Fantasy• Sci-Fi

Review: A Stellar Spy by Maya Darjani

November 10, 2025

Synopsis:

Devoted mother and career woman.
A sleeper agent, poised to act.
Tessa lives a double life.
She’s the security counselor to Finn, the leader of the planet.
He’s her ex-husband and father of her children.
She’s still in love with him.But she has a far worse problem.

Tessa is also a deep cover operative for an enemy planet, and turns out, her next mission is to betray him. After overpowered mages target and attack the seat of government, Finn wants to remove their magic completely—a brutal action Tessa can’t support. So she does the only thing she can do: she contacts her handler. But every action she takes increases the chance of discovery. If caught, she can’t protect the mages from retaliation or prevent future attacks against Finn and the children. And when her two roles collide, she must choose: fail her family, or forsake her ideals.

Review:

A spy novel, that takes place in space (on another planet) and has magic in it. Sounded like a unique mix and was what got me interested in the book to begin with.

We meet Tessa, who is still working for / with her Ex-Husband Finn while managing a demanding job and being a good mother for their children. On Rulani people get chipped to be registered so they cannot misuse their magic unregulated. A subject not everyone agrees one Tessa and Finn are on opposite sides of the spectrum.

When an attack happens, the Premier wants to implement a project that would take care of the attackers by taking away the magic and control everyone’s life even more, which results in various arguments between her and Finn. Tessa does not agree with the actions of a view resulting in enforcing a limitation on everyone.

Tessa originally came to Rulani as a spy to infiltrate and ended up falling in love with Finn and having a family. The recent events make her go back to her original roots and she wants to stop Finn’s plan.
What I enjoyed most was Tessa trying to be a good mother while struggling with her role of being a spy. The overall story presented a well mixing political intrigue with personal drama.

What began as something novel, ended up becoming more about betrayal and a rather typical spy story around the middle of the book. While still interesting, it lost me a bit here. I also wanted to know more about her original planet, other planets and why we have such a dilemma. Hopefully, this will be covered in the future. Overall an interesting story, that had a bit of an identify crisis in the middle but set the stage for building on that at the end.

🌙 Recension: A Stellar Spy (Children of Gaia #1) by Maya Darjani
📚 Genre: Sci-Fi & Fantasy
📅 Release Date: November 12, 2025
📗 available in: various formats
📱 Read as: Kindle
💸 I received an advance review copy for free, and I am leaving this review voluntarily.
🗣️ Language: English
📆 Pages: 316
⭐️ 3.75/5