Science Fantasy and the Joy of Genre-Braiding: Review of Jesse Aragon’s The Demon Star

Martin Cahill Under Review:The Demon Star. Jesse Aragon. DAW, July 2026. Science fantasy is tough to get right. Right has multiple meanings, but in this instance I mean: crafting a story where these two specific genres are not only braided together, but have melded on a literary-genetic level to become something else entirely; two disparate genres woven together so beautifully that the result is something distinct. The result we’re discussing today? Jesse Aragon’s debut The Demon Star. Melding high-tech and the supernatural, Aragon’s first novel is a thrilling beast of its own, and successfully offers something that the field is in desperate need of: a bold and new direction of storytelling. The people of Zivora live at the mercy of their gods, six powerful beings who arrived from the black of space with the ability to control the light of the sun itself. By their decree, when the sun goes dark, the people of Zivora are harvested at random as a sacrifice to these deities. And Jacen,…