Book Review: The Stars Undying, Empire Without End Book 1, Emery Robin
Book Review: The Stars Undying, Empire Without End Book 1, Emery Robin
Blog Tour November 18, 2022
Some debut novels have modest ambitions. Tell a story, explore some themes, draw some
characters, let it out into the world and hope it flies.
Then there are some debuts like The Stars Undying. Emery Robin takes inspiration from the
history of the Roman Empire, Egypt’s Ptolemaic era, Shakespeare’s plays, and weaves an epic
space opera with interstellar avatars of Julius Caesar, Cleopatra, Marc Antony, and Caesar
Augustus. Robin may not quite reach Shakespearean prose, but the sweeping arc and tragic
rise and fall of the characters certainly show that the homework was done.
Princess Altagracia has lost everything. Her father dead, her sister claiming the throne of
Szayet, her army decimated, her funds lost, she bets everything on the longest of long shots.
Matheus Ceirran is the Ceian commander who leads the military. Although Szayet is a
backwater planet in a distant region with a decrepit capital city long past its glory days and
dominated by a strange religion, Ceirran has followed a fugitive and former lover to the capital
city of Alectelo where he debarks to remind the locals of the power of the empire.
In Alectelo, Ceirran is first surprised when the reigning queen greets him with a box containing
the severed head of his fugitive. Later he is surprised at another present. A box of rugs arrives
at his office, a box of rugs that also contains the Princess Altagracia. In a move driven by her
desperation, she smuggles herself into the office and snuggles herself into the affections of the
most powerful military man in the galaxy.
Rulers of Szayet wear a specific pearl in their ear. This pearl, a biogenetic computer engineered
by a forgotten process, supposedly contains the life and spirit of Alekso the Undying, the
greatest ruler of Szayet. Alekso consults with the rulers, offering his brilliance and insight, his
experience and his strategic genius, and raises the rulers to the level of prophets.
Young women presenting themselves in the office of a conquering military commander,
regardless of how willing they are to play upon his desires, have little beyond the obvious to
offer. That is not enough for the commander to back their cause. However, Princess Altagracia
offers something new, something that every conquering commander angling to rule an empire
might want.
Godhood. Immortality. The opportunity to be undying.
A reimagining of the bloody, messy, tragic and epic lives of people whose legends have long
outlived their empires. Robin opens a career with a debut novel that promises the stars. For at
least this reader, it delivered them.
Our thanks to Anne Cater and her colleague Tracy Fenton of Compulsive Readers for our copy of The Stars Undying, provided so we could participate in this book tour. The opinions here are solely those of Scintilla. For other perspectives on this novel, check out the other bloggers on
this tour.
Book Review: The Stars Undying, Empire Without End Book 1, Emery Robin