--- title: "Voyage of the Salamander: The Independent Space Opera That Just Won Three BookFest 2026 Awards" description: Christian Hurst writes his Lily Starling novels on evenings and weekends, between a day job in advertising and a house full of rescue beagles. This month one... author: Darie Nani (Editor-in-Chief) date: 2026-04-20T12:32:55.720Z updated: 2026-06-29T08:43:58.400Z canonical: https://richwoman.co/article/voyage-of-the-salamander-bookfest-2026-awards image: https://cdn.nanimediahouse.com/lily-starling-featured-1.webp categories: Fiction content_type: Profile publication: Rich Books schema_type: Review about: - type: Person name: Christian Hurst description: "Christian Hurst is an independent science fiction author and Creative Director based in Meadville, Pennsylvania. His Lily Starling series is a young adult space opera saga that swept three categories at the BookFest 2026 awards: Sci-Fi Space Opera, Young Adult Sci-Fi, and LGBTQ+ Sci-Fi." url: https://churstpublishing.com sameAs: - https://churstpublishing.com - https://christianhurst.substack.com - https://www.instagram.com/churstpublishing - https://www.tiktok.com/@churstpublishing - https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/54551541.Christian_Hurst review: bestRating: 5 --- Somewhere in Western Pennsylvania, in between a day spent as a Creative Director in advertising and the evening chaos of a house shared with his wife, his son, and three rescue beagles, Christian Hurst sits down and writes science fiction. He has been doing it for years, quietly, without an agent, without a big publisher, without the kind of marketing budget that lands a debut novelist on the tables at the front of a bookshop. He publishes his novels himself, and through a small Pittsburgh press called Outpost Books, and he tells his story through a Substack, a newsletter, and an Instagram feed that cares more about the world of his characters than it does about self-promotion. Earlier this month, the first book in his Lily Starling series, *Voyage of the Salamander*, took First Place in three separate categories at the BookFest 2026 awards. Sci-Fi Space Opera. Young Adult Sci-Fi. LGBTQ+ Sci-Fi. Three different juries, each reading for a different community, all reading the same novel, all deciding it was the best on their shelf. If you have never heard of Christian Hurst, you are about to. And if you are looking for the kind of novel you can curl up with on a Sunday afternoon and still be thinking about on Wednesday morning, this is the one. ### Book: Lily Starling and the Voyage of the Salamander *Book 1 in the Lily Starling Series* By Christian Hurst A seventeen-year-old girl wakes in a city she does not recognise with no memory and a metal tag engraved with the name Lily Starling. Recruited onto the SFS Salamander, a Union starship at war with the psionic Krythar Ascendancy, she discovers that her parents engineered her DNA as a weapon and that the only people she can trust are the crew who slowly become her found family. The first novel in Christian Hurst's young adult space opera series, winner of three First Place categories at the BookFest 2026 awards. [Amazon (Hardcover)](https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0DYRG7GDJ) ## A character-driven space opera with one of the warmest young heroines in science fiction You meet Lily Starling in the first pages, and she hooks you immediately. She has woken up in a city she does not recognise, with no memory, no family, no history. All she has is a metal tag engraved with her own name and a faint sense that she has just turned seventeen. A few chapters later, she is on a Union starship called the Salamander, listening to its captain explain that her parents were scientists, that they engineered her DNA as a psionic weapon, and that the reason she exists at all is to help stop an alien empire called the Krythar Ascendancy from winning an interstellar war. It is, objectively, a lot. Lily, characteristically, takes it with a small sigh and a self-deprecating joke. Her voice is the soul of this book. She narrates in the first person, and the tone is warm, wry, a little nervous, almost always self-aware. "I'm about seventy-five percent sure this is really happening," she tells you in the opening pages. "The other twenty-five percent? That's reserved for the possibility that I've completely lost my mind. Honestly, not ruling it out." She is seventeen in the way the best young heroines in fiction are seventeen: old enough to carry the weight of what is being asked of her, young enough to be frightened by it, smart enough to know exactly how absurd her life has become. You spend four hundred pages inside her head, and by the end of the novel you would follow her anywhere. ## Found family books at their very best The real reason to pick this novel up, though, is the crew. Christian Hurst has written one of the most affectionate fictional crews in contemporary science fiction, and watching Lily find her place among them is the heart of the book. There is Captain Griff Calan, all silver-haired charm and quiet ceremony, who collects hats and monologues fondly about salamander biology whenever he is about to deliver news he does not want to share. There is Caris, the no-nonsense senior officer who tells Lily, very quietly, that she lost her own parents at the same age, and then changes the subject before either of them has to linger on it. There is Doctor Thesari, the Cyntharian medic whose calm precision cracks only when the data she is holding says something the rest of the room is not ready for. There is Datch, the synthetic officer whose deadpan "miracles are not within my programming, however, I will endeavor to assist" is the kind of line you read aloud to someone else in the room just because. There is Malik, who fights through injury and will not, under any circumstances, admit when praise lands. There is Alrek, the bright young engineer still learning what his psionic abilities mean. There is Rhyder, a smuggler with a crooked grin who turns up uninvited and proceeds to make himself indispensable. By the final chapter, Lily is writing in her log about "the crew, my found family", and you feel it. Not because the author has told you to feel it, but because you have watched it happen, scene by scene, over the course of the book. The meals in the mess hall. The late-night conversations at dimmed consoles. The quiet embrace on a shuttle bay after a mission that should not have survived. This is found family fiction of the richest kind, and if you have ever fallen for the crew of *Firefly*, the Rocinante in *The Expanse*, or the *Wayfarer* in Becky Chambers' series, you will find another ship to love here. ## Why The BookFest awards crossed three categories at once [The BookFest](https://richbooksmagazine.com/article/beyond-kaua-i-paradise-bookfest-making-space-for-women-s-literary-voices) is not a single, monolithic sci-fi prize. It is a juried awards programme produced twice a year by Black Chateau Enterprises, and the science fiction category is deliberately split into sub-genres so that specific kinds of readers can vote for specific kinds of books. Space Opera rewards scale, ambition, the grand sweep. Young Adult Sci-Fi rewards a young protagonist whose inner life genuinely drives the story. LGBTQ+ Sci-Fi rewards queer representation that feels organic and inhabited rather than ticked off a checklist. These are usually three different shelves, three different audiences, three different briefs. Hurst's novel satisfies all three at once, with no sense of compromise to any of them. The war with the Krythar is real and consequential, with fleets, weapons, stakes. The seventeen-year-old at the centre of the story is the engine of it, not a passenger on someone else's adventure. And the cast, quietly and without fanfare, includes queer characters who are simply people in the world, loved and loving and occasionally heartbroken, in exactly the way real people are. Hurst has been deliberate about that last choice. > "There's a natural secondary thread around how the series incorporates LGBTQ+ representation as part of the world rather than as a separate focus, just reflecting a broader, more inclusive vision of the future." > *Christian Hurst* That is what readers have been asking for from science fiction for years. A future in which queerness is part of everyday life. A future that looks, gently and without argument, like a better version of the present. The LGBTQ+ jury was voting for an author who had delivered exactly that. ## Books like The Expanse, written with a young heart If you have finished *The Expanse* and wondered what to read next, if you have given Becky Chambers' Wayfarers series to a friend and want another novel to press into their hands, this is that book. It is warmer than *The Expanse* and younger in voice than Chambers' work, but it sits unmistakably on the same shelf. Goodreads readers have given the Lily Starling series a 4.6 average across three books and two companion shorts, and the reviews are telling. They are not about the war, or the technology, or the worldbuilding. They are about Caris. About Datch. About the specific joy of a chapter set in the mess hall. About Lily's voice in your ear. Hurst himself describes the balance he set out to strike. > "The Lily Starling series was always intended to feel expansive in scope, dealing with things like time displacement, political systems, and large-scale conflict, but grounded in the emotional experience of the characters navigating those systems. That balance has been really important to me, especially in a genre that can sometimes lean more heavily into concepts than people." > *Christian Hurst* What he has produced is a space opera for readers who pick novels by how they make them feel. ## How Christian Hurst built the Lily Starling series, book by book The other story worth telling here is how a Creative Director in Meadville, Pennsylvania, ended up with three national awards on his mantelpiece. He did it the long, patient way. He published the first novel himself, through Christian Hurst Publishing, in 2025. He re-released it a year later in a second edition through Outpost Books, a small independent press in Pittsburgh. He designed the cover in-house with a collaborator, Max Young. He built his readership one email at a time, through [a Substack](https://christianhurst.substack.com), a newsletter, and an [Instagram feed](https://www.instagram.com/churstpublishing) that genuinely cares about the world he is writing about. By the time the BookFest jury was reading his work, the groundwork was already there. A first novel in its second edition. A second novel, *Lily Starling and the Storm Riders*, already out in the world. A third, *Lily Starling and the Death Machine*, set to release on April 30, just ten days after the awards. A related novella, *Love on Adius II*, for the readers who wanted more time in the universe. He has been writing the series the way the very best independent authors write them: patiently, book by book, trusting that good work finds its audience if you give it enough time. *Storm Riders* is on the shelf beside *Voyage of the Salamander*, and *Death Machine* arrives at the end of the month. For readers who want more time in the universe between novels, there is the companion novella *Love on Adius II*. If you are looking for something to slip into your bag for a weekend away, or to wrap up as a thoughtful gift for a reader you love, this is the series to pick. ### The Lily Starling series so far - [Lily Starling and the Voyage of the Salamander](https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0DYRG7GDJ) by Christian Hurst - [Lily Starling and the Storm Riders](https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0GJTT6RV5) by Christian Hurst - [Lily Starling and the Death Machine](https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0GNLJCHYH) by Christian Hurst - [Love on Adius II](https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0F7FWKZ6P) by Christian Hurst **About Christian Hurst** Christian Hurst is an independent science fiction author and Creative Director based in Meadville, Pennsylvania. His Lily Starling series is a young adult space opera saga that swept three categories at the BookFest 2026 awards: Sci-Fi Space Opera, Young Adult Sci-Fi, and LGBTQ+ Sci-Fi. [Website](https://churstpublishing.com) ## FAQ **Q: What are The BookFest book awards?** The BookFest is a juried book awards programme produced twice a year by Black Chateau Enterprises in partnership with Books That Make You. It runs spring and fall award cycles and is open to both traditionally published and independently published authors. Categories are split into specific sub-genres across fiction, non-fiction, and children's writing, with the science fiction category divided into Space Opera, Young Adult Sci-Fi, LGBTQ+ Sci-Fi, and others. Winners receive marketing exposure including inclusion at the LA Times Festival of Books and a Nasdaq Times Square billboard placement. **Q: What is "Lily Starling and the Voyage of the Salamander" about?** It is the first novel in Christian Hurst's young adult science fiction series. A seventeen-year-old girl wakes in an unfamiliar city with no memory and a metal tag engraved with the name Lily Starling. She is recruited onto a Union starship called the Salamander to help stop an alien empire that has sent a weapon back through time. The novel follows her as she discovers who she is, who built her, and what the crew of the Salamander slowly become to her. **Q: What other books are similar to The Expanse for character-driven space opera readers?** Becky Chambers' Wayfarers series, beginning with *The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet*, is the closest comparison for found-family ship dynamics. Christian Hurst's Lily Starling series is the most recent independent addition to the same lane, with a young adult accessible voice and inclusive worldbuilding. Fans of the cult television series *Firefly* will recognise the ensemble feel across all three. **Q: When does the next Lily Starling book come out?** *Lily Starling and the Death Machine*, the third novel in the series, is scheduled for release on April 30, 2026. The second novel, *Lily Starling and the Storm Riders*, is already available.