These Burning Stars is a fascinating read that I highly recommend. It's a cat and mouse game across multiple years and planets with fascinating character dynamics and multiple plots and schemes. Jun and Chono are strong characters whose motivations are layered and slowly uncovered, but it is Esek Nightfoot that steals the show for me. Bombastic, chaotic, and deeply obsessive over a mysterious figure named Six. This book jumps between tenses and time periods, slowly exposing the political setup and conspiracies that lay the bedrock of this story, and fair warning, there are tough topics discussed such as genocide. However, it is the characters and their relationships that really made this book such a stellar read for me. Also, it has an interesting approach to gender and queerness that I appreciated.