This book had an interesting premise, as science fiction novels often do not focus on less glamorous jobs and locations. However I felt the relationships were underdeveloped, and it was clear that this publication is still early in the author's career. I will look out for future books by them though!

Thank you to Netgalley and the publisher for granting me a free advanced copy of this book to read and review.

Action, invasions, aliens, queer characters and a very entertaining and frenetic development in this story that grabs you from the first page. Get ready for explanations, the story's own language and a closing glossary to understand the world.

Loved this one. Great mspec and polyam rep, fun and exciting and sweet. Loved the exes to lovers romance and the already established sapphic romance. Wound love to read more by this author.

The premise was interesting to me. I think if you like space operas you should give this one a try.

Thank you to the publisher and Netgalley for the digital galley. All thoughts are my own.

There’s a lot packed into this little novella, including a generous amount of world-building, multiple relationship developments (both romantic and familial), and a bit of a mystery. If I’m being honest, I’m pretty sure I picked this one up purely from the phrase ‘polyamourous scifi,’ but I don’t regret it at all. If you’re down for Star Wars vibes but a hell of a lot gayer, I think you’ll enjoy this quick read. (And I didn’t notice until the end, but there is a glossary to help with all the jargon, though I didn’t find it all that overwhelming.)

Not only is this poly scifi, it’s polynorm and queernorm. That is to say most relationships are triads or quads and the world (for example the space station housing) is built around that. There’s also an interesting conversation around cyborgism/body augmentation that I only wish could have been further explored. I’m keeping my eyes peeled for another book, hopefully a full novel or even series, in this world. So far as the plot itself, there were no huge surprises and several moments of suspicious convenience, but I didn’t mind because the characters and setting were such a blast.

On the surface, Local Star is a fast-paced, action packed adventure, full of conspiracies and twists and satisfyingly tropey scenes: Bonding with a gruff but ultimately (maybe) OK mechanic mentor! Horrible futuristic bureaucracies! Jailbreaks! Journeys through space station trash chutes! Zero Gravity Shenanigans! Near-death fakeouts! Within that adventure are a lot of satisfying trials and challenges that add depth to Triz and her world. The space station setting is comfortably familiar for the genre, but with enough flourishes of its own worldbuilding to make it feel distinctive, and Triz's marginalised upbringing and precarious current position gives us a unique perspective on its society, even as we see her move through the same spaces as Casne and her friends with little difficulty. The Cyberbionautic Alliance, or CeeBees, are a plausible, slightly two dimensional adversary force, but what makes them engaging is Triz's own prejudices against almost any form of cyborg body modification as a result of their existence. That's a challenging prejudice to hold when one of your girlfriends is trans and most of your friends are in the military and prone to serious injuries that require advanced prosthetics, and over the course of the novella we see her worldview evolve to something less absolute.

The novella's blurb and marketing puts polyamory at the centre of its description, and the different character relationships - particularly Triz, Casne and Nantha and Casne's parents, who are in a quad marriage - do a lot of work in relatively little space to show us how this works in practice, and what romance and family look like in a world where polyamory is the norm. As an orphan "guttergirl" who owes her current position to Casne's family (her position at the wrenchworks involves working with Casne's meanest and least emotionally open parent), Triz is constantly aware of the power inequalities between herself and Casne and Nantha, who had more privileged upbringings and went to the same flight school before they knew her, entering their shared romantic relationship with a bunch of history and shared experience that Triz is left out of. Instead of glossing over this dynamic, we are made aware that the characters ideally want to form a quad like Casne's parents, with a fourth person who would shift the balance of the relationship. That all of the characters approach this with openness and acceptance makes Local Star's romance elements really pleasant to read, and while Triz and Kalo's dynamic starts off painfully awkward, their bickering soon smooths into a fun adversarial dynamic - complete with a lot of learning about the others' background that apparently didn't happen during their first fling. I struggled to get a sense of what Triz and Kalo's first relationship would have been like just from their dynamic here, but their adventures together make the eventual end pairing a satisfying conclusion.

Local Star is a romp of a novella, and as such it offers few outright surprises, but its conspiratorial, mystery elements very much work as intended and it deploys its tropes very well. More than that, it's a great example of balancing effective worldbuilding, character beats and an action packed plot at a tasty novella length. Definitely one for sci fi romance fans to look out for!

Three of my favorite sentences in this book were:

"Good almost-morning. Good I-survived-flight-academy-and-I-still-don't-think-people-should-be-up-this-early-o'clock."

"He was half man and half precarious quantum state teetering on the edge of collapse."

And:

"There would be time to work over the engine of that relationship. And to consign it to the recycler if necessary, too."

I liked the polyamory relationships even if they weren't as fleshed out as I wished, but then multi-partner relationships is one of the aspects I consider really interesting in sci-fi and I can't read enough of it. I also liked the multi-layered characters and the flawed main characters.

3.75 stars. It started out slow, I wasn’t sure I liked the main character, but then the pace picked up and there were some truly beautiful lines. I’m not sure I understand what went wrong with Kalo and Triz or what the problem was or then how they fixed it, but it was obvious they would. The intrigue was good and the conflict surrounding the CeeBees and body mods in general was interesting and given just enough depth.

A confusing but fun read

When Triz's friend Casne is falsely accused of a crime, Triz and her ex Kalo will have to work together in order to save Casne. But things won't go as planned and their journey will turn out more dangerous than intended...

I don't know what to say about this book to be honest. It's a fun and quick read, and maybe it is too quick because I can't seem to remember what happened. What I know is that I liked Triz. She's fun to follow and will stop at nothing to save her friend which is beautiful. I liked the tension between her and Kalo as well. But the first few chapters - meaning half the book - had me really confused. The world building was too quick and intense and I had trouble keeping track of who was who and what was going on. But once I was into it, it was okay. Not tremendous, but fun I'd say. My heart did a few backflips because some events were a little stressful and surprising. The writing was okay as well but not particularly memorable. In fact, that's what I could say about this book. It's fun and cool, but not really amazing or fantastic. It's okay and bonus point for the polyamorous rep that was very well put into it.

If you like space opera and want a quick read, you should give this one a try I guess!

"We're family, you know that, don't you?"

Blasts off at speed & takes you on a ride with a lively, tightly packed crew. This book has a lovely spirit, and creates a vivid world.

the story was fun but pretty basic, i enjoyed the characters very much and i specially liked how casually queer they were. The world building was sometimes confusing, as there was many technical terms to keep track of, but i still really enjoyed the world!

It was a little hard to understand some of the lingo, but it was a cool poly story and gays in space is a favorite trope of mine, so I muddled through! I liked the characters and the science a lot. #NetGalley #LocalStar

2.5/5

local star is an interesting and quick sci fi novella that is begging to be made into a longer book— or even a series.

i wanted to like this book so much more than i actually did. i really struggled at the beginning to understand what was going on with all the terminology, and even was unclear with some of the words at the end of the story. (i didn't realize there was a glossary until i reached it). while i do appreciate being thrown into the story, it felt like i was a little TOO thrown in, and i struggled to follow what was being said since so much was mechanical. meaning that it wasn't really important to the story, just triz's job.

i also wanted so much more background on the characters and cultures of this universe. while i ended up with an idea of what was going on by the end, i wanted a more in-depth exploration, because i think it really is incredibly interesting. i wanted to see more of what made this world work and actually SEE more of the relationships between the characters. i'm not sure if i ever entirely bought the relationships, although i very much wanted to.

also as a tiny note, i was disappointed that (if my memory is correct), all the explicitly trans and nonbinary characters were so minor. the fact that we never see nantha onscreen was such a disappointment—it felt like she really should have been an important character as well. i also wish that there had been MORE of the polyamorous aspect in this book, since romance really was on the backburner of this novella in my opinion.

really, i just wanted this story to be longer and take its time to develop the world, the characters, and the relationships. i think there's something really good here, but it ended up being rushed and slightly hard for me to understand with one read. i ended up rounding up to 3 stars because it stuck with me, and i kept thinking about the characters afterward, because i really wanted to know more.

Thank you to NetGalley and Interstellar Flight Press for an eARC of this title.

There are a lot of things I loved about this story. For one, I loved that it was a queernorm world where polyamorous relationships are the norm. I love this because we have characters with multiple different sexualities and pronouns. I loved the variety and how all pronouns and relationships were completely accepted. I love stories where there is no questioning of sexualities, identities, and relationships. It makes them so incredibly welcoming and nice.

I really liked the dynamics between the characters. They were all varied and they all had complicated pasts and interactions. It was very nice to see characters that were complicated and flawed and relatable. I think that it made the plot more interesting because the pasts and interactions between characters impacted how they handled the twists and turns within the story.

I overall enjoyed the story. I think the plot was ended and cleaned up a little bit quickly, but other than that I really enjoyed it. It was fun and exciting. I would definitely recommend this title!

A nice, pacey little space opera. Thumbs-up for the fascinating polyamouous world created by Aimee Ogden, and the many queer characters. Would love to read more in this universe.

(Review copy from NetGalley)

Local Star was a decent read, but one that takes too long to get going and tries to do too much for such a short novella. I loved what Aimee Ogden did with queer, polyamorous relationships, even if the focal romance is hetero. The characters never have time to develop, though, making it hard to care about their struggles.

The sci-fi aspects, however, are where the story suffered most for me. There's a lot of introductory world-building that's never really explored, and the space opera potential is never realized. There's some interesting discussion about body modification, but even that's more focused on humanity and ethics than technology.

I feel like there's a solid novel laying beneath Local Star, but the story needs to be twice as long to do it justice.

This was a fun, queer adventure. I liked that polyamorous relationships were the norm in society - this made for more complex and interesting relationships. Some of the sci-fi terms were a lot to get your head around, so it would have been to good to have the glossary at the beginning so I’d known it was there.

*I received an eARC via Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.*

Local Star is a fast-paced sci-fi novella that I had such a fun time reading! Ogden is really able to pack the world-building in (and provides a glossary at the back, which was quite helpful).

Set in the middle of a galactic war between the Cyberbionautic Alliance (Ceebees) and the Confederated Worlds, Triz is a mechanic with a lot of self-worth issues and fear of open space. She's hoping to spend the weekend celebrating with her partner, Casne, but her plans are spoiled when Casne, a pilot, is accused of war crimes and Triz has to partner with her ex, Kalo, to help clear her name.

I thought the three main characters were well fleshed out and I loved to see their interactions with each other. I loved exploring Triz's background and how that impacted her self-worth and her relationships with Casne (and Casne's quad parents) and Kalo. That being said, it never felt like there were real stakes with Casne's arrest because it was so unbelievable that she was guilty, which made it a little confusing that one of her quadparents was so quick to believe that she was guilty.

I loved the casual lack of heteronormativity and the use of genderless pronouns in this world, but I think I was expecting a bit more on the polyamory side. As a whole though, I thought this novella was a fun time and I would definitely read more set in this world if Ogden writes it!

When I heard there was a queer space opera on NetGalley, I jumped at a chance to get an ARC.

There was a ton of intriguing sci-fi worldbuilding for a novella, with a set up for polyamorous families and queernorm practices. There's not a single mention or even hint of homophobia, which makes it a lovely escapist read for queer readers.

The crux of the plot was around supposed war crimes committed by one of the MC's romantic interests. Admittedly, there was never any doubt that she actually did what she was accused of. But I've rarely read a book that doesn't make it clear it was a frame job and I was intrigued at exactly who did it... even if the reveal was a little underwhelming.

The crux of the action was properly dramatic and dire, with injuries that made the giant Thing That Must Be Done all the more challenging. It was fast paced and kept my attention through to the end. I do enjoy a good flight through space in a ship that's not entirely repaired and could fall apart.

The biggest reason for the 3 star rating was my struggle with the book's length. It felt much, much too short. There was a lot of worldbuilding for such a small book, presenting you with a lot of things without exploring it. I never really got a feel for the villains or the war they were in, because there just wasn't enough time to dwell on it. Triz also had a lot of personal character arcs for a novella. There was her overcoming her personal bigotry towards biologically modded people, struggling with her sense of belonging in the quad family, and rekindling an old relationship on top of maintaining a current relationship with her partner, all on top of dealing with the plot proper. It was just too much to be properly explored in under 200 pages. I loved all the ideas in theory, but the execution was rushed.

With the sheer amount of worldbuilding, this isn't a great sci-fi for beginners. But it is a great pick for anyone that loves a queernorm world and action scenes.