Gravity of a Distant Sun

Stearns concludes her Shieldrunner Pirates trilogy with this action-packed but emotionally vacant space opera. Space pirates Adda Karpe and her nonbinary lover and coconspirator Iridian Nassir are on the run from artificial intelligence and the government following the betrayal of their leader, Captain Sloane, in Mutiny at Vesta. After an artificial intelligence tricks Adda into trying to hurt Iridian, she wakes in a government-controlled hospital with brain damage. Meanwhile, Iridian is arrested for the crimes they committed with Adda and meets a few familiar faces in prison. Communicating via a psychic link, Iridian and Adda plot to reunite by jumping solar systems using an interstellar bridge, but they’ll have to fight mind control and escape government facilities to get there. Stearns’s writing is cinematic and packed with plenty of drama, but the characters take a backseat to the plot, and it’s difficult to invest in their love story when they spend so much of the book apart. Readers will enjoy the propulsive storytelling and many daring escapes but yearn for a stronger connection to the heroines. Agent: Hannah Bowman, Liza Dawson Assoc. (Feb.)