BVC Presents Cover Stories: A SEA OF STARS and TROUBLE

Maya Kaathryn Bohnhoff
June 4, 2025

Book View Café presents: Cover Stories

Greetings, genre fiction fans. Welcome to Cover Stories, in which an author shares a book, what’s on its cover, a hint of what’s inside and some insider info on their creation.

So, what’s the book of the day?

A SEA OF STARS and TROUBLE by Maya Kaathryn Bohnhoff

What’s on the cover?

The cover of SEA OF STARS and TROUBLE contains both subjects of the title: a sea of stars and Trouble Matthews.

Also on the cover, a blurb from the one and only Kevin J. Anderson, author of the award winning Climbing Olympus and The Trinity Paradox … oh, right—and all those DUNE sequels.

What’s inside the book?

“Who am I?” For some people, this is a philosophical question. For “Trouble” Matthews, it’s an existential one. And knowing the answer could be just as deadly as not knowing.

Ridley “Trouble” Matthews is a blank slate when he walks into the city of Porphyry on the planet of Herron’s Hope. All he has are the clothes on his back; all he knows of himself is his name … and that he’s running from something … or someone.

Shanghaied aboard the good ship Moonraker by smugglers, Trouble is swept up in a lethal blur of intrigue, piracy, and betrayal, complicated by his emergent memories and an array of seriously amped up physical and mental assets of which strength, quickness, and enhanced senses are just the tip of the iceberg.

The good news is, Trouble escapes Herron’s Hope. The bad news? His growing list of augmentations raises an urgent question: Did he do this to himself, or was it done to him … and why?

As he tries to peer deeper into his own memories, Trouble is less and less sure that he wants to know what sort of man he is or why his dreams are haunted by a child’s laughter.

Where’d all that come from?

The seeds of the novel were sown in a media tie-in I was asked to complete by my late, beloved writing partner and Jedi Master, Michael Reaves. The tie-in was canceled when the media failed to thrive, but Michael told me to keep my work and do whatever I wanted with it. A SEA OF STARS AND TROUBLE is the result.

I went way beyond “filing the serial numbers off” of the story and completely turned the main character and his story inside out and upside down. I originally planned on a three book trilogy, but some sage advice from an editor I much respect suggested I put all the action into a single, longer novel. (Thanks, Steve!)

The series was going to be the Pilgrimage Trilogy for Reasons, and the first book was going to be Pilgrim’s Passage. But no one could say the title without stumbling into Pilgrim’s Progress. My youngest daughter, Amanda, titled it “A Sea of Stars and Trouble” in homage Shakespeare’s “To be or not to be” soliloquy from Hamlet.

What have reviewers/readers said about SEA OF STARS and TROUBLE?

“A Sea of Stars and Trouble is a colorful and swashbuckling space adventure with clear, fast-paced writing and a rogues’ gallery of interesting characters.”

—Kevin J. Anderson, New York Times bestselling coauthor of Dune: House Atreides

“In A Sea of Stars and Trouble, Maya Kaathryn Bohnhoff takes us on a grand space opera ride, with a shanghaied hero who might or might not be a hero, who doesn’t know, himself—really doesn’t know himself—until he’s put to the test. Who is he? What’s he capable of? Can he be trusted? It’s a smashing good ride, with an irrepressible spirit and enough twists and surprises to carry you straight through to the end.”

— Jeffrey A. Carver, author of The Chaos Chronicles

What else should I know?

There is a song that goes with the novel. The lyrics are included in the book. It’s simply entitled “Trouble” and it is on the album I Remember the Rain which my husband produced in our recording studio (Mystic Fig Studios, by name) and which we released in February of 2016. And, yes, that is me singing.

Naturally, the book will be available from my author page in the BookViewCafe online bookstore. AND there’s a shiny new paperback edition that you can purchase on Amazon.

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