The Stars Within — Stefan Petrucha

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.