Victoria’s day starts out like any other aboard the transorbital ship, Phoenix. Such is the life of an emergency medicine specialist in the age of “post-discovery”. Sure, she had always dreamed of interacting with intelligent extraterrestrial life- the real thing, not those microbes on distant moons. Who wouldn’t? She was still happy with her career, however mundane and demanding it might be. That’s what it took to run a ship the size of a small city smoothly. Monotony. But all that changes one morning, and suddenly she’s not so sure she didn’t stick her foot in it…
Be careful what you wish for.
***
Escape had been their only drive, and even death was preferable to the alternative. But they never thought their flight for freedom would put them in an uncharted system. Forced to interact with an isolated world and its inferior, albeit curious people. When it affords them an unforseen and unprecedented opportunity to take back their world from those who seek to destroy them, however, Aderus begins to wonder if it wasn’t fate. Earth’s proposal is shocking and uncomfortable for a fierce, independent race that relishes in their solitude. But the more he learns of humans, the more he comes to admire and respect them. One, in particular.
Saving Askara
Interesting aliens in that they are more technologically advanced, yet socially very unstructured. As a group of escapees, they have no captain, and the hero is appointed the leader for diplomacy but has zero interest in it besides getting what he wants. I would have liked to see him embrace it a little more as the story went on.
This ended on a cliffhanger, which is unusual for romance. I understand that 400 pages might have been too much for one book, but it may have been a better call to combine the two books and simplify the plot some to one 350 page work. I wanted more of an emotional arc in this on its own.
Chasing Earth
I think this may not have been a good choice to split the book in two — or that there was more needed in this book to match the first. This was novella length, and I was surprised when the ending hit, which is not what you want your reader to feel. I think it would have been better to make the last chapter an epilogue instead, to help cue the ending, rather than just noticing a shift in POV.
The heroine comes off as a bit of an oblivious ditz, and gets mad at the hero for not telling her things that either he didn’t know or she should have been able to surmise.
Spanning Worlds
The couple was cute. Their relationship seemed to happen quickly, but that was fine. There were mostly external forces keeping them apart — emotional growth happened for the hero but it didn’t seem to be a major blocker.
This set up a lot of mysteries, so hopefully there will be more books to resolve some of the worldbuilding questions.
Nice cover.
One reply on “Read Saving Askara Books 1-3”
This Article was mentioned on tracydurnell.com