This review is based on an eARC (Advance Reading Copy) provided by the publisher via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. Radiant Star was released on May 12, 2026.

I missed the boat on the Imperial Radch series when it first came out, but after enjoying a standalone within the Radch universe (Translation State) and Ann Leckie’s Hugo-nominated novelette (“Lake of Souls”), I decided to try my luck with another Radch-adjacent standalone and pick up Radiant Star. 

Radiant Star takes place on an icy rogue planet brought under Radchaai control in the time between the first and second chapters of the book. For readers of the original trilogy, the rest of the book takes place around roughly the time period of the end of Ancillary Justice. Big things are happening, and while the events of Radiant Star don’t have much impact on the outside world, the reverse is very much not true. And so a tiny community dedicated mostly to the fringe religion of the Radiant Star, along with its shiny new Radchaai governor, must reckon with massive disruptions to its way of life, all while caught up in its own petty squabbles. 

Radiant Star is written as if being told as a history to an unknown audience much more familiar with Radchaai culture than with the Radiant Star. It’s a style that creates emotional distance between the readers and characters, and it isn’t long before the logic behind this choice becomes clear: there is no real attempt to build emotional connection to the main characters because the main characters are generally unsympathetic. With the exception of a boy whose sale into servitude was interrupted by the arrival of the Radchaai, the major point-of-view characters are almost all figures of great political or religious influence (sometimes both). The narrator tries to provide reasons for their actions, but she makes little effort to cast them as sympathetic. There’s a deep skepticism about the entirety of the Radiant Star religion—even when characters report having visions that seem to be genuinely prophetic—and while the most powerful religious figures are characterized as being genuinely devout, their motivations are almost invariably based in desire for money, power, or status. 

For readers who enjoy seeing the rich and powerful get the comeuppance that they were so sure couldn’t happen to them, Radiant Star may well be an engaging read. Delivering poetic justice certainly isn’t the only goal of the novel, but it does feel like the driving force. Unfortunately, that requires spending a lot of time reading about characters who are eminently dislikable and whose motivations are banal. It’s genuinely difficult to care about many of the major characters, and that makes the first half a real slog. The action picks up in the back half, and seeing the high brought low does offer some entertainment value, but had I not known I liked reading Leckie, there’s no way I’d have made it past the midway point. An entertaining finish is well and good, but the opening drags it way down. 

The second half also brings out some thematic concerns that add a little more depth to the narrative. The tendency to assume that a new crisis will be resolved without undue burden because one historically has not felt the effects of other crises earns a scathing rebuke that’s undoubtedly inspired by seeing similar attitudes all too often in the real world. And there are multiple interpersonal relationships with drastic power imbalances, where the less-powerful person tends to assume that the imbalance and its effects are the natural state of things instead of a contingent dynamic that is both unhealthy and possible to change. Again, these points are well-taken and feel like moments where the book is trying to say something deeper than “isn’t it great when bad people get their just deserts.” 

The ending of Radiant Star offers closure on most of the big plot threads, and—with the possible exception of the big religious questions—generally does justice to what has come before. It may be like watching a slow-moving train wreck, but it’s  entertaining, and it has something to say. Unfortunately, getting to that ending is a different story. The distancing effect of the narration, the dearth of likable characters, and the banality of the politics make for a story that drags badly through the first hundred pages or more. It gets better as it goes, but it doesn’t get so much better as to entirely redeem the slog of a first half. 

Recommended if you like: hatefics with careful worldbuilding.

Can I use it for Bingo? It’s hard mode for Politics and Court Intrigue, and it fits Feast Your Eyes, though I’d strongly recommend against hard mode. It also is Published in 2026 and features a handful of Trans or Nonbinary Protagonists.

Overall rating: 12 of Tar Vol’s 20. Three stars on Goodreads.