An Accident of Stars (Manifold Worlds #1), by Foz Meadows
27 Jan 2025The Book
Synopsis:
When Saffron Coulter stumbles through a hole in reality, she finds herself trapped in Kena—a magical realm on the brink of civil war. It’s there that her fate becomes intertwined with that of three very different women: Zech, the fast-thinking acolyte of a cunning, powerful exile; Viya, the spoiled, runaway consort of the empire-building ruler, Vex Leoden; and Gwen, an Earth-born worldwalker whose greatest regret is putting Leoden on the throne. But Leoden has allies, too, and chief among them is the Vex’Mara Kadeja, a dangerous ex-priestess who shares his dreams of conquest.
Pursued by Leoden and aided by the Shavaktiin—a secretive order of storytellers and mystics—the rebels flee to Veksh, a neighboring matriarchy ruled by the fearsome Council of Queens. Saffron is out of her world and out of her depth, but the further she travels, the more she finds herself bound to her friends with ties of blood and magic. Can one girl—and an accidental worldwalker at that—really be the key to saving Kena? Or will she die trying?
My Review
An Accident of Stars is the first book in the portal fantasy duology Manifold Worlds, written by Foz Meadows, published by Angry Robot Books. A really rich novel in terms of worldbuilding and characters, which takes a classic portal trope but twists it in delicious ways to give us a main character that is impossible to not love.
Great part of what makes An Accident of Stars a memorable story could be pointed on Saffron Coulter, our main character, a teenager that doesn't fit well in our world, and who passes to Kena through a hole in reality. Saffron finds herself trapped in this new world, which is on the brink of a civil war, and she's not a Chosen One, but a normal girl who misses home and that doesn't have any kind of special power; however, she will cross paths with three powerful women who will become an important part of her story: Gwen, Viya, and Zech.
The richness of the characters is simply amazing, as not only with Saffron we have a great example on how to write a well-fleshed younger character, but any of them are complex and have their own inner motivations. The more Saffi travels with our characters, the better we will get to know them, and the more she will find herself tied to them; and even if she misses home and wants to return, she will also long to help her friends, taking risks that she wouldn't imagine when she entered the world. We can say that Saffron grows in all the senses, but in a way that it feels totally suitable with the plot.
The worldbuilding is also excellent: rich, exploring the social and political structures, but never being too overwhelming for the reader; Meadows doesn't resort to infodump, but introduces naturally what the reader needs in each moment, playing also with the aspect of Saffron being an outsider to the world. The pacing is a bit slow at the start, but once it picks, it never stops.
An Accident of Stars is a brilliant choice for any reader that is longing for a different portal fantasy, with a well-fleshed cast; while there is a cliffhanger, I hope it is resolved in the second book in the duology, as I need to know more of what happens after that ending!
The Author/s
Foz Meadows
Foz Meadows is a queer fantasy author, essayist, reviewer and poet; their work has been published in venues such as Apex Magazine, Goblin Fruit and The Huffington Post. They are a four-time Hugo Award nominee for Best Fan Writer, which they won in 2019; they also won the 2017 Ditmar Award for Best Fan Writer, for which they are a three-time nominee. In 2017, their portal fantasy An Accident of Stars was a finalist for the Bisexual Book Awards, and in 2018, their queer Shakespearean novella Coral Bones won the Norma K. Hemming Award in the short fiction category. Their most recent novel, A Strange and Stubborn Endurance, is a queer romantic fantasy published by Tor; the sequel, All the Hidden Paths, is due for release in December 2023, while another queer fantasy novella, Finding Echoes, is due for a late 2023 release with Neon Hemlock.