For fans of Firefly's found family and The Expanse's factions in conflict, KIN SHIP: String of Stars is a character-driven, hopeful space opera about the crew whom a powerful, ancient ship chose to call kin.
Salvage ship Captain Oren Jandt spent eleven months alone in the dark between the stars, collecting ancient artifacts in a losing race against grief. He finally decides to put a crew together aboard the Lucky Seven and chase a very promising salvage lead.
Then he and his newly recruited crew of outcasts make a life-changing discovery. Sleeping inside an asteroid in pirate-infested border space is a 1.37-kilometer Progenitor ship, ancient beyond reckoning, stirring back to life. She scans the crew to their very bones. And, as a pirate ship closes to attack Lucky Seven, she sends them a single word.
Kin?
Jandt answers "Kin," and the giant ship destroys the pirate vessel in an instant.
Now every faction in the known galaxy wants Zoh — the authoritarian Corp, the reptilian Tingur, the caniform Xicans. And one of them is willing to kill to get control of Zoh.
And aboard the
Lucky Seven a grief-stricken captain, a sensor officer who can detect every lie, a wisecracking pilot who cares deeply about his shipmates, a security officer with NEVER RELENT tattooed on her knuckles, and a robot physician who is about to discover what it means to become truly sentient — must survive long enough to find out why the ancient ship woke up. And what she needs from them.
Because Zoh has been lonely for a very long time. And she did not choose them by accident.
In the tradition of Lois McMaster Bujold and Becky Chambers — a found family space opera with real stakes and no grimdark.
Book One of the four-book KIN SHIP series.
