April Book Reviews: The Demon Star by Jesse Aragon
I received a free copy from DAW via Netgalley in exchange for a fair review. Release date July 28th, 2026.
I was intrigued by the high space opera premise of this novel, and I thought I'd give it a try. In The Demon Star, Ysira's planet is ruled by gods that expect a human tithe every decade, and years ago, she barely survived being the sacrifice. When she discovers a chance to topple the gods, she seizes it, but the key to victory may be using her estranged child...
As someone who viciously panned the last few books I read that took inspiration from Dune, I have to say this one is good, actually. On Ysira's world, the survivors of a centuries-ago apocalypse are subjected to the most brutal and obvious imperialism: the routine harvest of people with psychic abilities. While their overlords have starfaring technology, the main characters use swords and flint arrowheads, which makes any resistance effectively futile. The primary plot is the slow reveal of the gods' nature, which is particularly brutal from the perspective of the other main character, the bitter, disillusioned priest Jacen. The Dune comparisons are obvious here—the colonized desert planet, the powerful overlords, the young messiah—but The Demon Star is the book I wish Dune was. Who cares about the teen ingenue, I want to hear more about the messiah's mother, who is prepared to sacrifice her only child, however reluctantly, for the revolution. It adds extra piquancy that Neri is only eleven. Old enough to make his own choices, but painfully young to be subsumed utterly into being the messiah.
A bleak sci-fi debut meditating on ruthlessness, fanaticism, and sacrifice. While it ran a bit heavier to action scenes than I prefer, I admired the relentless flow of violence forcing the inevitable conclusion. However, most of the questions raised in this book are already answered by the end, and I'm not sure what's left for the inevitable sequels except for chasing the sunk cost fallacy through an ocean of blood. Difficult to pull off, although Shelley Parker Chan's He Who Drowned the World managed it. We shall see.
