BOUND BY STARS

Weslie Fleet travels on the maiden voyage of new luxury interplanetary starship The Boundless.

It’s 2212, and 17-year old Earther Weslie has won the Interplanetary Alliance Life Support Bot competition for her bot named ILSA, or Individualized Life Support Assistant unit 001. The prize is a first-class ticket on luxury starship The Boundless, scheduled to embark on its maiden voyage to Mars, a five-week trip. In this future, the elite live in a life-sustaining environment on Mars, while the lower classes mine the Earth for resources and work in factories. Weslie’s mother works for Dalloway Technologies, the sponsor of the bot contest. In a rush to the ship, Weslie crashes into Jupiter Dalloway, the young heir to the Dalloway company. Jupiter is only the heir because his older sister recently died, and he wants nothing to do with the company, preferring artistic pursuits to technological ones. On the voyage, the two are thrust together repeatedly, leading to ample romantic tension between them as they’re continuously at odds thanks to their vastly different backgrounds. Because she won the contest, Weslie is given a room on the first-class deck. She is shocked and disgusted by the extravagance of the wealthy Mars inhabitants while on Earth, she and her mother struggle to survive. She is looked down upon by the other first-class passengers, and is even questioned by staff more than once about what she’s doing in first class. As in James Cameron’s Titanic, the romantic lead can’t resist the tension despite their difference in class and the expectations of Jupiter’s family. Starling slips in many Titanic references, although the novel will still be thrilling to any who haven’t seen it. Starling manages to make a critique of classism romantic and thrilling, with high stakes and heavy swoons. Weslie and Jupiter are both assumed white, but the supporting cast is ethnically diverse.

Titanic-inspired romance set in space with thrilling action and social justice bent.