Eddy and Effie Lancaster are well-off, young, educated, and healthy fraternal twins in Mike Kupari’s novel “Twin Star.” They’re citizens of Albion Prime, a prosperous planet in the Interstellar Alliance. In their late 20s, they can make a comfortable life on Albion without much effort. Eddy is content with the life of a gentleman of leisure on this stodgy paradise of a planet.
Their uncle, Jacques “Jack” Arsenault-Lancaster, runs an import-export firm. He’s an immigrant who met the twins’ Aunt Abigail while visiting Albion, falling in love and marrying her. Before that, he spent his time knocking around the galaxy, both raiding and trading. He’s now semi-retired but keeps his hand in interstellar trading while remaining on Albion.
Uncle Jack makes the twins an offer that Effie jumps at, despite Eddy’s reluctance. Jack is embarking on an expedition to a largely unexplored planet, one believed to possess an unknown but sentient species.
A Chance to Explore
For Jack, it’s a last adventure before retiring. It offers a first-contact situation with a hitherto unknown alien race. It also offers risk. The first expedition to visit 500 years earlier returned without landing, reporting “difficulties.” The second, which departed a decade earlier, simply vanished.
Effie’s eagerness is uncomplicated. She’s devoted her life to exobiology. She’s completing a doctorate in alien biology, but the off-planet research expedition she proposed was turned down by Albion’s government. As the first off-planet scientific effort in decades, it was viewed as too expensive by the government. This is her chance to explore an unknown world.
Eddy’s reluctance is equally straightforward. He’s comfortable with the life he has. On the surface, Eddy seems like an outer-space Bertie Wooster. He even has his own Jeeves, in the form of valet Mason. However, Eddy and Mason are more like Dorothy Sayers’s Lord Peter and Bunter than P.G. Wodehouse’s Bertie and Jeeves.
Eddy isn’t afraid of the challenge. An off-planet excursion to a distant world simply isn’t on his bucket list. He’s also finally found a woman who interests him. A long expedition would interrupt that relationship.
The twins were orphaned as young children when their parents died in an accident. The same accident killed Uncle Jack’s wife, Abigail, and their Aunt Deirdre’s husband, David. Subsequently, Uncle Jack and Aunt Deirdre split the responsibility of raising the twins.
Eddy feels he owes Uncle Jack loyalty. Uncle Jack, with no children, also recruits his nephew with an eye to making him his heir, so Eddy can continue the import-export business after Jack dies. Eddy also knows he won’t be able to live with himself if something happens to his sister while he stays home. He finally agrees to go.
Setting Sail
Eddy, as Jack’s lieutenant, and Effie, as the science lead, soon learn that there’s more to the trip than meets the eye. Jack is an agent for Albion’s government, a cut-out for things requiring plausible deniability, including smuggling.
The ship they hire, the Vagabond, is registered with the Sentinel Stellar Union, a one-star independent polity that cooperates with the Alliance. Vagabond’s crew also serve as intelligence agents for its government, cooperating with Albion. The technology the expedition can uncover may enrich both planets.
The risks soon multiply. The Ordered Dominion of Man, a totalitarian, multi-stellar empire that’s a rival to the Alliance and hostile to the Sentinel Stellar Union, learns of the expedition. The expedition becomes a race to get there first.
Further complications develop when fears arise that the Cepheids might also have an interest in the system Jack plans to explore. Two centuries earlier, the Cepheids attacked human-occupied space in a war that penetrated the Solar System and savaged Earth and Mars, before the Cepheids abruptly withdrew.
Furthermore, upon arrival on the unexplored planet, they discover a threat to humanity that makes the hostility of the Dominion and Cepheids seem trivial. This mix yields a fast-paced adventure, where the actions of those aboard one spaceship could determine the future course of humanity, deciding whether humans will exist as individuals or appendages.
Kupari has written a book reminiscent of the science fiction of the 1950s and 1960s. It’s a tale that looks to the future with optimism, while acknowledging the risks and tradeoffs inherent in technology.
It affirms the individual, showing that people matter more than societal trends or abstract theories. It explores the price to be paid for a secure, safe life, while illustrating the risks and rewards of freedom and individuality.
It’s also a book about people, rather than technology. Readers watch the characters, especially Eddy and Effie, mature and grow as the plot unwinds. As they overcome adversity, the twins work their way through issues that have hindered their confidence. It also explores the willingness of people to make sacrifices for the right cause, even to giving the last full measure of devotion.
It ends with a satisfying conclusion, one which leaves readers pleased and wanting more. Best of all, there’s the possibility of a sequel, which readers can eagerly await.
‘Twin Star’
By Mike Kupari
Baen: April 7, 2026
Paperback, 480 pages
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