I loved Cold Welcome which was one of my favourite books of 2017 – see my review here, so I was really excited when this second book in the series was published.
When Admiral Kylara Vatta and a ship full of strangers were marooned on an inhospitable arctic island, they uncovered secrets that someone on Ky’s planet was ready to kill to keep hidden. Now, the existence of the mysterious arctic base has been revealed, but the organisation behind it still lurks in the shadows, doing all it can to silence her. It is up to the intrepid Ky to force the perpetrators into the light and uncover decades’ worth of secrets – some of which lie at the very heart of her family’s greatest tragedy.
If you haven’t yet had the pleasure of reading Cold Welcome, then I suggest you put this one on hold and track it down, because the story carries on almost seamlessly from that first adventure featuring Ky Vatta and the other hapless passengers who crashed into the sea with her. However, this story also includes a lot of the characters who featured in Moon’s previous series, Vatta’s War. As I have read all the books in this space opera adventure series, I was delighted to meet up with characters whom I regarded as old friends. Himself, who only read the first book, found he was floundering at bit at the start.
I found this story to be gripping and tension-filled as Ky finds herself once more in the middle of a mess of trouble. This time though, she is back home where she should feel safe. I really liked the fact that she was once more confronted with a situation where she didn’t know who to trust. Moon is very good at building the tension and providing an atmosphere of suspicion. It seems particularly hard on the poor souls who endured all sorts of hardships, while struggling to survive in desperate conditions, only also to face imprisonment where they are drugged into drooling helplessness.
One aspect I appreciated is that now she is back home, Ky finds she has to deal with her cousin, Stella. The two don’t particularly get on, mostly because they clashed a lot during their teens. The cliché would be that because they are Family and under threat, the two young women would suddenly pull together – and it was refreshing that Moon sidesteps that wornout trope and provides us with a more interesting and believable dynamic. The other main character who faces a crisis is Grace, who in theory, as Rector of the planet, should be well guarded and entirely capable of coping with any threat to her leadership. Events prove otherwise.
The story is fast-moving, with plenty going on. And unlike Cold Welcome, the viewpoint swings between a larger cast of main characters, both protagonists and villains. Moon is deft at quickly establishing sympathetic characters and making me care about what happens to them and I found myself caught up in the plot, reluctant to put the book down until I knew what happens next. Of course, with such a steady build-up in tension, the climax of the book has to really matter and Moon succeeds in producing plenty of action as both sides make their move. I thoroughly enjoyed this one and will be eagerly looking out for the next book in this engaging series. This is recommended for fans of science fiction thrillers – though ideally, you should first read the Vatta’s War series and Cold Welcome.
9/10
Brainfluff 