Wed, 31 Dec 2025 21:27:00 -0700

Review: This Brutal Moon, by Bethany Jacobs

Series: | Kindom Trilogy #3
Publisher: | Orbit
Copyright: | December 2025
ISBN: | 0-316-46373-6
Format: | Kindle
Pages: | 497

This Brutal Moon is a science fiction thriller with bits of cyberpunk and space opera. It concludes the trilogy begun with These Burning Stars. The three books tell one story in three volumes, and ideally you would read all three in close succession.

There is a massive twist in the first book that I am still not trying to spoil, so please forgive some vague description.

At the conclusion of These Burning Stars, Jacobs had moved a lot of pieces into position, but it was not yet clear to me where the plot was going, or even if it would come to a solid ending in three volumes as promised by the series title. It does. This Brutal Moon opens with some of the political maneuvering that characterized These Burning Stars, but once things start happening, the reader gets all of the action they could wish for and then some.

I am pleased to report that, at least as far as I'm concerned, Jacobs nails the ending. Not only is it deeply satisfying, the characterization in this book is so good, and adds so smoothly to the characterization of the previous books, that I saw the whole series in a new light. I thought this was one of the best science fiction series finales I've ever read. Take that with a grain of salt, since some of those reasons are specific to me and the mood I was in when I read it, but this is fantastic stuff.

There is a lot of action at the climax of this book, split across at least four vantage points and linked in a grand strategy with chaotic surprises. I kept all of the pieces straight and understood how they were linked thanks to Jacobs's clear narration, which is impressive given the number of pieces in motion. That's not the heart of this book, though. The action climax is payoff for the readers who want to see some ass-kicking, and it does contain some moving and memorable moments, but it relies on some questionable villain behavior and a convenient plot device introduced only in this volume. The action-thriller payoff is competent but not, I think, outstanding.

What put this book into a category of its own were the characters, and specifically how Jacobs assembles sweeping political consequences from characters who, each alone, would never have brought about such a thing, and in some cases had little desire for it.

Looking back on the trilogy, I think Jacobs has captured, among all of the violence and action-movie combat and space-opera politics, the understanding that political upheaval is a relay race. The people who have the personalities to start it don't have the personality required to nurture it or supply it, and those who can end it are yet again different. This series is a fascinating catalog of political actors — the instigator, the idealist, the pragmatist, the soldier, the one who supports her friends, and several varieties and intensities of leaders — and it respects all of them without anointing any of them as the One True Revolutionary. The characters are larger than life, yes, and this series isn't going to win awards for gritty realism, but it's saying something satisfyingly complex about where we find courage and how a cause is pushed forward by different people with different skills and emotions at different points in time. Sometimes accidentally, and often in entirely unexpected ways.

As before, the main story is interwoven with flashbacks. This time, we finally see the full story of the destruction of the moon of Jeve. The reader has known about this since the first volume, but Jacobs has a few more secrets to show (including, I will admit, setting up a plot device) and some pointed commentary on resource extraction economies. I think this part of the book was a bit obviously constructed, although the characterization was great and the visible junction points of the plot didn't stop me from enjoying the thrill when the pieces came together.

But the best part of this book was the fact there was 10% of it left after the climax. Jacobs wrote an actual denouement, and it was everything I wanted and then some. We get proper story conclusions for each of the characters, several powerful emotional gut punches, some remarkably subtle and thoughtful discussion of political construction for a series that tended more towards space-opera action, and a conclusion for the primary series relationship that may not be to every reader's taste but was utterly, perfectly, beautifully correct for mine. I spent a whole lot of the last fifty pages of this book trying not to cry, in the best way.

The character evolution over the course of this series is simply superb. Each character ages like fine wine, developing more depth, more nuance, but without merging. They become more themselves, which is an impressive feat across at least four very different major characters. You can see the vulnerabilities and know what put them there, you can see the strengths they developed to compensate, and you can see why they need the support the other characters provide. And each of them is so delightfully different.

This was so good. This was so precisely the type of story that I was in the mood for, with just the type of tenderness for its characters that I wanted, that I am certain I am not objective about it. It will be one of those books where other people will complain about flaws that I didn't see or didn't care about because it was doing the things I wanted from it so perfectly. It's so good that it elevated the entire trilogy; the journey was so worth the ending.

I'm afraid this review will be less than helpful because it's mostly nonspecific raving. This series is such a spoiler minefield that I'd need a full spoiler review to be specific, but my reaction is so driven by emotion that I'm not sure that would help if the characters didn't strike you the way that they struck me. I think the best advice I can offer is to say that if you liked the emotional tone of the end of These Burning Stars (not the big plot twist, the character reaction to the political goal that you learn drove the plot), stick with the series, because that's a sign of the questions Jacobs is asking. If you didn't like the characters at the end (not the middle) of the first novel, bail out, because you're going to get a lot more of that.

Highly, highly recommended, and the best thing I've read all year, with the caveats that you should read the content notes, and that some people are going to bounce off this series because it's too intense and melodramatic. That intensity will not let up, so if that's not what you're in the mood for, wait on this trilogy until you are.

Content notes: Graphic violence, torture, mentions of off-screen child sexual assault, a graphic corpse, and a whole lot of trauma.

One somewhat grumbly postscript: This is the sort of book where I need to not read other people's reviews because I'll get too defensive of it (it's just a book I liked!). But there is one bit of review commentary I've seen about the trilogy that annoys me enough I have to mention it. Other reviewers seem to be latching on to the Jeveni (an ethnic group in the trilogy) as Space Jews and then having various feelings about that.

I can see some parallels, I'm not going to say that it's completely wrong, but I also beg people to read about a fictional oppressed ethnic and religious minority and not immediately think "oh, they must be stand-ins for Jews." That's kind of weird? And people from the US, in particular, perhaps should not read a story about an ethnic group enslaved due to their productive skill and economic value and think "they must be analogous to Jews, there are no other possible parallels here." There are a lot of other comparisons that can be made, including to the commonalities between the methods many different oppressed minorities have used to survive and preserve their culture.

Rating: 10 out of 10