I just finished reading Like Stars in Heaven, book three of Eric Thompson’s Sibohan Dunmoore series.

This is the sci-fi I live for, ladies and gentlemen. I loved everything about this book. I stayed up until 3am on a work night reading the climax, and then was awake until 4am thinking about it. I am exhausted this morning, with absolutely no regrets.

Despite the last book in the series seemingly setting up an overarching plot for subsequent books, Like Stars in Heaven immediately decides to hare off in a completely different direction. Instead of following the conspiracy-and-coup plot, we instead get a lost colony plot, with the sailors of the Stingray escorting a diplomat outside of Commonwealth space to try and find the origins of a probe from a long-lost cold-sleep colony ship that launched four hundred years ago. What they find out there turns out to be way, way worse than expected, and I was there for every page of it.

Spoilers follow. Don’t read the following paragraph if you’ve already decided you’re going to read the book.

FIghting alien empires is something I’ve seen a lot of, and while I enjoy it I honestly don’t get super invested in the conflict. This book, however, gives us a good old-fashioned human authoritarian state, with all the xenophobia and fascism our unfortunate history can muster, which is a villain that I love to hate. The interactions between the Commonwealth envoy and the Dominion that they find in deep space are tense–you know eventually the damned fascists are going to do something unreasonable, because 1) they’re fascists, and 2) they don’t realize the actual power of what they’re fucking with. You keep seeing more and more horrible things, waiting for that moment of catharsis when the Stingray and its crew can finally start flexing on these people, and when the climax comes it’s the best feeling in the world.

This is my favorite kind of sci-fi. I love seeing authoritarian regimes get torn to pieces, and I love first contact stories, and this book is both. Thompson might as well have written it with me in mind. I’m a little disappointed that the end suggests that the whole mission gets classified, and we might not see more of this weird corner of space in the future, but hey, this series keeps surprising me so maybe book four or five will drop back in on these fascist weirdos and we can see how that revolution is coming along.

Based on the epilogue, the next book is also going to be going in a completely unexpected direction. And man, I’m really looking forward to it.

I’m so happy there are six books in this series.