Ordinarily, having the fate of the entire galaxy thrust on your unwilling shoulders and having to stand up and fight rather than flee and hide may not seem like a whole lot of fun.
Ask Luke, Han and Leia from Star Wars or any of the gang in Guardians of the Galaxy – saving star systems and all of the people therein is not exactly the stuff of fun and merriment.
And yet, as Michael Moreci ably demonstrates in Black Star Renegades, it’s more than possible to have high stakes, HUGE ones in fact, and to be wielding a legendary weapon which could determine the fate of countless worlds and civilisations yearning to be free, and still have some wisecracking, swashbuckling action adventure.
Lots and lots of high-octane adventure in fact, and to somehow have some fun doing it.
Or maybe not fun so much as be able to enjoy the camaraderie of people who are right there on your side and by your side, to be armed with as many clever quips as deft enemy-tackling moves and to face up to your destiny with as much jocular zest as grim determination.
Cade Sura is armed with all of that and more, and as he has to face the fact that he reluctantly holds the weapon that will play a pivotal role in charting the entire fate of the galaxy and that it has far purpose for being than he does (he is, at best a fraud and at worst, an opportunistic liar), he has to make a choice – does he bow to the inevitable and duck and dive and evade responsibility once again?
The Rokura was on him. And who could possess the Rokura other than the Paragon? Nobody. And since Duke kknew nothing of what happened inside the spire, he couldn’t contradict everyone’s natural conclusion: Cade holds the Rokura. Therefore, Cade is the Paragon.
Things keep getting better and better, Cade thought.
The absolute thrill of Black Star Renegades, quite apart from nonstop pellmell action and enemies writ large in genocidal mania – the Big Bad in this story is the ruthlessly expansionist Praxis Kingdom, an empire hellbent on subjugating the whole galaxy to its twisted will – is having a protagonist who doesn’t feel even remotely up to the task.
It’s not that Cade, an orphan from the hardscrabble, lawless world of Kyysring, isn’t capable because he is, his fighting skills right up there, or that he isn’t smart or more than able to look after himself because he can do all that and more.
It’s more that he’s always felt that glib evasion is better than facing up to the stark reality of a situation, and while the idea of just getting the hell out of there does cross his mind more than once, he eventually accepts that even though he’s the worst person he can imagine to wield a fate-altering weapon, that there’s no one else who can do it (for a whole host of reasons, with circumstance right up there with there with fate) and he has no choice to stand and fight or cruelly authoritarian evil wins and he can’t countenance that.
So, he gathers together, quite accidentally but effectively as it turns out, a crew of friends and sort-of-not-really enemies and together, they take the fight to Praxis’s leader Ga Halle who’s determined to make the galaxy safe for her people, even if everyone else, and she means everyone else, has to manifestly suffer as a consequence.
If this sounds like a thousand other sci-fi novels you’ve read, on a bare bones, high level read of the plot you’d be right.
Styled as a love letter to sci-fi generally, and Star Wars in particular, Black Star Renegades has the aforementioned evil empire, the plucky hero, the ragtag bunch of heroic misfits, a mysterious order of monks who can also kick some military ass (when they are inclined to), droids who know their mind and aren’t afraid to use their abilities and a martial arts-laced mythology that has a profound impact on people and events.
The brilliance of Moreci’s approach is that for all his deliberate homage to sci-fi he knows and loves, Black Star Renegades never once feels soullessly derivative.
In fact, even as you spot influences aplenty, the story feels vibrantly alive and energetically original, a space operas more than capable of standing on its own two feet, mechanised or not, and of propelling you along on a giddy adventure as apt to crack a joke as it is to bear the weight of many worlds on its reluctantly considerable shoulders.
It is, in fact, a masterclass is acknowledging there’s nothing new under the narrative sun and then proceeding to make it your own, filling an age-old tale of galactic good and evil with so much wit and vivacity that you feel swept along on a ceaseless, unstoppable tide of fun-filled, hugely meaningful action.
Kira looked around the cockpit, and Cade felt like they were seeing the same thing: a one-armed Qel, a troublemaking genius, a rebellious pilot, and a counterfeit savior.
‘Sure,’ Kira said with sardonic grin. ‘How can we lose?’
Shooting across the galaxy from seedily lawless planets to ones on which sit towering weapons-holders and millennia-old temples in which the fate of worlds is decided (or not), Black Star Renegades is one of those richly expansive tales which builds worlds with rampant alacrity, fashions fully-realised characters full of hilarity and bravery, and which balances, with witty aplomb, hardcore action with some emotional intimacy, a storyline that has all the stakes in the world buried within it.
Again, with all the fate, weight and import brimming into and out of the narrative, you could be forgiven for wondering how there could be any fun to be had at all.
But there is, and Moreci reminds us more than once that while facing up to your fate might feel like the biggest, most terrifying thing in the galaxy, that there’s an exhilaration that comes from taking on inevitable destiny, however reluctantly embraced, and going for it, because you are finally where you are meant to be.
We all want easy, happy lives, but life doesn’t always make that kind of allowance, and once Cade and his band of merry misfits accept that they have no choice but to fight for a free galaxy in which they want to live, Black Star Renegades absolutely takes off even more than it winningly has already, serving up thrilling action, vivaciously engaging and funny characters, humour that sparkles and pops, and adventure so big and alive that hanging on for the ride is going to be one of the best things you’ve done, and Cade too for that matter, in a very long time.