Wyrm’s mother always told him he was special, that he was the World Soul who’d bring peace to the galaxy. But she’s babbling now, committed to an asylum, leaving the sickly 10-year-old on a perilous journey to find his father.
That father is none other than Anacharsis Stifler, the man who discovered the Plasma in old Earth’s ruins, a weapon that’s allowed the atheist Archosians to liberate planet after planet from their superstitious beliefs, whether they want to be liberated or not.
When Anacharsis returned to Earth to find a cure for his wife, he vanished, setting off not only Wyrm’s desperate trek, but an invasion of the fragile world by Archosian High Commander Sebe Mordent, who can’t allow anyone else to find whatever secrets remain.
Meanwhile, the Pantheon, an uneasy collection of diverse faiths, approach their old foes, the Kundun Slave-kings, in the hope of forming an alliance to stop the atheist expansion. En route, Wyrm is forced to throw in with a manipulative gender-shifting alien, a war criminal, a genocidal female scientist, and the childlike woman Calico.
But is Calico harmless, or a visitor from Earth’s past sent to judge whether humanity is worth preserving? The Stars Within is a sprawling sci-fi epic, populated with complex, at times flawed, at times heroic, but always real characters.
Political intrigue, theological musings, and a tightly-woven action-driven story play out in six intertwining narratives set in a fully realized universe on the verge of mass war.
To the manor born, the idealistic Archosian Wyrm suffers from a rare allergic reaction that gave him his nickname, making him sweat an oily ooze when stressed. His father missing, his mother insane, after witnessing the rape of his young crush by her own cousin, the son of a powerful general, and feeling helpless to stop it, Wyrm leaves his comfortable home to dare the fringes of space, find his father, and learn if his mother’s belief that her sickly boy is the messianic World Soul, has any truth to it.
Wife of the famed archeologist Anacharsis Stifler, while all Archosia celebrated his discovery of the deadly plasma, she went mad. Held in an asylum, sharing her psyche with the primal mother goddess, Sky, she tells the story of creation, the advent of the Grayborn and, the World Soul, over and over. But is she insane, or has the primal Mother Goddess Sky actually inhabited her?
Brilliant, popular, and powerful, Sebe Mordent has always championed Archisia’s scientific ideals. He’s also always been ambitious, having become their youngest general. Marrying into the aged General Wintour’s family sealed his hold on power, making him High Commander. Now he plots to overthrow the corrupt, bureaucratic Directorate and establish himself as emperor. But his rapid rise came at a price. Old Wintour insists Mordent use his latest invention, Colossus, in the invasion of Earth, and Mordent is convinced it could be a deadly mistake.
Mentor, pundit, tutor to Wyrm and his father, and head of a small, secret cabal seeking to maintain a peaceful balance between the warring factions, Ludi has become a pariah on both sides. Preaching a middle path between science and religion – he’s wanted by the Pantheon as a heretic, his works censured by Archosia’s Directorate as god-appeasing. A follower of ancient Grayborn ways, he believes humanity is on the verge of a cataclysmic change, and that the gods may be more real than ourselves.
After a lifetime of service to Lau, the harsh god of Law, to preserve the future of his faith against the expanding atheist Archosians, Anton Gui is forced to join the Pantheon and work with the same blasphemers he once judged and tortured. Now, on a mission to Earth to ally with the Kundun, who consider Lau a demon, the disciplined Gui finds himself deeply attracted to the Acolyte Harek to the point of distraction. Is it the last straw for his profoundly-held beliefs, or a final test from his god?
