Starshatter is a science fiction book written by Black Knight. It’s… a rather odd choice for a pen name, to be honest, but it’s not like there are any objective rules for pen names. It certainly stands out, I will concede that. But on Minds, he is known as Aragmar. The plot of Starshatter follows aliens, humans, and animals gifted with higher intelligence comparable to humans working together (or fighting each other) throughout space with some other sci-fi surprises thrown in for good measure. As an aside, Aragmar also already has a sequel to Starshatter out that, in full disclosure, I have not read yet. This review will be solely about the first book. Also, though this may not be a rule I always apply in my IMHO series, I will do my best to avoid any spoilers in the actual story, as I do want people to read this book. It is still a unique story written by an independent creator, and supporting independent creators like this is how we get away from the more sanitized and corporate stories that typically fill the mainstream.
That being said… I wish I enjoyed this story more than I actually did.
Now, I don’t consider this a spoiler, so let’s take a look at the table of contents. Ten chapters, most of the titles being a single word. After reading the first chapter, you might correctly assume that each chapter is the name of a character. Which is completely acceptable; chapter names aren’t even required, and ensuring they aren’t something that will offer spoilers is important. Character names as chapter titles can be a useful method of allowing a reader to find where they left off without them being able to glean information about the overall plot earlier than planned.
The problem I have with this is that most, not all but most, of these chapters are completely detached from each other in the current narrative. The main characters for the most part don’t interact with each other, so the result is fundamentally a set of short stories. Which, again… is fine… but that is not what this book is being sold as. It is presented as a full story, not a collection of short stories. The stories do eventually all tie in together, which I won’t go into detail on as that could be construed as a spoiler, but it felt rushed and hectic. I would have spread the character introductions throughout the entire story while adding them to a growing group with it’s own group dynamics, but that brings up a different problem I consider far more difficult to solve.
There are ten chapters, which means ten protagonists, each one taking their turn as a point of view for the reader. Jumping point of view between chapters is usually acceptable, though the book will also jump heads mid chapter. Doing this so often, even when properly telegraphing when it happens, creates more issues with characterization. The reader is being pulled around everywhere and being given convenient establishing information constantly through the thoughts of different characters. This means very little real plot happens; there isn’t time for it. We don’t get to know the characters better over the entire story, nor do we see them change and grow much beyond a single major event in their own chapter. For the second book, I don’t know how one will solve this problem, as now there are ten characters to keep track of that all have shallow character arcs to begin with. These characters will be competing for attention, as their relations to each other need to be at least indicated; a small amount of this was done in the first book, but it was mostly summed up as “everyone is getting along pretty well”. Which, if that is it… that’s not just boring, it’s unrealistic. Almost the entire cast has been given very extreme personalities, so I would be shocked if some of them didn’t try to freaking kill each other over some misunderstanding or more substantive disagreement.
As a quick aside, quantity of main characters is something I’ve done quite a lot of experimentation with in my own work. I settled on about four in my own main story, and I try to establish not only what they think of and how they act towards each other, but their relations to side characters. The goal of this approach is giving the reader a deeper understanding of the main characters while also including some more shallow establishing information about relations to side characters and the world in general. At least, that’s what I tried to do. It’s certainly not simple to juggle four characters in a plot without ever completely ignoring any of them, though, so I’m certainly skeptical about trying to do the same with ten different characters.
Back on topic… another issue I have is not just the characterization of the heroes, but also the villains. The villains exist solely to happily slaughter and abuse innocent people, after which they are killed without remorse by the heroes and the heroes’ allies. Their motivation is an obscure conquer-the-galaxy kind of thing, with no explanation given to why murderous aliens are roaming the galaxy with such vast resources. It certainly doesn’t help establish the villains as a realistic threat that must be reckoned with when most of the characters fight them off in their own chapters with far fewer advantages at their disposal compared to their antagonist. Even the author acknowledges that the villains in the first book are basically incompetent, evidenced by taking a quote from the second book’s description:
“Yet, their insidious Taz'aran enemy has had it with its underachieving and poorly performing leaders of late.”
This may sound rather harsh, but I generally consider this bad writing. Having an incompetent villain makes your heroes less impressive in their victory. Having an illogically evil antagonist makes the reader wonder how they managed to gain so much power, influence, and resources when everyone agrees they are bad news and can’t be trusted. Sure, not every villain needs to have an enormous amount of characterization, especially if the author wants to portray them as a paper dragon anyways. But if the main conflict of the story is the back and forth between the forces of good and evil, one doesn’t want that conflict to be shallow.
To get slightly meta-narrative for a moment… I see this as the largest issue, though it is also the least objective. This story feels like it was designed to setup a much larger story. This is actually seen a lot in various mediums; a creator wants to establish a massive universe with unique characters, but it quickly becomes obvious that a single book can’t comfortably contain the epic story they want to tell. So, they write a story that sets up the next story by establishing all the characters and mechanics they wish to use. Don’t confuse this impression as a statement that Starshatter had no story; it did. But I find the story was almost detached from itself, looking to make the necessary rounds establishing all the characters and their abilities to simply prepare for the next book. I didn’t find this story, when considered by itself, as very fulfilling. It had a lot of characters without a lot of meaningful character interaction, nor a lot of plot progression as everything was basically reset each chapter to follow an entirely new story. I think a better approach is to have a book with both a self-contained, cohesive story as well as a larger story running in the background. If a full book can’t truly be appreciated as a story by itself, it probably shouldn’t be structured that way. Perhaps it should have been labeled part 1, and the next book part 2, to advertise that it functions only as an introduction, or even just include both parts together as a single book.
Honestly, I went into this story hoping for something better. There were some other minor issues I found, but after reading the entire story, these are the most serious ones. I sincerely hope the second book improves upon what was laid out in the first and doesn’t suffer other pitfalls, though I am skeptical based on what I saw in the first. For those thinking of reading the first book, I recommend going in with the understanding that it is a bunch of short stories, some of which are two-parters. I believe that mindset will improve your experience overall.
At least, in my humble opinion.
Some links:
Aragmar's channel
Starshatter
Twin Suns Of Carrola(Starshatter, Part 2)
This post on Minds