Title: Star Mother
Author: Charlie N. Holmberg
Publisher: 47North
Genre: Fantasy
Year Published: 2021
Reviewed by Liz Busby
While this is still at its heart a fantasy romance (a genre that Holmberg excels in), the book went above and beyond the typical genre tropes to focus more on the nature of divinity and the protagonist’s own motivations. Reading this as a scholar of Mormonism in speculative fiction, I see lots in the worldbuilding that points to the author’s LDS background.
The description of the protagonist’s heavenly pregnancy takes seriously the idea of heavenly procreation that’s deeply implied in LDS theology about Heavenly Mother, both in a positive and negative light. (And yes, there is a sort of heavenly polygyny going on, but not the way you might expect.) Although Ceris has given up a lot to become a mother, she doesn’t resent her choice because she sees the beauty in giving life to another person. The way the protagonist finds meaning in motherhood feels deeply Mormon to me.
After the plot twist (which is in the back cover copy, but I won’t spoil here) leaves the protagonist at a loss for meaning, she goes about recovering it in a very LDS way: family history, including a moment with a physical object representing her family tree that I would love to have a version of for my home. Star Mother takes the tropes of the mortals-interacting-with-gods fantasy and makes them its own by adding uniquely LDS doctrines, including the fact that the world building is set up for the gods to be bound to respect mortal agency. Though the ending was a bit confusing and abrupt, still, I think that this book is an excellent representation of how a secondary world fantasy can be thoroughly Mormon.