Although he hasn\u2019t seen his spacefaring military father (who may or may not be dead) in years, Kael Vallen wants to follow in his footsteps\u2014and does just that when he turns 18.As a recruit in the God Ruler\u2019s forces, Kael dreams of sharing the transcendent light of the Starlit Covenant with what he sees as the ignorant masses. Unbeknownst to Vallen, his underage brother, Auctor, secretly enlists, as well, and follows his sibling into space. After traveling to the planet Xalthryn to \u201cprovide support\u201d to the God Ruler\u2019s forces already on the surface, Kael and his overzealous brother are shocked to find themselves thrown into a full-fledged war, where their forces may be the fanatical aggressors. Ostrom\u2019s novel is powered by palpable emotional intensity, and its deep development of its central characters and unapologetically graphic depiction of war pack an undeniable punch: \u201cKael peeked out from behind his barrier to see trees torn and men running. A projectile caught a man in the torso, and his body seemed to explode. Legs flew one way, head and shoulders the other.\u201d However, the book\u2019s overall lack of description and overly simple plotting work against it. The populace on Xalthryn, for example, could\u2019ve\u2014and should\u2019ve\u2014been noticeably different than their military oppressors in terms of their physiology and culture, but, as it is, their depiction feels superficial at best. The terms \u201cheretics\u201d and \u201csavages\u201d fittingly describe the bigotry but not the people, who ultimately seem two-dimensional. Readers will also be able to predict the story\u2019s general conclusion without much difficulty. <\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Although he hasn\u2019t seen his spacefaring military father (who may or may not be dead) in years, Kael Vallen wants to follow in his footsteps\u2014and does just that when he turns 18.As a recruit in the God Ruler\u2019s forces, Kael dreams of sharing the transcendent light of the Starlit Covenant with what he sees as […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":4765,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4764","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-interesting"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4764"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4764"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4764\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/4765"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4764"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4764"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4764"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}