Starshine by G. S. Jennsen

Blurb

The year is 2322. Humanity has expanded into the stars, inhabiting over 100 worlds across a third of the galaxy. Though thriving as never before, they have discovered neither alien life nor the key to utopia. Earth struggles to retain authority over far-flung planets and free-wheeling corporations while an uneasy armistice with a breakaway federation hangs by a thread as the former rebels rise in wealth and power.

Alexis Solovy is Earth Alliance royalty, her father a fallen war hero and her mother an influential military leader. But she seeks only the freedom of space and has made a fortune by reading the patterns in the chaos to discover the hidden wonders of the stars.

Nothing about her latest objective suggests the secret it conceals will turn her life– not to mention the entire galaxy–upside down. But a chance encounter with a mysterious spy leads to a discovery which will thrust Alex into the middle of a galactic power struggle and a sinister conspiracy, whether she likes it or not.

Review

I am ashamed to say that I bought this book when I first bought my Kindle in 2018 and it has sat on there ever since. However, this year I rediscovered it and decided I would read it. I am now very annoyed that I hadn’t read this book earlier and got stuck into the series. 

The story follows two main characters; Alexis Solovy who comes from the Earth Alliance and owns and captains her own starship and Caleb Marano who is from the Senecan Federation and is a special intelligence agent. However, the story also flashes to other characters in other parts of the galaxy to reveal more of how events unfold. As the story unfolds we begin to see how all these characters are subtly connected. 

The story involves key people in military, politics, and the criminal underworld who are all pulling strings to manipulate the Earth Alliance and Senecan Federation into a war. While all this is happening Alexis and Caleb get thrown together in an unexpected turn of events which leads them to exploring a previously uninhabited region of the galaxy. 

I loved the world building in this book and the detail it went into. Sometimes in science fiction books the author glosses over the more science based things but Jennsen goes into the detail and I found that really interesting. Some people might feel the beginning of the book is a little slow but I was glad of the details and background it gave as it helped me then enjoy the action more. The book is full of all these fab achievements and advancements of humanity but humanity is still plagued by people wanting more money and power.

Alexis and Caleb were both fascinating characters although Alexis did get on my nerves slightly at times. They both have their own issues but as the book goes on we learn more about their histories and how it has shaped their characters. I can’t wait to see how their characters develop in the next book. 

I absolutely loved this book and bought the next one in the series straight away. This is definitely one of my top books of 2025 so far and I highly recommend it to all sci-fi fans. I give this book 5 out of 5 Dragons. 

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Purchase Links

Bookshop.org | Waterstones

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About the author

G. S. Jennsen is a speculative and science fiction author, as well as a futurist, geek, gamer, programmer and editor. She has become an internationally bestselling author since her first novel, Starshine, was published in March 2014. She has chosen to continue writing under an independent publishing model to ensure the integrity of her series and her ability to execute on the vision she’s had for it since its genesis.

While she has been a lawyer, a software engineer and an editor, she’s found the life of a full-time author preferable by several orders of magnitude. 

When she isn’t writing, she’s gaming or working out or getting lost in the mountains that loom large outside the windows in her home. Or she’s dealing with a flooded basement, or standing in a line at Walmart reading the tabloid headlines and wondering who all of those people are. Or sitting on her back porch with a glass of wine, looking up at the stars, trying to figure out what could be up there.

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