his empire. In the tropical sunlight and lush gardens, Esme helped raise her three motherless half sisters. But as Esme is groomed to take over the family business of manufacturing weapons for the mercenary groups spread across the galaxy, she slowly uncovers the sinister truth at the heart of her father's company. And when those secrets are finally revealed, Esme is sure that she's lost her sisters--and part of her soul--for good.
Now, after a lifetime of following her father's orders, Esme has a second chance. For the first time, Esme is making her own decisions, and the impact of her decisions will reverberate throughout the Four Sisters. As Esme struggles to assemble her estranged sisters for one last good-bye with their dying father, she has to choose whether she wants to follow in her father's footsteps--or blaze a daring new path.
Now, after a lifetime of following her father's orders, Esme has a second chance. For the first time, Esme is making her own decisions, and the impact of her decisions will reverberate throughout the Four Sisters. As Esme struggles to assemble her estranged sisters for one last good-bye with their dying father, she has to choose whether she wants to follow in her father's footsteps--or blaze a daring new path.
421 pages, Hardcover
First published March 21, 2017
8 people are currently reading
1159 people want to read
About the author
Cassandra Rose Clarke
62 books1,439 followersCassandra Rose Clarke is a speculative fiction writer living amongst the beige stucco and overgrown pecan trees of Houston, Texas. She graduated in 2006 from The University of St. Thomas with a bachelor’s degree in English, and in 2008 she completed her master’s degree in creative writing at The University of Texas at Austin. Both of these degrees have served her surprisingly well.
During the summer of 2010, she attended the Clarion West Writers Workshop in Seattle, where she enjoyed sixty-degree summer days. Having been born and raised in Texas, this was something of a big deal. She was also a recipient of the 2010 Susan C. Petrey Clarion Scholarship Fund.
During the summer of 2010, she attended the Clarion West Writers Workshop in Seattle, where she enjoyed sixty-degree summer days. Having been born and raised in Texas, this was something of a big deal. She was also a recipient of the 2010 Susan C. Petrey Clarion Scholarship Fund.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 60 reviews
May 27, 2017
I think this is my favorite book by this author and one of the best books I've read recently.
The Coromina family control the corporation that owns and rules the entire Coromina system (a corpocracy). Esme is the eldest of four daughters and in line for CEO of the company once her father Philip passes, which is unexpectedly nearer than anyone thought. He requests that Esme gather his other three daughters who are all estranged from both Esme and Philip to see him on his deathbed.
The story follows the current events timeline as Esme visits her sisters and events from periods years ago that explain the relationships between Esme and her sisters, her father and the overall company and what it does. While foregrounding this engrossing family epic, there's a rich science-fictional background dealing with aliens, alien DNA, special powers and engineered lifeforms as well as the fascinating world of a "corpocracy" that has citizen-employees and can go to war with other corporations for profit.
Like Clarke's other books, I think you could criticize this for being slow, but I think that's a stylistic thing. I would describe it more as languid and detailed, and while there is action, the emotional payoff is what's at the heart of this book. Also like other books by this author, the events concentrate around an isolated powerful woman who is desperately lonely and at least partially responsible for her current state. I think this one is the best of her books that explores this thematic element.
Superb.
The Coromina family control the corporation that owns and rules the entire Coromina system (a corpocracy). Esme is the eldest of four daughters and in line for CEO of the company once her father Philip passes, which is unexpectedly nearer than anyone thought. He requests that Esme gather his other three daughters who are all estranged from both Esme and Philip to see him on his deathbed.
The story follows the current events timeline as Esme visits her sisters and events from periods years ago that explain the relationships between Esme and her sisters, her father and the overall company and what it does. While foregrounding this engrossing family epic, there's a rich science-fictional background dealing with aliens, alien DNA, special powers and engineered lifeforms as well as the fascinating world of a "corpocracy" that has citizen-employees and can go to war with other corporations for profit.
Like Clarke's other books, I think you could criticize this for being slow, but I think that's a stylistic thing. I would describe it more as languid and detailed, and while there is action, the emotional payoff is what's at the heart of this book. Also like other books by this author, the events concentrate around an isolated powerful woman who is desperately lonely and at least partially responsible for her current state. I think this one is the best of her books that explores this thematic element.
Superb.
March 23, 2017
3.5 of 5 stars at The BiblioSanctum https://bibliosanctum.com/2017/03/23/...
From the moment I first picked up this book, I knew I was walking into something special. After my experience with her novels The Mad Scientist’s Daughter and Our Lady of the Ice, Cassandra Rose Clarke’s name has pretty much become synonymous for me with some very cool ideas in sci-fi, and she has not disappointed me yet. Star’s End, I am happy to say, is another strong entry into the genre. And while it’s true that I did not quite fall head over heels for it like with her previous novels, I nevertheless devoured the story like there was no tomorrow.
Described as a space opera which takes place in the far-flung future, Star’s End follows a young woman named Esme Coromina, heir to her father Philip’s vast corporate empire consisting of four terraformed moons that orbit one giant gaseous planet. Together, the moons are known as the Four Sisters—and perhaps not so coincidentally, Philip also has four daughters. Of his children though, only Esme, the eldest, is in a position to succeed him and take over the company when he dies; the three younger sisters have long turned their backs on him and abandoned the family business, due to a falling out long ago caused by something terrible Philip did. Esme was the only one who stayed, partly out of ambition and partly because she plans on changing things for the better once she inherits the Coromina Group.
What follows is narrative that alternates back and forth between past and present, exploring the events that led up to Philip’s heinous act that drove Esme’s sisters away. But the biggest shock to our protagonist comes at the start of this book—her 300-year-old father, whom she has always thought of all-powerful and invincible, is dying. Afflicted with a fatal disease that not even his rejuvenation treatments can cure, Philip tells Esme that he probably has at most six months to live, but before he dies, he would like to see all his daughters one last time. Esme, skeptical of her father’s reasons for this request, agrees to help him regardless, though deep down, she knows the real difficulty behind his dying wish is whether or not she can even convince her sisters to come home. When they left, the three of them made it very clear that they wanted no more to do with Philip Coromina or their eldest sister—for in their eyes, by staying by their father and his company, Esme had betrayed all of them too.
As a result, Esme finds herself in a rather awkward and painful situation. It’s this that makes me feel so deeply for her character, and makes me want to applaud the author for once again setting up such a compelling and emotional premise. Tracking down her sisters one by one, Esme must confront her guilt and come to terms with her past failings in this heartbreaking tale. In a lot of ways, this makes Star’s End a lot less like your traditional space opera novel, and more like your familial drama about love and redemption. In fact, it makes me think that the publisher description is actually a little misleading, suggesting that there’s a lot more suspense in this story when there really is none. Sure, there are indeed the promised “sinister aspects” of the Coromina Group involving its work with alien DNA, not to mention the overall mystery of the “big bad thing” that Philip did—but when answers do come, it is not a shock, nor are Esme’s next moves really in question. Because of the way Star’s End is structured, i.e. alternating between the past and the present timeline, nothing that happens is really a surprise, though ultimately it might not matter so much since the novel’s strengths are clearly in the character building and in the poignancy of Esme’s quest.
Perhaps this is also why Star’s End reminded me so much of The Mad Scientist’s Daughter. While on the surface the two stories have very little in common with each other, both are excellent in providing a deep analysis and portrayal of their main characters. Almost everything else fades into the background as Esme takes center stage in Star’s End, much like how the plot in The Mad Scientist’s Daughter took a backseat while Cat’s personality and her relationship with Finn came to the forefront. This, in my opinion, is where Cassandra Rose Clarke’s writing really shines. When it comes to the delineation of her protagonists, she is an artist; she’ll take apart a character’s entire life, deconstructing their past and present to show how their experiences influence their decision making and shape them as a person. This kind of in-depth character study is exactly we get to see in Star’s End with Esme.
Still, there were a few hiccups. The first time we jumped from the present timeline back to the past, I was really jarred by the change from third-person to first-person narrative mode, and unfortunately, I never truly got used to the switching. As a result, I always found myself feeling more sympathy for and in tune with “past” Esme, especially since older “present” Esme sometimes felt wishy-washy and inconsistent. One moment, she would be preening in response to her father’s praise and proud that she pleased him, but the next she would be flushing with shame if someone else complimented her on the exact same thing by comparing her to Philip. I was also frustrated that Esme didn’t stand up for herself more, considering how her heart was always in the right place. Given how much of the past was outside her control, I didn’t understand why Esme had to be so hard on herself either, and thought that a lot of her sisters’ treatment of her was grossly unfair.
Minor as they were, some of these flaws were admittedly distracting enough that I felt the need to rate this one slightly lower than the author’s other novels I’ve read in the past. BUT! In spite of that, I still want to make it clear—I had a really good time with Star’s End. This book was a powerful and enjoyable read, and even though it wasn’t exactly what I expected, I am in no way disappointed with the way things turned out. If anything, it just reaffirms Cassandra Rose Clarke as a must-read author; I honestly can’t wait to see what she’ll surprise me with next.
From the moment I first picked up this book, I knew I was walking into something special. After my experience with her novels The Mad Scientist’s Daughter and Our Lady of the Ice, Cassandra Rose Clarke’s name has pretty much become synonymous for me with some very cool ideas in sci-fi, and she has not disappointed me yet. Star’s End, I am happy to say, is another strong entry into the genre. And while it’s true that I did not quite fall head over heels for it like with her previous novels, I nevertheless devoured the story like there was no tomorrow.
Described as a space opera which takes place in the far-flung future, Star’s End follows a young woman named Esme Coromina, heir to her father Philip’s vast corporate empire consisting of four terraformed moons that orbit one giant gaseous planet. Together, the moons are known as the Four Sisters—and perhaps not so coincidentally, Philip also has four daughters. Of his children though, only Esme, the eldest, is in a position to succeed him and take over the company when he dies; the three younger sisters have long turned their backs on him and abandoned the family business, due to a falling out long ago caused by something terrible Philip did. Esme was the only one who stayed, partly out of ambition and partly because she plans on changing things for the better once she inherits the Coromina Group.
What follows is narrative that alternates back and forth between past and present, exploring the events that led up to Philip’s heinous act that drove Esme’s sisters away. But the biggest shock to our protagonist comes at the start of this book—her 300-year-old father, whom she has always thought of all-powerful and invincible, is dying. Afflicted with a fatal disease that not even his rejuvenation treatments can cure, Philip tells Esme that he probably has at most six months to live, but before he dies, he would like to see all his daughters one last time. Esme, skeptical of her father’s reasons for this request, agrees to help him regardless, though deep down, she knows the real difficulty behind his dying wish is whether or not she can even convince her sisters to come home. When they left, the three of them made it very clear that they wanted no more to do with Philip Coromina or their eldest sister—for in their eyes, by staying by their father and his company, Esme had betrayed all of them too.
As a result, Esme finds herself in a rather awkward and painful situation. It’s this that makes me feel so deeply for her character, and makes me want to applaud the author for once again setting up such a compelling and emotional premise. Tracking down her sisters one by one, Esme must confront her guilt and come to terms with her past failings in this heartbreaking tale. In a lot of ways, this makes Star’s End a lot less like your traditional space opera novel, and more like your familial drama about love and redemption. In fact, it makes me think that the publisher description is actually a little misleading, suggesting that there’s a lot more suspense in this story when there really is none. Sure, there are indeed the promised “sinister aspects” of the Coromina Group involving its work with alien DNA, not to mention the overall mystery of the “big bad thing” that Philip did—but when answers do come, it is not a shock, nor are Esme’s next moves really in question. Because of the way Star’s End is structured, i.e. alternating between the past and the present timeline, nothing that happens is really a surprise, though ultimately it might not matter so much since the novel’s strengths are clearly in the character building and in the poignancy of Esme’s quest.
Perhaps this is also why Star’s End reminded me so much of The Mad Scientist’s Daughter. While on the surface the two stories have very little in common with each other, both are excellent in providing a deep analysis and portrayal of their main characters. Almost everything else fades into the background as Esme takes center stage in Star’s End, much like how the plot in The Mad Scientist’s Daughter took a backseat while Cat’s personality and her relationship with Finn came to the forefront. This, in my opinion, is where Cassandra Rose Clarke’s writing really shines. When it comes to the delineation of her protagonists, she is an artist; she’ll take apart a character’s entire life, deconstructing their past and present to show how their experiences influence their decision making and shape them as a person. This kind of in-depth character study is exactly we get to see in Star’s End with Esme.
Still, there were a few hiccups. The first time we jumped from the present timeline back to the past, I was really jarred by the change from third-person to first-person narrative mode, and unfortunately, I never truly got used to the switching. As a result, I always found myself feeling more sympathy for and in tune with “past” Esme, especially since older “present” Esme sometimes felt wishy-washy and inconsistent. One moment, she would be preening in response to her father’s praise and proud that she pleased him, but the next she would be flushing with shame if someone else complimented her on the exact same thing by comparing her to Philip. I was also frustrated that Esme didn’t stand up for herself more, considering how her heart was always in the right place. Given how much of the past was outside her control, I didn’t understand why Esme had to be so hard on herself either, and thought that a lot of her sisters’ treatment of her was grossly unfair.
Minor as they were, some of these flaws were admittedly distracting enough that I felt the need to rate this one slightly lower than the author’s other novels I’ve read in the past. BUT! In spite of that, I still want to make it clear—I had a really good time with Star’s End. This book was a powerful and enjoyable read, and even though it wasn’t exactly what I expected, I am in no way disappointed with the way things turned out. If anything, it just reaffirms Cassandra Rose Clarke as a must-read author; I honestly can’t wait to see what she’ll surprise me with next.
May 1, 2021
A little tough to get into at first and definitely full of elaborate details. On the other hand, it is a long read and I don't feel the story would have been as good without those details. I could definitely picture this as a series. Good read, well thought out.
September 21, 2017
I very much enjoyed this slow burner of a book - beautiful science fiction story about family (and aliens).
Read
November 2, 2017DNF, so no star rating.
This was neither good nor bad. It just didn't hold my interest, and I finally realized I was never going to pick it back up.
This was neither good nor bad. It just didn't hold my interest, and I finally realized I was never going to pick it back up.
May 16, 2017
Esme's father is the head of a company that basically runs four moons. Through her life, Esme has been groomed to eventually take over the business - longevity treatments already have Philip aged 300+ so she could be in for a long wait.
Esme appears desperate for her father's approval whilst resenting any comparisons made between them. Her younger sisters fled the family years previously and the plot flits back to crucial scenes as Esme grew up and the present day. Some of the reveals are surprising, others not so much.
My biggest problem with this book was down to really poor proof reading. Character's ages changing, she/he mistakes, changing of the setting. I'd be thrown from the text wondering what I'd missed and rereading!
Esme appears desperate for her father's approval whilst resenting any comparisons made between them. Her younger sisters fled the family years previously and the plot flits back to crucial scenes as Esme grew up and the present day. Some of the reveals are surprising, others not so much.
My biggest problem with this book was down to really poor proof reading. Character's ages changing, she/he mistakes, changing of the setting. I'd be thrown from the text wondering what I'd missed and rereading!
March 27, 2020
I thought that this was a pretty good book, but really, really slow, which is why I gave it 4 stars. While the descriptions of imagery were perfect, and I could perfectly imagine it, it slowed down the story at times. The beginning of the story did also drag on for a little while. The sci-fi aspect of the story, however, was 5 stars. Clark created a perfectly unique world for the story, where everything fit together smoothly and snuggly. While some sci-fi books have details that contradict each other, that did not happen in this book. Overall, a great read, and I can't wait to read more from her.
July 18, 2021
This is the third novel I've read by this author. Her writing style appeals to me greatly. I think the plotting of this novel could have been a little more straightforward, and the copy editing was abysmal in places, but overall it was a highly enjoyable read. It's third, though, behind #1 The Mad Scientist's Daughter and #2 Our Lady of the Ice, two memorable and striking books by Cassandra Rose Clarke.
January 6, 2019
A powerful book, although I didn’t like it as much as the author’s earlier YA novels. Emotionally, I prefer light and fluffy, and this novel was anything but. Its plot was complex, its characters controversial, and its writing gripping.
The story revolves around Esme, the oldest daughter and heir of an owner of an arms-dealing corporation. Her father is an evil and cruel man, totally ruthless and incapable of love, has always been like that. During his long life, he has created an empire: four planets are under his control. Now he is dying. Finally, Esme could get out of his influence. Or could she? She wants to change the company, to turn it away from the arms-dealing and bio-engineered soldiers – its main products – but can she?
At the moment, she is executing her father’s last order. He wants her to find her three younger sisters, all estranged from her and their father years ago, and bring them back for a goodbye. Esme’s search for her sister is the focus of the book. Or it would’ve been, if the book was built along one timeline. But it isn’t.
The narrative switches between the events of different times, alternating between now and the past. That’s how the chapters are called. “Now.” “Twenty-six years ago.” “Now.” “Eighteen years ago,” and so on. The author wants to explain what happened in the past, how the sisters got estranged, I understand that, but her treatment of the timelines didn’t work for me. Her jumping back and forth made the reading process choppy, as the story constantly yanked me out of one storyline into another. It would work much better for me, if the chapters were arranged chronologically.
One more little irritant related to the main problem was that one of the chapters, the one called “Eighteen years ago,” actually relates what happened 21 years ago. It’s an editing glitch, granted, but it made me count years again and again as I read the chapter. It made me confused, which distracted me from the story.
Aside from these two problems, the book is a solid sci-fi novel with a strong emotional undertone. It’s a family story in a sci-fi world. I can’t say I loved it, but I couldn’t stop reading it until I got to the end. Overall – a satisfying read, a wholesale escape from reality, which is what a sci-fi book is supposed to be. It definitely delivered.
The story revolves around Esme, the oldest daughter and heir of an owner of an arms-dealing corporation. Her father is an evil and cruel man, totally ruthless and incapable of love, has always been like that. During his long life, he has created an empire: four planets are under his control. Now he is dying. Finally, Esme could get out of his influence. Or could she? She wants to change the company, to turn it away from the arms-dealing and bio-engineered soldiers – its main products – but can she?
At the moment, she is executing her father’s last order. He wants her to find her three younger sisters, all estranged from her and their father years ago, and bring them back for a goodbye. Esme’s search for her sister is the focus of the book. Or it would’ve been, if the book was built along one timeline. But it isn’t.
The narrative switches between the events of different times, alternating between now and the past. That’s how the chapters are called. “Now.” “Twenty-six years ago.” “Now.” “Eighteen years ago,” and so on. The author wants to explain what happened in the past, how the sisters got estranged, I understand that, but her treatment of the timelines didn’t work for me. Her jumping back and forth made the reading process choppy, as the story constantly yanked me out of one storyline into another. It would work much better for me, if the chapters were arranged chronologically.
One more little irritant related to the main problem was that one of the chapters, the one called “Eighteen years ago,” actually relates what happened 21 years ago. It’s an editing glitch, granted, but it made me count years again and again as I read the chapter. It made me confused, which distracted me from the story.
Aside from these two problems, the book is a solid sci-fi novel with a strong emotional undertone. It’s a family story in a sci-fi world. I can’t say I loved it, but I couldn’t stop reading it until I got to the end. Overall – a satisfying read, a wholesale escape from reality, which is what a sci-fi book is supposed to be. It definitely delivered.
December 26, 2017
Three and a half stars rounded up to four. This was good...globalism run amok I guess. I admired Esme for having the patience to wait for her father to be dying before revealing her plans for his solar system spanning company. I found the idea of a corporation running the government (corpocracy) interesting but mostly chilling. I found the ending a little too easy though as I think that a corporation that has no qualms about threatening to murder the teenaged children of its founder, that uses the DNA of a child to create a race of super soldier slaves would probably have little difficulty murdering its new CEO when she decides to change the direction of the company.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
December 20, 2017
I ultimately found Star's End a pretty frustrating read. I thought it had an intriguing premise--future, corporate-led terraformed and colonized planets, and family drama between sisters at the center of it. Unfortunately, all of the characters ended up feeling pretty thin and their interpersonal relationships just weren't that interesting to me. The switch between tenses and times got old fast and hindered some of the character development for me.
For instance, Esme has a relationship with a soldier, Will, who we are told over and over again is so important to her, with overtones of romantic/sexual attraction, but they never have an actual conversation beyond "Hey, my Dad wants me to do this thing," "OK, I'll do this, this, and this in response" until the last thirty pages or so, when suddenly Esme is constantly worried about him betraying her for no apparent reason. There's no showing of *how* or *when* he became so important to her in the first place. He was just there, until he could provide some extra nonsensical tension at the end.
But the real thing that bugged me about the structure of this book was the inconsistent ages.
Now. I'm not exactly a math whiz. I tend to have to double-check numbers a lot, so when a book makes a specific point about a character's specific age I tend to remember it.
The first flashback in the book is "Twenty six years ago." 26 years ago, the protagonist, Esme, is 16. Her toddler sisters are either 2 or 3 (this was unclear). Her littlest sister Isabel is born. So far, so good.
The second flashback is "Eighteen years ago" - i.e. eight years have passed since the first flashback. Isabel should be eight, or at least seven turning eight, yes?
She's six.
The twins who were either 2 or 3 8 years ago are somehow still only 8. Though they're also bizarrely excited about company politics and starting their internships (at *8*?)
The third flashback is "Fourteen years ago" - i.e. four years have passed since the second flashback, and twelve since the first. Going by the original ages, Isabel should be 12 (26-14 = 12, yes?). Going by the ages in the second flashback, she should be 10.
She's fourteen.
She's fourteen apparently because there needed to be a fake plot about her having a fake STD and it's less icky to think of a fourteen year old having sex than a twelve or ten year old, I guess (I think either option is pretty bad personally).
I'm honestly not sure this issue would bother me if there hadn't been huge labels about where in time we supposedly were. I might have picked up on inconsistencies in the ages, but been better able to brush it off. But instead it nagged and nagged at me, I was consistently reminded of it. I don't understand why no one could do basic math, here. If you need a character to be a certain age, just move the timeline to where they are that certain age. How is that difficult?
Anyway, my strange preoccupation with that kept me for ever fully immersing myself in the book, and I just kind of felt meh about the whole thing.
2.5 stars.
For instance, Esme has a relationship with a soldier, Will, who we are told over and over again is so important to her, with overtones of romantic/sexual attraction, but they never have an actual conversation beyond "Hey, my Dad wants me to do this thing," "OK, I'll do this, this, and this in response" until the last thirty pages or so, when suddenly Esme is constantly worried about him betraying her for no apparent reason. There's no showing of *how* or *when* he became so important to her in the first place. He was just there, until he could provide some extra nonsensical tension at the end.
But the real thing that bugged me about the structure of this book was the inconsistent ages.
Now. I'm not exactly a math whiz. I tend to have to double-check numbers a lot, so when a book makes a specific point about a character's specific age I tend to remember it.
The first flashback in the book is "Twenty six years ago." 26 years ago, the protagonist, Esme, is 16. Her toddler sisters are either 2 or 3 (this was unclear). Her littlest sister Isabel is born. So far, so good.
The second flashback is "Eighteen years ago" - i.e. eight years have passed since the first flashback. Isabel should be eight, or at least seven turning eight, yes?
She's six.
The twins who were either 2 or 3 8 years ago are somehow still only 8. Though they're also bizarrely excited about company politics and starting their internships (at *8*?)
The third flashback is "Fourteen years ago" - i.e. four years have passed since the second flashback, and twelve since the first. Going by the original ages, Isabel should be 12 (26-14 = 12, yes?). Going by the ages in the second flashback, she should be 10.
She's fourteen.
She's fourteen apparently because there needed to be a fake plot about her having a fake STD and it's less icky to think of a fourteen year old having sex than a twelve or ten year old, I guess (I think either option is pretty bad personally).
I'm honestly not sure this issue would bother me if there hadn't been huge labels about where in time we supposedly were. I might have picked up on inconsistencies in the ages, but been better able to brush it off. But instead it nagged and nagged at me, I was consistently reminded of it. I don't understand why no one could do basic math, here. If you need a character to be a certain age, just move the timeline to where they are that certain age. How is that difficult?
Anyway, my strange preoccupation with that kept me for ever fully immersing myself in the book, and I just kind of felt meh about the whole thing.
2.5 stars.
March 13, 2017
The nitty-gritty: A thought-provoking family saga set far in the future, with corporate intrigue, secrets and plenty of finely drawn relationships between children and their parents.
Star’s End was not the Cassandra Rose Clarke book I was expecting. But then again, I didn’t really have any expectations when I started, other than I knew that Clarke would deliver something truly unique with lots of emotion and detailed characterization. And I was not disappointed. Star’s End may not be the fast-paced or action-packed space opera that you think you need, but you will emerge from the reading experience a more thoughtful person, I guarantee. Clarke has taken an interesting idea about the dangers of having too much power and turned it into a gripping story about love, trust and ultimately doing the right thing. I was surprised how well this story resonates with present-day culture and politics, and while the author didn’t go out of her way to make a statement, there are one or two truths wrapped up in the story, for those readers who choose to look for them.
Esme Coromina is the eldest daughter of Phillip Coromina, the family matriarch whose mega corporation terraformed a group of four moons that surround a sun-like planet called Coromina I. Always concerned about turning a profit, the Coromina Group is responsible for creating the super, bio-engineered soldiers who protect the star system and act as the ultimate weapons of war. The DNA of a mysterious life form dubbed the Radiance is responsible for the strength and abilities of the soldiers, or “R-Troops” as they are called, but even Esme doesn’t know the real story behind their creation. Esme has grown up her entire life knowing that her father is grooming her to take his place as CEO when he dies, and now, that day may be closer than Esme wants to admit. Phillip has contracted galazamia, a wasting disease that will finally end his three-hundred year life—he’s been getting rejuvenation treatments for years—and his final request is a doozy: he insists that Esme round up her three estranged half-sisters and bring them home before he dies.
But her sisters—Adrienne, Daphne and Isabel—have very good reasons for disappearing. Years ago, Esme inadvertently hurt her little sister Isabel, and now Daphne and Adrienne refuse to speak to her because of it. As Esme begins to search for them, compelled by her father not to fail the last task he gives her, she remembers the terrible events of the past that led to Isabel’s disappearance and Adrienne and Daphne’s refusal to have anything to do with Esme and her father. At the highest levels of the Coromina Group are secrets that not even Esme knows, but when she discovers these secrets, she’ll need to decide what to do with them: follow in her father’s ruthless footsteps and run the company the way it’s been run for years, or forge her own path into the future.
Clarke divides her story into past and present sections, jumping back and forth in order to slowly reveal the story behind the Radiance and the R-Troops. It’s a very slow reveal, so patience is definitely required for this story, but believe me, it’s worth it. I was drawn into Esme’s strange life and her conflicted feelings towards her callous father, and never did I feel the story lag. Clarke is a master at drawing out the mysteries of her futuristic star system, and while I did have several guesses about what was going on, the final reveal was not what I was expecting.
Cassandra Rose Clarke is a genius at writing strong but vulnerable female characters, and Star’s End is no exception. I found Esme to be a brilliantly drawn character, a woman who has been carefully controlled by her father all her life, as he maneuvers her into position to eventually take over his job. Phillip is no dummy: he makes sure that Esme is on board with his vision, without actually telling her all the company’s secrets. And Esme seems to be the perfect daughter: obedient, a hard worker, ambitious and usually willing to follow orders without asking questions. But it’s only a veneer, as the reader soon finds out. Underneath, Esme’s love for her sisters wins out over corporate loyalty, and without her father’s knowledge, she begins to make small changes within the company, knowing that the higher she rises, the easier it will be to effect change.
From the flashbacks, we find out early on that something isn’t quite right with the youngest sister, Isabel. She has a habit of disappearing, and she, Daphne and Adrienne are able to communicate in an odd, guttural language that no one else can understand. In the present, we know that Esme regrets something that happened long ago, something that turned her sisters against her, but the reader is kept in suspense until nearly the end of the story. Little by little, we get to see Esme’s progress as she tries to carry out her father’s last wish, to reunite the family, and although it’s sometimes agonizing to see her struggle, I appreciated the author not taking the easy way out.
One of the more emotional subplots of Star’s End deals with Esme’s birth mother Harriet, who had a one-night stand with Phillip but then gave birth to Esme and left her to go back to her life in the military. Esme and Harriet continue to stay in touch through the years, and Harriet proves to be the one constant person in her life.
And if you’re looking for a story about sisters, then look no further. Clarke wedges a block between Esme and her sisters by giving them different mothers, but Esme, as the oldest, never stops trying to mend their relationship. As in real life, family dynamics are rarely smooth sailing, and this is one hell of a messed up family!
Star’s End didn’t blow me away like Our Lady of the Ice did—I absolutely loved the world-building in that book, and this time Clarke plays it safer, giving us a future that isn’t that much different from our own. But I am highly recommending this for the subtlety of the relationships, the growing mystery and the terrifying themes of how powerful one corporation can be. This is a future well within our reach, and in fact, we may already be living parts of this future and not even know it. It’s scary stuff, but ultimately, Clarke gives us a glimmer of hope. Esme has free will and the ability to change things. You’ll just have to read the book for yourself to find out which direction she decides to take.
Big thanks to the publisher for supplying a review copy.This review originally appeared on Books, Bones & Buffy
Star’s End was not the Cassandra Rose Clarke book I was expecting. But then again, I didn’t really have any expectations when I started, other than I knew that Clarke would deliver something truly unique with lots of emotion and detailed characterization. And I was not disappointed. Star’s End may not be the fast-paced or action-packed space opera that you think you need, but you will emerge from the reading experience a more thoughtful person, I guarantee. Clarke has taken an interesting idea about the dangers of having too much power and turned it into a gripping story about love, trust and ultimately doing the right thing. I was surprised how well this story resonates with present-day culture and politics, and while the author didn’t go out of her way to make a statement, there are one or two truths wrapped up in the story, for those readers who choose to look for them.
Esme Coromina is the eldest daughter of Phillip Coromina, the family matriarch whose mega corporation terraformed a group of four moons that surround a sun-like planet called Coromina I. Always concerned about turning a profit, the Coromina Group is responsible for creating the super, bio-engineered soldiers who protect the star system and act as the ultimate weapons of war. The DNA of a mysterious life form dubbed the Radiance is responsible for the strength and abilities of the soldiers, or “R-Troops” as they are called, but even Esme doesn’t know the real story behind their creation. Esme has grown up her entire life knowing that her father is grooming her to take his place as CEO when he dies, and now, that day may be closer than Esme wants to admit. Phillip has contracted galazamia, a wasting disease that will finally end his three-hundred year life—he’s been getting rejuvenation treatments for years—and his final request is a doozy: he insists that Esme round up her three estranged half-sisters and bring them home before he dies.
But her sisters—Adrienne, Daphne and Isabel—have very good reasons for disappearing. Years ago, Esme inadvertently hurt her little sister Isabel, and now Daphne and Adrienne refuse to speak to her because of it. As Esme begins to search for them, compelled by her father not to fail the last task he gives her, she remembers the terrible events of the past that led to Isabel’s disappearance and Adrienne and Daphne’s refusal to have anything to do with Esme and her father. At the highest levels of the Coromina Group are secrets that not even Esme knows, but when she discovers these secrets, she’ll need to decide what to do with them: follow in her father’s ruthless footsteps and run the company the way it’s been run for years, or forge her own path into the future.
Clarke divides her story into past and present sections, jumping back and forth in order to slowly reveal the story behind the Radiance and the R-Troops. It’s a very slow reveal, so patience is definitely required for this story, but believe me, it’s worth it. I was drawn into Esme’s strange life and her conflicted feelings towards her callous father, and never did I feel the story lag. Clarke is a master at drawing out the mysteries of her futuristic star system, and while I did have several guesses about what was going on, the final reveal was not what I was expecting.
Cassandra Rose Clarke is a genius at writing strong but vulnerable female characters, and Star’s End is no exception. I found Esme to be a brilliantly drawn character, a woman who has been carefully controlled by her father all her life, as he maneuvers her into position to eventually take over his job. Phillip is no dummy: he makes sure that Esme is on board with his vision, without actually telling her all the company’s secrets. And Esme seems to be the perfect daughter: obedient, a hard worker, ambitious and usually willing to follow orders without asking questions. But it’s only a veneer, as the reader soon finds out. Underneath, Esme’s love for her sisters wins out over corporate loyalty, and without her father’s knowledge, she begins to make small changes within the company, knowing that the higher she rises, the easier it will be to effect change.
From the flashbacks, we find out early on that something isn’t quite right with the youngest sister, Isabel. She has a habit of disappearing, and she, Daphne and Adrienne are able to communicate in an odd, guttural language that no one else can understand. In the present, we know that Esme regrets something that happened long ago, something that turned her sisters against her, but the reader is kept in suspense until nearly the end of the story. Little by little, we get to see Esme’s progress as she tries to carry out her father’s last wish, to reunite the family, and although it’s sometimes agonizing to see her struggle, I appreciated the author not taking the easy way out.
One of the more emotional subplots of Star’s End deals with Esme’s birth mother Harriet, who had a one-night stand with Phillip but then gave birth to Esme and left her to go back to her life in the military. Esme and Harriet continue to stay in touch through the years, and Harriet proves to be the one constant person in her life.
And if you’re looking for a story about sisters, then look no further. Clarke wedges a block between Esme and her sisters by giving them different mothers, but Esme, as the oldest, never stops trying to mend their relationship. As in real life, family dynamics are rarely smooth sailing, and this is one hell of a messed up family!
Star’s End didn’t blow me away like Our Lady of the Ice did—I absolutely loved the world-building in that book, and this time Clarke plays it safer, giving us a future that isn’t that much different from our own. But I am highly recommending this for the subtlety of the relationships, the growing mystery and the terrifying themes of how powerful one corporation can be. This is a future well within our reach, and in fact, we may already be living parts of this future and not even know it. It’s scary stuff, but ultimately, Clarke gives us a glimmer of hope. Esme has free will and the ability to change things. You’ll just have to read the book for yourself to find out which direction she decides to take.
Big thanks to the publisher for supplying a review copy.This review originally appeared on Books, Bones & Buffy
March 14, 2022
This is an excellent story. I had a few issues with it but loved it overall. This review is perhaps a bit of an incoherent collection of my thoughts about the book.
I thought the characters were all fantastic and the dialogue was consistently mature. The plot is spectacularly complex but not at all incomprehensible and the universe that the author has created is fascinating. The narrative jumps around to various events in time which is a technique that I always find frustrating and in this case it even felt unnecessary. We would learn vague references which could have been expounded upon in the current timeline but instead the author chose to whisk us back to experience each of the significant events. I just think we didn't need quite so much detail.
Esme takes all of the responsibility for her father's cruel work on her own shoulders and strives to right his wrongs in her own way. She plays investigator, working her way up the security clearance levels and piecing together the secrets that helped her father build his corporate empire. She was mostly very good at this but occasionally did that thing where a character has been expecting something all along but doesn't believe it when it comes out to be true.
"He was the sort of person you wanted to die and so you knew never would."
One of the main themes explored is that if you want to improve a system your best chance is to learn the system and manifest change from within the system, but that this tactic comes with the risk of being changed by the system, potentially perpetuating the system unwittingly.
It's a slow build up to the way things are described in the blurb. A viral disease breaks out on Star's End which people are referring to as "the flu" but everyone who catches it inevitably dies within a few days. There's no cure for it and Esme's father evacuates the family to a space station but they manage to bring the virus with them. It reminded me of when our recent/current pandemic peaked in Victoria which drove people across the border to South Australia to escape it and the associated lockdowns, but of course they only managed to drive the numbers up in SA until the numbers were comparable and SA introduced its own lockdowns.
Actually, although there is always a lot of drama happening the whole story felt like a slow burn and I think this had something to do with experiencing every single detail.
The tech in this universe was intriguing. Minds are plugged into car computers when driving. One security guard has night vision as an engineered part of his body, not a pair of goggles. Humans are engineered by Coromina, the company which Esme is being groomed to inherit the leadership of. Their main line is weapons manufacture, but it is largely defined by genetically engineered soldiers.
Definitely worth checking out and if the author writes more scifi I'll be interested.
I thought the characters were all fantastic and the dialogue was consistently mature. The plot is spectacularly complex but not at all incomprehensible and the universe that the author has created is fascinating. The narrative jumps around to various events in time which is a technique that I always find frustrating and in this case it even felt unnecessary. We would learn vague references which could have been expounded upon in the current timeline but instead the author chose to whisk us back to experience each of the significant events. I just think we didn't need quite so much detail.
Esme takes all of the responsibility for her father's cruel work on her own shoulders and strives to right his wrongs in her own way. She plays investigator, working her way up the security clearance levels and piecing together the secrets that helped her father build his corporate empire. She was mostly very good at this but occasionally did that thing where a character has been expecting something all along but doesn't believe it when it comes out to be true.
"He was the sort of person you wanted to die and so you knew never would."
One of the main themes explored is that if you want to improve a system your best chance is to learn the system and manifest change from within the system, but that this tactic comes with the risk of being changed by the system, potentially perpetuating the system unwittingly.
It's a slow build up to the way things are described in the blurb. A viral disease breaks out on Star's End which people are referring to as "the flu" but everyone who catches it inevitably dies within a few days. There's no cure for it and Esme's father evacuates the family to a space station but they manage to bring the virus with them. It reminded me of when our recent/current pandemic peaked in Victoria which drove people across the border to South Australia to escape it and the associated lockdowns, but of course they only managed to drive the numbers up in SA until the numbers were comparable and SA introduced its own lockdowns.
Actually, although there is always a lot of drama happening the whole story felt like a slow burn and I think this had something to do with experiencing every single detail.
The tech in this universe was intriguing. Minds are plugged into car computers when driving. One security guard has night vision as an engineered part of his body, not a pair of goggles. Humans are engineered by Coromina, the company which Esme is being groomed to inherit the leadership of. Their main line is weapons manufacture, but it is largely defined by genetically engineered soldiers.
Definitely worth checking out and if the author writes more scifi I'll be interested.
March 8, 2019
Elegant slow-burning space opera.
December 20, 2021
Main character was sort of ridiculous but book was enjoyable anyway.
August 2, 2017
This book was interesting, and mildly entertaining, basically light YA with a sci-fi backdrop.
I think it was hampered by starting some world building, then suddenly stopping. Basically, we find out that it's a certain number of centuries in the future, everyone in the book works for a space corporation in a new star system, there are four planets there, and rich people can take spaceships from one planet to another as easily as booking an airplane flight is now. They can terraform planets within decades, offscreen, haven't officially found alien life, have agelessness for rich people, and have the ability to make clone soldiers.
We never find out any details about any of this, though, it's just a backdrop. Everything else that we see is basically 20th century tech, except with 'light boxes', which are just future cellphones that never need to get updated. I usually like this, because the author would normally add in an offhand remark at some point to reference a stable technology.
My problem is that this never happens... the entire story is a somewhat infuriating series of flashbacks, the plot doesn't always make sense, and the characters don't always act intelligently.
The plot can be summed up like this:
Esme is the rich daughter of the CEO of their star system's corporation, which makes him basically a king, and she a princess, since she's due to take over eventually and everyone's fine with that. But, he get sick with a space illness, and tells Esme to find her three jerk sisters so he can pass his power over to her, and they can be there to cede any claims to the throne for future liability's sake. Eventually Esme does find them though (The first wasn't really hidden, the second one was only kinda hidden, and they got some surprise aliens to tell them where the third one was), and even though she was already king CEO at that point, they show up, realize that the person they really hated was the father and not Esme, and they live happily ever after (with some aliens).
However, a good 90% of the book was an extended flashback recounting Esme's life up to a event that blew up her childhood home.
Frustrating parts:
We gradually learn that there were aliens already on the planet when the father showed up centuries ago, and he terraformed over them somehow, even though they had super tech, bioweapons, and the ability to move to alternate dimensions. So, that didn't make much sense, but on top of that, evidently they could have gotten all sorts of money and accolades for discovering the first aliens ever, which doesn't make much sense from a business point of view, even if he was a real estate developer.
Throughout the entire book, it's implied that Esme's mother, a mercenary, died during whatever happened at her childhood home, but she survives that just fine. This is never explained!
The youngest sister is telepathic, because of bad stuff the father did, but whenever she reads Esme's mind, she somehow gets the wrong impression (except at the end).
So, the book could have been better, but it was always just good enough to keep reading!
I think it was hampered by starting some world building, then suddenly stopping. Basically, we find out that it's a certain number of centuries in the future, everyone in the book works for a space corporation in a new star system, there are four planets there, and rich people can take spaceships from one planet to another as easily as booking an airplane flight is now. They can terraform planets within decades, offscreen, haven't officially found alien life, have agelessness for rich people, and have the ability to make clone soldiers.
We never find out any details about any of this, though, it's just a backdrop. Everything else that we see is basically 20th century tech, except with 'light boxes', which are just future cellphones that never need to get updated. I usually like this, because the author would normally add in an offhand remark at some point to reference a stable technology.
My problem is that this never happens... the entire story is a somewhat infuriating series of flashbacks, the plot doesn't always make sense, and the characters don't always act intelligently.
The plot can be summed up like this:
Esme is the rich daughter of the CEO of their star system's corporation, which makes him basically a king, and she a princess, since she's due to take over eventually and everyone's fine with that. But, he get sick with a space illness, and tells Esme to find her three jerk sisters so he can pass his power over to her, and they can be there to cede any claims to the throne for future liability's sake. Eventually Esme does find them though (The first wasn't really hidden, the second one was only kinda hidden, and they got some surprise aliens to tell them where the third one was), and even though she was already king CEO at that point, they show up, realize that the person they really hated was the father and not Esme, and they live happily ever after (with some aliens).
However, a good 90% of the book was an extended flashback recounting Esme's life up to a event that blew up her childhood home.
Frustrating parts:
We gradually learn that there were aliens already on the planet when the father showed up centuries ago, and he terraformed over them somehow, even though they had super tech, bioweapons, and the ability to move to alternate dimensions. So, that didn't make much sense, but on top of that, evidently they could have gotten all sorts of money and accolades for discovering the first aliens ever, which doesn't make much sense from a business point of view, even if he was a real estate developer.
Throughout the entire book, it's implied that Esme's mother, a mercenary, died during whatever happened at her childhood home, but she survives that just fine. This is never explained!
The youngest sister is telepathic, because of bad stuff the father did, but whenever she reads Esme's mind, she somehow gets the wrong impression (except at the end).
So, the book could have been better, but it was always just good enough to keep reading!
Want to Read
January 28, 2017PW Starred: In this skillfully orchestrated tale set nearly 2,000 years in the future, Clarke (The Mad Scientist’s Daughter) foregrounds a family drama of Shakespearean scope against the backdrop of an interplanetary “corpocracy” run by Phillip Coramina, a manufacturer of bioengineered weapons. When Phillip is diagnosed with a terminal illness, he deputizes his oldest daughter, Esme, to call her three estranged stepsisters home to the family estate at Star’s End. As Clarke’s narrative toggles back and forth between these events and occurrences in the past, it reveals sordid secrets that Esme has gradually become aware of—especially those connecting her youngest sister, Isabel, to the Radiance, a mysterious alien influence intimately bound up with the Coramina Group’s commerce. Clarke’s smoothly calibrated mystery is also a coming-of-age tale for Esme, as she accepts her responsibilities as heir apparent to her father’s business. The well-developed characters enhance this novel of grand ideas, bringing relatable human motives and vulnerabilities to a world in which industry, government, warfare, and space travel are inextricably intertwined. (Mar.)
May 15, 2017
Pretty engaging, a sort of easier, less-complex, version of Slow River by way of These Broken Stars. I liked Esme a lot, but the other characters were fairly flat and undistinguishable. And somehow, it is easier to suspend disbelief (and politics) and accept fix-it fantasies where massive and horrifying structural oppression (including, in this case, genocide, colonialism, and slavery, as well as war-profiteering) is solved by putting a well-meaning, good person in charge when that fantasy involves fantastic monarchies than when it involves fantastic corporations -- the dystopian "corporation" future in which this novel takes place is all too real, and that means I'm not convinced by Esme's good intentions and work within the system.
March 24, 2024
I'm glad I read Star's End, but it had some frustrating problems throughout the story. The pacing was really slow in some places and the story could be extremely dragged out, especially the childhood aspects. I also thought the world-building was lacking detail and used more as a setting than a well-developed world. The technology wasn't really imaginative and felt like our current technology with a different name (light boxes instead of cellphones). It felt like a story with a lot of potential that didn't really live up to its intriguing premise
March 8, 2018
It took me awhile to finish this book. The world building is stunning and it’s well written, with an interesting narration choice. There aren’t chapters, but the book alternates between a third person limited present storyline, following Esme’s current mission to find her sisters and a first person past storyline following Esme throughout her young adult years. The past portion on the book really dragged for me, I was much more interested in what present day Esme was up to than her growing up in Star’s End. Despite the back cover synopsis, the only way Esme helps to raise her sisters is telling the fleet of nannies and tutors to keep an eye on them while she’s off doing her company internship.
I could not find it in me to care about Esme. The Coromina family owns four planets. They literally make trillions of dollars a year manufacturing bioengineered soldiers and weapons to equip those soldiers. The ‘company’ is a government system called coporcracy and Esme’s father is the current ruler/CEO. People who live on the four planets are called citizen-employees. This is capitalism at full throttle. Everyone and everything on the four planets exists solely to fuel the weapons manufacture and to add to the upper echelon’s wealth. There’s a hefty dose of Big Brother as well, of course. Media is strictly monitored, business espionage is the norm, and the CEO often has troublesome people ‘relocated’.
So there’s a lot going on and in the middle of it is Esme and I wouldn’t say I hated her, but I disliked her immensely. She’s a coward and despite what the ending tries to spin, she is just like her father in terms of power ambition. She only on two occasions finds her spine and stands up to her father, but those moments are quickly over and she goes back to doing everything her father asks.
Her father is Exhibit A for sociopath. He doesn’t care about anything but his wealth and status. There are a few moments in there where Esme thinks she sees something else in him, but I chalk that up to an unreliable narrator ploy. The dude is an AssHole.
This book is 421 pages of things happening to Esme. She’s never proactive and most of the book is her waiting to be summoned or waiting for the other shoe to drop. She spends a lot of time slumping against chairs, sitting on beds, headaches from too many thoughts, and sleepless nights. The only reason this story exists is because her father sets her out to collect her estranged sisters. She wasn’t going to do it on her own.
She also spends the entirety of the book afraid. Honestly, her entire narration is dictated by fear. Fear of her father, fear she’s becoming like her father, fear for her sisters, fear of her sisters, fear for her mother, fear she’s going to do/say the wrong thing. The list goes on and it never ends. I can’t tell if Esme is supposed to be a sympathetic character or an unlikeable character. All those fears would make sense if this was a YA, but Esme is in her forties. At this point it’s Learned Helplessness and I have no time or sympathy for it. She has the emotional depth and fortitude of a wet tissue.
The characters of this book never fully come to life Esme, with all her cowering, is the most well rounded of them all. Her sisters are plot devices on Esme’s convoluted journey to redemption, her closest friend, a bioengineered soldier named Will, is another plot device whose only purpose is to help her find her sisters. Her father is the evils of capitalism personified. It gets tedious, especially since Esme does little more than fret about everything.
The ending of the book, I think, is supposed to have an A Tree Grows in Brooklyn vibe; not happy, but hopeful, but it falls a little flat. Esme may not have her father’s cruelty, but she still wants the power being CEO/ruler affords her. She promises to only use her powers for good and she’s going to help people and blah, blah, blah. But the whole thing reads like those ridiculous accounts of ‘good’ slave owners. Yeah, so some of them didn’t flay children, but they still had slaves. Yeah, Esme wants to change the company’s focus, but she’s still keeping a system in place that has proven to be easily corrupted, abused, and refers to its citizens as employees and property.
I can’t say I’d recommend Star’s End. As a dystopic system of government, it’s awesome, but the main character, Esme, has little to enjoy and can make getting through some places a chore.
I could not find it in me to care about Esme. The Coromina family owns four planets. They literally make trillions of dollars a year manufacturing bioengineered soldiers and weapons to equip those soldiers. The ‘company’ is a government system called coporcracy and Esme’s father is the current ruler/CEO. People who live on the four planets are called citizen-employees. This is capitalism at full throttle. Everyone and everything on the four planets exists solely to fuel the weapons manufacture and to add to the upper echelon’s wealth. There’s a hefty dose of Big Brother as well, of course. Media is strictly monitored, business espionage is the norm, and the CEO often has troublesome people ‘relocated’.
So there’s a lot going on and in the middle of it is Esme and I wouldn’t say I hated her, but I disliked her immensely. She’s a coward and despite what the ending tries to spin, she is just like her father in terms of power ambition. She only on two occasions finds her spine and stands up to her father, but those moments are quickly over and she goes back to doing everything her father asks.
Her father is Exhibit A for sociopath. He doesn’t care about anything but his wealth and status. There are a few moments in there where Esme thinks she sees something else in him, but I chalk that up to an unreliable narrator ploy. The dude is an AssHole.
This book is 421 pages of things happening to Esme. She’s never proactive and most of the book is her waiting to be summoned or waiting for the other shoe to drop. She spends a lot of time slumping against chairs, sitting on beds, headaches from too many thoughts, and sleepless nights. The only reason this story exists is because her father sets her out to collect her estranged sisters. She wasn’t going to do it on her own.
She also spends the entirety of the book afraid. Honestly, her entire narration is dictated by fear. Fear of her father, fear she’s becoming like her father, fear for her sisters, fear of her sisters, fear for her mother, fear she’s going to do/say the wrong thing. The list goes on and it never ends. I can’t tell if Esme is supposed to be a sympathetic character or an unlikeable character. All those fears would make sense if this was a YA, but Esme is in her forties. At this point it’s Learned Helplessness and I have no time or sympathy for it. She has the emotional depth and fortitude of a wet tissue.
The characters of this book never fully come to life Esme, with all her cowering, is the most well rounded of them all. Her sisters are plot devices on Esme’s convoluted journey to redemption, her closest friend, a bioengineered soldier named Will, is another plot device whose only purpose is to help her find her sisters. Her father is the evils of capitalism personified. It gets tedious, especially since Esme does little more than fret about everything.
The ending of the book, I think, is supposed to have an A Tree Grows in Brooklyn vibe; not happy, but hopeful, but it falls a little flat. Esme may not have her father’s cruelty, but she still wants the power being CEO/ruler affords her. She promises to only use her powers for good and she’s going to help people and blah, blah, blah. But the whole thing reads like those ridiculous accounts of ‘good’ slave owners. Yeah, so some of them didn’t flay children, but they still had slaves. Yeah, Esme wants to change the company’s focus, but she’s still keeping a system in place that has proven to be easily corrupted, abused, and refers to its citizens as employees and property.
I can’t say I’d recommend Star’s End. As a dystopic system of government, it’s awesome, but the main character, Esme, has little to enjoy and can make getting through some places a chore.
February 20, 2019
Wow. I don’t fully know what else to say. This book was fantastic from start to finish. It is beautifully written, both in syntax and characterization, and evocative, potent, and fully realized.
The world and time Clarke has created is vivid, real-feeling, and both so delightfully removed from our own reality, and yet strikingly familiar in its temperaments and concerns. The main character, Esme, navigates the pit-falls of corporate competitiveness and the constant striving for profit increases in a world where the success of corporations defines society (sounds familiar, right?), but at the same time, she lives in a future context in which corporations have become governments, and control whole star-systems.
The book plumbs the depths of relationships between sisters, and between absentee fathers (and also a mother) and their daughters. It examines what it means to be a family, and what happens when you betray the trust of those closest to you. It does so with compassion and honesty, and at the end of the day, Esme finds herself travelling throughout her solar system to find her sisters whom she has deeply-wounded, asking for forgiveness but with a willingness to admit how deeply she had wronged them. Her journey is profound and redemptive, and is deftly interwoven with the tale of how she failed in her promise to protect her younger sisters, a promise made both to herself and to them.
The novel also grapples with the question of what the best way to effect change in society is, within the “machine” of corporations and government, or from without. I greatly appreciate that Clarke doesn’t firmly take the side Esme chooses: working within her corporation to improve the lives of its employee-citizens. There is no lack of nuance in the philosophical discussions Star’s End dives into. It also touches on the potential ethical pitfalls of creating genetically engineered people, and what this means for human identity and human rights. It also contemplates a relatively new angle on how humanity might engage with aliens, should we find them if one day we explore the stars beyond our own solar-system.
On the surface alone, this novel is about corporate corruption and familial relationships, but it delves so much deeper into questions of ethics and the nature of humanity itself. It does so in a way which is never dry, is consistently cogent and nuanced, and best of all, a manner which entertains. I would recommend Star’s End both to seasoned readers of sci-fi and newcomers to the genre alike. It is beautiful, moving, at times an edge-of-your-seat romp of a read, and brilliantly written all around.
My only qualm is that the end leaves me wanting more. I would give an arm or leg for a sequel, or at the very least, $30.
The world and time Clarke has created is vivid, real-feeling, and both so delightfully removed from our own reality, and yet strikingly familiar in its temperaments and concerns. The main character, Esme, navigates the pit-falls of corporate competitiveness and the constant striving for profit increases in a world where the success of corporations defines society (sounds familiar, right?), but at the same time, she lives in a future context in which corporations have become governments, and control whole star-systems.
The book plumbs the depths of relationships between sisters, and between absentee fathers (and also a mother) and their daughters. It examines what it means to be a family, and what happens when you betray the trust of those closest to you. It does so with compassion and honesty, and at the end of the day, Esme finds herself travelling throughout her solar system to find her sisters whom she has deeply-wounded, asking for forgiveness but with a willingness to admit how deeply she had wronged them. Her journey is profound and redemptive, and is deftly interwoven with the tale of how she failed in her promise to protect her younger sisters, a promise made both to herself and to them.
The novel also grapples with the question of what the best way to effect change in society is, within the “machine” of corporations and government, or from without. I greatly appreciate that Clarke doesn’t firmly take the side Esme chooses: working within her corporation to improve the lives of its employee-citizens. There is no lack of nuance in the philosophical discussions Star’s End dives into. It also touches on the potential ethical pitfalls of creating genetically engineered people, and what this means for human identity and human rights. It also contemplates a relatively new angle on how humanity might engage with aliens, should we find them if one day we explore the stars beyond our own solar-system.
On the surface alone, this novel is about corporate corruption and familial relationships, but it delves so much deeper into questions of ethics and the nature of humanity itself. It does so in a way which is never dry, is consistently cogent and nuanced, and best of all, a manner which entertains. I would recommend Star’s End both to seasoned readers of sci-fi and newcomers to the genre alike. It is beautiful, moving, at times an edge-of-your-seat romp of a read, and brilliantly written all around.
My only qualm is that the end leaves me wanting more. I would give an arm or leg for a sequel, or at the very least, $30.
June 27, 2018
Star’s End is the ultimate in corporate control. A science fiction story about the Four Sisters, four planets terraformed by Phillip Coromina. He not only owns the planets, he owns the people who inhabit them. Any person who doesn’t follow company rules disappears. Exiled or killed? The family business manufactures weapons. One product of the company is manufactured humans who are programmed in their DNA to be soldiers. They fight wars across the galaxy alongside normal human mercenaries hired by the corporations. The manufactured soldiers are programmed to be loyal to each other and the corporations.
The protagonist in Star’s End is Phillip’s oldest daughter, Esme. Her mother is a soldier who left her to be raised by Phillip when she was born. Esme’s three-hundred-year-old father is dying. He has a disease which kills even those taking rejuvenation treatments. She is taken by surprise, but she has been waiting a long time. Esme will become CEO of Coromina Group. She wants to change the path of the company and no longer manufacture weapons.
There are also aliens living on the planets. Philip isolated them long ago and they have no contact with the humans. Sounds familiar, doesn’t it? Fear the aliens; fear anyone different from you instead of learning to live together; creating wars for profit.
Esme’s three younger half-sisters have all disappeared. She is trying to track them down and bring them home before her father dies. Each sister chose to leave when they found out how cruel their father was and what he had done to Isabel, the youngest. But Esme has stayed to work from inside to improve the system.
The novel jumps between present and past. The past POV is Esme, first person past, and the present is Esme, third person past. There are many secrets that we don’t learn until events occur in the past chapters or until Esme reaches a level in the corporation to learn them. Phillip is all about secrets. You are privy to more of what’s happening as you go up the ranks of the company. At the end of the story, Esme is one of the few Ninety-Nines, the highest level who can know all the secrets.
An interesting novel, obviously anti-corporate. I enjoyed it, even if I found Esme reluctantly following her father’s orders hard to take.
The protagonist in Star’s End is Phillip’s oldest daughter, Esme. Her mother is a soldier who left her to be raised by Phillip when she was born. Esme’s three-hundred-year-old father is dying. He has a disease which kills even those taking rejuvenation treatments. She is taken by surprise, but she has been waiting a long time. Esme will become CEO of Coromina Group. She wants to change the path of the company and no longer manufacture weapons.
There are also aliens living on the planets. Philip isolated them long ago and they have no contact with the humans. Sounds familiar, doesn’t it? Fear the aliens; fear anyone different from you instead of learning to live together; creating wars for profit.
Esme’s three younger half-sisters have all disappeared. She is trying to track them down and bring them home before her father dies. Each sister chose to leave when they found out how cruel their father was and what he had done to Isabel, the youngest. But Esme has stayed to work from inside to improve the system.
The novel jumps between present and past. The past POV is Esme, first person past, and the present is Esme, third person past. There are many secrets that we don’t learn until events occur in the past chapters or until Esme reaches a level in the corporation to learn them. Phillip is all about secrets. You are privy to more of what’s happening as you go up the ranks of the company. At the end of the story, Esme is one of the few Ninety-Nines, the highest level who can know all the secrets.
An interesting novel, obviously anti-corporate. I enjoyed it, even if I found Esme reluctantly following her father’s orders hard to take.
March 27, 2017
If you liked Cassandra Rose Clarke's other adult science fiction books, you'll probably like this one as well. Same slow burn way of telling the story, without every little thing spelled out, same focus on the characters over the sci-fi aspects. This one's really a family drama and a story of corporate intrigue, with a little mystery thrown in for good measure, it just happens to take place in space in a system of terraformed worlds. I think it works really well, but I would hesitate to call it a space opera because of this.
I really liked main character Esme, and how the story moves back and forth in time from her childhood at Star's End with her three half sisters and how things went horribly wrong, and the present, having moved up in her father's company and now on a quest to find her sisters again and to move the company in a new direction in an attempt to fix all the things her father has broken in his 300 years. I love her relationship with Will; it's totally understated and so much is merely implied, but there's so much trust there. And I found her relationship with her father interesting, and believable, even though I could never bring myself to like him at all.
It's definitely not going to be a best seller--I feel like Clarke's books fit a very particular kind of audience--but if you're looking for science fiction that's not focused on action or space battles or dumb one-liners, and enjoy stories and characters with depth, Clarke just might be your girl. I will read anything at all that she writes and I've yet to be disappointed!
I really liked main character Esme, and how the story moves back and forth in time from her childhood at Star's End with her three half sisters and how things went horribly wrong, and the present, having moved up in her father's company and now on a quest to find her sisters again and to move the company in a new direction in an attempt to fix all the things her father has broken in his 300 years. I love her relationship with Will; it's totally understated and so much is merely implied, but there's so much trust there. And I found her relationship with her father interesting, and believable, even though I could never bring myself to like him at all.
It's definitely not going to be a best seller--I feel like Clarke's books fit a very particular kind of audience--but if you're looking for science fiction that's not focused on action or space battles or dumb one-liners, and enjoy stories and characters with depth, Clarke just might be your girl. I will read anything at all that she writes and I've yet to be disappointed!
January 23, 2020
The four moons that orbit the gas giant Coromina I have been terraformed for the human citizen-employees of the Coromina Corporation which owns the system. It’s founder Phillip Coromina has been its CEO for three centuries, but he has a fatal disease. His final wish is for his eldest daughter and heir Esme is to bring her three sisters home before he dies. Esme is extremely skeptical that she’ll be able to accomplish this assignment. She fears that her estranged stepsisters won’t want to see him. She’s not even sure that they’ll even want to talk to her, and she has no idea where two of them are. They could be anywhere on the Four Sisters, as the terraformed moons are called. As the person in charge of Genetics for the Corporation, she has her own work that needs to be done. There’ve been several security breaches recently. That’s a big worry since the Corporation’s main source of income is producing genetically modified soldiers.
Clarke switches from third person narration of Esme’s search for her sisters, to extended first person scenes from Esme’s childhood at the family estate, Star’s End. These reveal her relations with her sisters and their emotionally cold father. After her stepmother’s death, Esme vows to take care of her sisters and is especially disturbed when Isabel, the youngest, mysteriously vanishes. Clarke skillfully presents a page-turning thriller in a realistic extraterrestrial setting that has a really well done brooding sense of menace.
Clarke switches from third person narration of Esme’s search for her sisters, to extended first person scenes from Esme’s childhood at the family estate, Star’s End. These reveal her relations with her sisters and their emotionally cold father. After her stepmother’s death, Esme vows to take care of her sisters and is especially disturbed when Isabel, the youngest, mysteriously vanishes. Clarke skillfully presents a page-turning thriller in a realistic extraterrestrial setting that has a really well done brooding sense of menace.
August 1, 2017
3.5 stars.
A great premise, a really strong start, bogged down with some generic sci-fi in the middle but brought home with a strong, spectacular finish.
I was, however thrown and irritated by inconsistency in the flashbacks. The first flashback is 26 years ago, and the second is billed as 18 years ago, a gap of 8 years, but the characters only seem to have aged 5/6 years and Esme states she's been with her father's company for 5 years. In the thirs flashback, if we go by the chapter titles, 12 years have passed, but Isabel, who was born in the first flashback, is 14 years old. It's a sloppiness that should have been caught in the edit and definitely brought the book down half a star. (Unless of course, I unwittingly had an ARC and all that got fixed for the final version - doesn't look like an ARC but maybe)
A great premise, a really strong start, bogged down with some generic sci-fi in the middle but brought home with a strong, spectacular finish.
I was, however thrown and irritated by inconsistency in the flashbacks. The first flashback is 26 years ago, and the second is billed as 18 years ago, a gap of 8 years, but the characters only seem to have aged 5/6 years and Esme states she's been with her father's company for 5 years. In the thirs flashback, if we go by the chapter titles, 12 years have passed, but Isabel, who was born in the first flashback, is 14 years old. It's a sloppiness that should have been caught in the edit and definitely brought the book down half a star. (Unless of course, I unwittingly had an ARC and all that got fixed for the final version - doesn't look like an ARC but maybe)
August 28, 2017
This interesting science fiction novel is set in another solar system, where humanity has terraformed and settled four moons of a gas giant. The heroine's narrative alternates between the framing story, in the present day, and her life story, beginning with her wealthy childhood. I had a hard time sympathizing with the heroine. She hates her father and hates her job working for his evil corporation. Yet she never even conceives of quitting or giving up her plush corporate life-style, as her three half-sisters have done. Her misery, as she puts in decades trying to get enough power to change the company from within, makes the overall tone depressing. But the answer to the central mystery -- how and why her family's estate of Star's End was destroyed, and why her three half-sisters are alienated from her -- is really cool, and the ending hopeful, making the journey worthwhile.
January 25, 2020
I enjoyed Cassandra Rose Clarke's take on a powerful family with secrets to hide. The characters were fairly well-developed and I love the atmospheric settings. I did feel like it was quite loosely plotted, however, and went on for too long. This made the climax difficult to pinpoint and the reveals underwhelming. And oh my god it needed proof reading. About 5 times she contradicted herself, about descriptive details! She'd say, "Esme got out of the car and went into her living room" and then 3 lines later Esme would be describing the seats in front of her in the car... or say "she jumped off the stage", only to continue that "she stayed on the stage to look out for her sisters". They were frustratingly obvious errors and really took me out of the immersion in the story.
I enjoy her writing and imagination, but she didn't really do right by the characters or the world in this one.
I enjoy her writing and imagination, but she didn't really do right by the characters or the world in this one.
May 25, 2017
Shows the difficulty of changing things from within and the conflict you can face both internally (for the changes you want to make) and externally (for not leaving).
It shows the power that family has over us. We see her relationship with her father (he wants her to follow in his footsteps, but he has no emotional connection), her sisters (who resent her for having a mother who is alive & who think she mishandled things related to her youngest sister), and her mother (who gave her up).
The skipping back and forth on the timeline really worked for me.
However, because there's one chapter per "skip", some of the chapters were really really long. That made it hard to find a stopping point sometimes.
It shows the power that family has over us. We see her relationship with her father (he wants her to follow in his footsteps, but he has no emotional connection), her sisters (who resent her for having a mother who is alive & who think she mishandled things related to her youngest sister), and her mother (who gave her up).
The skipping back and forth on the timeline really worked for me.
However, because there's one chapter per "skip", some of the chapters were really really long. That made it hard to find a stopping point sometimes.
May 2, 2020
I really enjoyed the premise, writing, and characters. It is worth a read if you like sci-fi such as Red Rising. HOWEVER, there ARE major proofreading and editing errors. I read an ARC that was gifted to me, and I thought that was something that would be fixed before publication, but it appears from other reviews they were not.
It doesn't change the story, but if you're like me and your brain catches dates, ages, descriptions etc then those issues may also stick out for you. Still a good story and I enjoyed reading, and would read sequels.
It doesn't change the story, but if you're like me and your brain catches dates, ages, descriptions etc then those issues may also stick out for you. Still a good story and I enjoyed reading, and would read sequels.
June 6, 2017
3.5 stars.
There was something really enthralling about this book--about the relationship between Esme and her sisters, Esme and her father, and Esme's journey of self discovery. Esme was just a great character to follow--deeply flawed, lost, confused, and hopelessly trying to do the right thing while sometimes completely unable to see past her own privilege. The world-building was hazy at times, but I kind of loved that this was a story about people over politics in the end. Delightful.
There was something really enthralling about this book--about the relationship between Esme and her sisters, Esme and her father, and Esme's journey of self discovery. Esme was just a great character to follow--deeply flawed, lost, confused, and hopelessly trying to do the right thing while sometimes completely unable to see past her own privilege. The world-building was hazy at times, but I kind of loved that this was a story about people over politics in the end. Delightful.
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