Aftershocks (The Palladium Wars #1) July 1 2019
by Marko Kloos
I am amazed by the depth of this book, It took me to places I did not expect. Reading about prisoners of war after a battle, when they have lost I did not know how empathetic it would be to look at those war criminals. This book looks into how the solar system (or any country) returns to normal after an all encompassing war. The losses on both sides were as steep as those in World War II. With the main characters on the front line. From the paper pushers to the military police, this book looks at the cost of war, and the desire to find retribution on both sides of the conflict. It is an enduring story that may change your mind about war, combatants and all the politics of war. Marko has brought to the forefront the idea that not every story is understood. Thank you for teaching me to see more then the headlines of a story. I hope to read the next book soon.

It offered a great story and concept about a Prisoner of War and other former war soldiers, the effects of everyone after the war had taken place, even the civilians of a future era. The Multiple Point of Views, characters, and the plots were well-developed. I was more engaged in Aden's and Idina's story than the rest. I love the different species and how they still don't like each other after the war, but Idina had warmed up to Gretians. I am eager to find out how this all turns out at the end. Overall, this series is definitely something I would want to continue reading.

Aden served as an intelligence officer in an ill advised war. Now after being released from prison, he must evolve. Aftershocks is an interesting tale about human prejudices. I await the sequel to this tale.

Loved this book. It was hard to out down once I got into it. I feel like the perfect number of characters were introduced to know them well yet not too many to get confused. I can't wait until the next book so I know what happens to them.

Aftershocks is the first in a new science fiction series by author Marko Kloos, who's mainly known for his Military Science Fiction series, Frontlines. I'm not a big fan of MilSci, but I've greatly enjoyed the Frontlines series, so I was excited to see Kloos branching out into different genres. Aftershocks is the first of that new series (titled "The Palladium Wars"), and while there are MilSci elements involved, the book is for the most part firmly in the Space Opera category.* It's also a more epic in scope than his Frontlines series - which is a bit more of a series about a single character despite the grander plot - and I was excited to see how Kloos would handle the shift.

*or maybe, "Epic Science Fiction?" since a good deal of it takes place on planets? Whatever, you get the point.*

And well, the answer is of course: pretty well, as Kloos is still a great writer of characters, to say nothing of interesting settings and action scenes, but Aftershocks still felt at the end like a massive missed opportunity. The reason is that the book feels really incomplete: the book is under 300 pages long and ends before any of the main characters' story arcs has any sort of resolution whatsoever, leaving me just frustrated at being given nothing satisfying to go along with the book's loose ends. There aren't really any dramatic cliffhanger endings either, and so it all just feels like I read two thirds of a book, without anything to make it feel like what was there was worth my time.
-------------------------------------------Plot Summary-------------------------------------------------
Five Years Ago, the war Gretia started with all of the other planets in the system - Pallas, Oceana, Rhodia, Hades, and Acheron - came to an end, with the Alliance of the other planets accepting Gretia's surrender and occupying the planet. Since then, Aden - a former Blackguard of the Gretian military - has spent the years as a POW in a Rhodian camp. But as the terms of the surrender agreement dictate, Aden suddenly finds himself released, and adrift in a system where his planet of origin, and his military background, make him an outcast.

And now that five years have passed, things are starting to stir once again, with mysterious actors pushing events once again towards conflict. The abandoned Gretian navy is destroyed right under the Alliance's noses, an Alliance patrol on Gretia is ambushed by men with stealth technology, and pirates seem to be becoming more active in the system at ambushing freighters. It is clear that for Aden, for an Alliance soldier on Gretia, for an Alliance patrol ship captain, for the daughter of a major Gretian corporation taking her first leadership role at the company - that these events threaten to change everything, taking their very lives in the process if they're not careful.
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As I mentioned above, Aftershocks most differs from Kloos' Frontlines series in that the book does not just stick to one character's point of view. Aden gets our most page-time as the point of view character, but Dunstan (Alliance Patrol Ship Captain), Idina (Alliance Sergeant on Gretia), and Solveig (Gretian heir to a major planetary corporation) all get their own third person point of view chapters and story arcs. These story arcs generally don't intersect with each other: only two of the four main characters have any interaction at all, although they all paint a combined picture of what is happening in this universe.

And Kloos makes all of these characters interesting, even if a few of them are pretty typical character archetypes. Again, Aden gets the most chapters here (basically every other chapter follows him), and his story as the struggling former POW trying to find a way in this world works really well. Idina's plot almost feels like a buddy-cop plotline, with her getting to appreciate her Gretian partner on patrol, but its executed well. Solveig may be the typical heir to a corporate empire who wants to do things a little her own way and with morals her father may not quite align with, but she's not as naive as the usual version of this plot and it works with everything else. Dunstan is a capable and competent captain of the patrol ship, and while his own personal development is the least interesting of the four, his storyline provides some excellent action and space opera scenes. They're all interesting characters and story-arcs that I'd have loved to see more of.

And that's the problem with Aftershocks: we don't see enough of any of these story arcs. And yes the first book in a series, especially one epic in scope (epic fantasy or space opera) is guaranteed to end with a bunch of cliffhangers or loose threads for later books to pick up later. But the first book still needs to wrap up at least one initial plot arc, even if its clearly not the overall one: think of Game of Thrones wrapping up Ned's plot arc, or The Fellowship of the Ring separating the party as Sam/Frodo go into Mordor - sure those series couldn't have ended with those first books, but readers got a satisfying conclusion to one stage of the story, making it all worth it and ensuring they knew there was a more satisfying conclusion coming.

Aftershocks doesn't have a single story arc - or stage of a story arc - come to anything resembling an end. Our mysterious antagonists remain mysterious throughout and are never revealed, our protagonists discover that something is happening but none of them actually discover any particulars whatsoever, and practically none of the characters have any character development arc conclude or reach a new stage by the end of this book. The one exception is Idina, who gains a growing respect for her Gretian police comrades, but that's such a minor (and obvious) development it isn't enough to satisfy. You know going into this book, or at least by a few chapters in, that someone is manipulating events in the system to start a new conflict with possible new mysterious technology, and you spend the entire time of this book waiting for this to emerge, and it remains in the shadows, small outbursts aside, even at the end. And it's not like this is a long book - it's under 300 pages!

Kloos' past works is probably enough to get me to try out the second book in this series, but I'm going to need to see significant developments from that book to make this book not feel like a waste of time. So I can't recommend Aftershocks that highly at the end, which is a shame: Frontlines didn't have this same problem despite ending its first book on a major cliffhanger, so I was surprised to see it here.

Can a man find himself while fleeing from everything he ever was?

Aden Robertson has been serving a prison sentence, having been on the losing side of a war. He’d like to start over and find a quiet place to live, free from persecution for his role in the war and his planet of origin. He’d also like to leave more of himself behind, more secrets, more lies. But in addition to being despised as a Gretian, a Gretian soldier, and a Blackguard to boot, he’s got a feeling that someone else may be closing in on him.

He’s made it through the last months of his imprisonment, can he make it through the bureaucracy and finagle a ride to Gretia? Bad luck, bad people, complications, and entanglements jeopardize his flight toward a new life and freedom. Aden finds himself not headed for peace, but war from an unseen enemy. But even as bad things happen to good people, Aden’s luck might possibly be changing. If he can just avoid… well, just about everyone.

Meanwhile, someone may be trying to restart a war, as the occupation forces on Gretia face sudden, violent, and merciless attacks on their troops and on the Gretian civilian population. Someone destroys the mothballed Gretian space fleet, and it isn’t the people guarding it. An invisible, unidentified enemy is breaking the peace and plunging all the planets back into the bloody conflict.

Aftershocks is the first novel in a new series by Marko Kloos, who is fast becoming one of my all-time favorite authors. While I’m late to the game, discovering him a little over a year ago, I’ve devoured everything Frontlines and even a certain treatise regarding shifters. Aftershocks is a frenetic, wildly implosive read that has me hungry for the next book and salivating over the thought of another great series. Highly recommended for those who love military stories, science fiction, intricate world-building, complex characters, and simply good storytelling. Chalk another one up in the must-read column.

I’ve heard so many good things about the work of author Marko Kloos but haven’t yet had the chance to dive into his popular and critically-praised Frontlines series. So when given the opportunity to read the opener to his new military/sci-fi series, I jumped without hesitation. And now, having finished "Aftershocks (The Palladium Wars #1)" in just two days — firing up my Kindle over breakfast, between innings of softball games, in lines at stores and late into the night — I understand what all the fuss was about. He’s good, real good.

This review is based on an advance copy provided by the publisher through NetGalley for that purpose. The book will be available on July 1, 2019.

Five years after losing a devastating system-wide war that it started, the planet of Gretia is under occupation, stripped of it’s vaunted military and paying heavy reparations to the winning Alliance comprised of the system’s other five planets. The peoples of the Alliance planets carry a lot of anger, fear and resentment against the Gretians, but for the most part their lives have returned to normalcy; the constant reminders that they were the losers, however, has begun to eat at some on Gretia. Protest demonstrations on the planet have grown in frequency, size and intensity.

Throughout the system ominous events happen. Are they connected, and if so, how, why and to what end? To those with some knowledge of history, this premise bears remarkably similarities to post-WWI Europe — something I found very interesting and instantly engaging. History as we understand it changes with time: the impact of some events and people only become clear in hindsight; for those swept up in the moment such potentialities and connections are near-impossible to discern.

The story advances across several locations in the system through the actions of four protagonists: a recently released POW military intelligence officer, a senior non-commissioned officer in the Alliance occupation forces, a captain of a warship patrolling Alliance space, and a young Gretian woman taking the reins of her family’s corporate empire after her tycoon father loses his position as part of the armistice. The characters are well-developed and relatable, but I have no doubts we haven’t yet learned all there is to know about them.

Because this is, after all, very much the first book of a series. No knowledgeable reader should have any doubts about this. Before the open-ended conclusion — which will doubtless annoy more than a few shortsighted readers — there are some exceptionally well-described action set pieces, but overall the pace is measured. The author is setting the stage, describing the characters and locations, and providing the necessary initial information to understand, and enjoy, the entire production.

The prose is smooth and natural, the premise engaging, and the characters interesting; I absolutely want to know what happens next, and if the following entries are as good as "Aftershocks" I’m sure to enjoy the series.

This is not the first book by Marko Kloos that I have read; I've read his Wild Card books as well as the entire Frontlines series. When I found out that that Kloos was working on a new space series, I was very excited and pleased to report that this book did NOT disappoint. Kloos uses several different POV characters to tell the story; all work really well and tie together in ways that I did not expect.

This book came to a satisfying conclusion; I'm looking forward to reading the next book in this new series.


Thanks to 47North and NetGalley for providing an early copy for me to review.

Marko Kloos starts a new series with Aftershock, set 5 years after a war in a six-planet solar system where all the planet have been colonized, but only one is really Earthlike, Gretia, were Earth seed crops will grow and colonists don't have to live in floating arcologies on a sea, or in the sky, or in tunnels carved out of cliff faces. Gretia was the planet that had it all, and yet they started a war they couldn't win against the combined forces of the other worlds. Now, the aggressor is under occupation and civil unrest is starting to ramp back up. According to the terms of the peace, Gretia's troops were taken as POWs for five years, so the story opens as the first is being released. Aden was a member of the feard Blackguard, though his specialization was linguistics and intel, and suddenly free to leave the admittedly humane Alliance POW camp, he can go home again. Except that he'd joined up in order to escape from home and family, and no one back there even knows he's alive.

Back on Gretia, civil unrest is growing and suddenly something more is raising its head, both on the ground and in space. Stealthy insurgents with highly advanced technology are starting to stage attacks on the occupation forces and protesters alike, stirring the pot, but to what end? In space, pirates that aren't pirates at all are starting to show up, and in fact, the cargo vessel that Aden takes to get off the planet he'd been imprisoned on comes under attack.

The good news is that Marko Kloos has created a really terrific setup for a new space opera, and just in time. As the Expanse nears the conclusion of its nine book arc fans are going to need something to look forward to, and this more than fills the bill. The bad news is that it's short, and a fast read that you'll blow through all too quickly. Unlike books in the Expanse, Aftershock doesn't neatly tie up a sub arc but only introduces the players and sets the stage for what's to come.

I enjoyed Kloos's other series so thought I would give this a shot. Aden was on the losing side of an interplanetary war and has been a POW for five years. He finds out that he is getting set free the next day and is going to have to figure out his place in this galaxy now that his homeworld Gretia has been under control of interplanetary forces. His homeworld started the conflict and his brigade specifically committed incredibly violent acts, drawing the hatred of most people he meets who find out his true origin. So Aden makes his way across the galaxy back towards home with some interesting adventures along the way. As a counterpoint to Aden's side we have a few other people back on Gretia telling their tales letting us know about the discontent running through that world due to the peacekeeping forces still there after the war.
I liked this book, the writing was good and fast paced. It was an interesting take on what happens after a war. The characters could use a bit more development. My biggest complaint was that it seemed that we got a lot of build-up but never really got anywhere. Don't get me wrong, the plot definitely moved forward, but it was all set up for what must be coming down the road. Which will keep me reading once the second book comes out, so there's that, I guess.

Simply inhaled this.

Be warned: it's the first in a series, and ends on the sort of cliffhanger that causes readers to breathe brimstone and pitchforks. If you can't stand that sort of ending, then buy the book and stash it underneath that copy of Proust you've always meant to read, until the next comes out.

It starts deceptively slowly, as Aden, who has been a prisoner of war for five years, is released and told to get out of Rhodia. Everyone hates the Gretians who lost the war, but they really, really hate the military unit he was in.

We also are introduced to some other POVs. Some of these connect up toward the end, others don't, but as attacks begin to happen, without anyone knowing why or who, it's clear that all these POVs will be converging as action stars shifting into high gear.

Kloos is so good at military SF and worldbuilding. Terrific characters, fascinating setup, unpredictable turns in the plot. But how long O lord, how long, until book two????

I'll be buying this in print.

Wow! The action in this book is amazing. It makes it move so incredibly fast i felt like I was done in a day. Very good plot with decent character development. Not the best but enough as to not take away from the book.

Full Disclosure: I received an ARC copy of the book from Netgalley.

I am a relative newcomer to Marko Kloos's writing as I only started his Frontlines series after Point's of Impact had came out. What I had found was a series that was well written with compelling characters and a realistic science fiction universe that is a world that 'could have been'. I devoured the whole series in just over a week and added another favorite author of the military science fiction genre along side David Weber, Jack Campbell, David Drake, and John Ringo.

Aftershocks, the start of a new series, 'The Palladium Wars', was just as well written and with the same level of character development as his previous novels. The story is about a system still recovering from a vicious war 5 years in the past. But unlike a lot of the genre, this was not a war with aliens or on an interstellar stage, but something far more intimate. The universe (so far) takes place in a single system and like all the wars in the real world, it was fought by a single species amongst itself divided mainly by planetary cultures. Kloos also has written the book from 3 main points of view allowing the reader to get more than one side of the story and the underlying issues in the system.

Overall, I found it a great read and was sorry that I have to wait until next summer until the next book.

#Aftershocks #NetGalley

Aftershocks is a very solid first book in a new science fiction series that revolves around six planets striving for stability after a war has ended. The story is told through multiple points of view - each showing a different area of how order is maintained within the solar system and how it affects different individuals. However, it doesn't take too long in the story before we see that the "order" they are striving to maintain is fragile and occurrences of guerilla type warfare begin occurring. Throughout the entire book, you can almost feel the drumbeats of war coming - but the question is from whom and how are they doing what they are doing? In fact, this story is a very large prelude to something major - you can feel it with every page you turn.

Often science fiction leaves me feeling very stupid for struggling to grasp the worlds the author has created so it is very refreshing when a book like this comes along - one where you clearly understand the world being built. With each of point of view we slowly learn what the world looks like. The main characters Aden, Idina, Dunstan, and Solvieg provide us a view into the world as they experience it: resentment toward the losing side, the technology used in the world, and how each of the planets differ from the others as well as how each planet adapted to their landscape. However, they each also have moments where they are presented with and escaping from danger that are each very exciting to read. My personal favorite is Dunstan and what he encounters.

Overall, the book was very enjoyable to read - even the cliffhanger ending and can definitely recommend it.

Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for the ARC in exchange for an honest review.

After 5 years as a POW, Aden tries to come to terms with reality and forge a life for himself in a system that disdains his people as warmongers. But when a Palladian security force is wiped out and an advanced warship stolen, it's clear that a time of dearly bought peace is about to end.

I really enjoyed Aftershocks by Marko Kloos. Correction. I WAS really enjoying it. And then it stopped. Rather abruptly. Like when you’re watching a really great show and then suddenly the power goes out. That’s what it felt like at the end of Aftershocks.

But let’s not start on a downer …

Aftershocks is still a great read. I’ve sorta cherry-picked the afore-mentioned Aden as the principle character but I confess I’m not entirely convinced. There are a few other characters, for a start. And the format of the book basically revolves around a different character spearheading a particular chapter. So we start off with Aden, but we also have Idina – a Palladian warrior (more on that later), Solveig – the heir apparent to a manufacturing empire and Dustan – a starship commander.

And for all intents and purposes, Aden doesn’t really do all that much during the book. Initially, he’s released from a Rhodian prison centre –

Okay, time out -

Rhodia is a planet and there are other planets – namely Acheron, Palladia, Oceania and Gretia. Gretia basically tried to be king of the planets but the other planets didn’t like it, fought back and won. So now we have an Alliance of sorts between everyone other than Gretia and they really don’t like Gretia. As you might expect. Okay ...

Resume

... and basically Aden spends the majority of the book trying to get back home, ending up in a few scrapes along the way. A lot of the juicier action happens with the other characters, but I just have this feeling that Aden’s going to be the driving force in this series. I’d put money on it. It just doesn’t really happen here.

All the main characters are solid nonetheless. Aden is very much the fish out of water, let loose in a world (or system) that has hurried on without him. Idina is the badass warrior, Dustan the redoubtable commander and Solveig the newly crowned vice-president of Ragnar industries and who already is feeling the weight of expectation. They wear their roles well but I wouldn’t say any of them were dynamic though. They function within their niches and they do it well.

The real winner here for Aftershocks is the plot

Least I think it is. It was exciting, it was dramatic, it was suspenseful … If there’s one thing that Kloos excels at, it’s how to build a sense of anticipation. His action scenes are stupendous and there’s a real sense of indrawn breath before everything hits the fan. But then the whole thing ended and I felt cheated to some extent. Don’t get me wrong. I know a series (and this is definitely a series) is going to have developments that will be relayed in other books, but I still think any book needs a sense of completeness. This book doesn’t have it. It felt like a long load of the gun and then the gun eventually jammed. Very frustrating. And that’s the main reason why it dropped from a four star to a three. But it was gripping – can’t deny it. While it was moving, it was MOVING, with shocks, rope-a-dopes and some serious reader questions along the lines of ‘Who is doing this? I need to KNOW’.

It’s also a well realised world

There’s detail in the environments, from the flower-shaped city capital of Oceania to the glistening glass arcologies of Rhodia. And even the technology of this space-faring fable has a sense of legitimacy. But it’s also not so outlandish as to be incomprehensible. They still work on ‘comtabs’ (basically fancy iPads) and these function as both tools and entertainment devices. It’s a sort of strange this world / future world hybrid.

Aftershocks is still a solid sci-fi space adventure

Kloos’ characters and interplanetary setting are tangible creations and the plot itself is exciting, suspenseful and provides tantalising hints of forces hitherto unknown. It promises exciting stories ahead as well. But this story has a tame ending, if you could even call it an ending. I expected some measure of explanation regarding unfolding events, some iteration of ‘Dun dun dun – SCENE’, but it just … stopped. I’d still recommend it to readers looking for a good space opera or military science fiction, but maybe make sure you have Book 2 as well to be on the safe side.

I received an ARC copy of this book from NetGalley for a fair and honest review

I should preface this by saying that I liked the authors previous books, so he's built up a fair amount of credit Why is this relevant, does it make me give a nicer review? No, but it buys trust that the payoff is worth the investment. This book, for me, is a scene setter for a broader story.

The book seems a little flighty at first, with multiple perspectives and different, seemingly unconnected stories and threads. Towards the end of the book, things started to knit together a bit more solidly, but I was left with the impression that the payoff is coming in the next few books. There was a fair amount of background and character backstory setting, which took quite a while to get going. That's not to say it was dull, the story was interesting and the world rich, but it took some time to understand why it was relevant.

Back to my original point, for a newcomer to the author, it may seem like you don't get anywhere, but with some trust, I'm sure that the series will be a good one. I enjoyed the book, but looking forward to the next one more.

Huge thanks to Netgalley and the publisher for providing me an ARC in exchange for an honest review!

Five years after the end of a system-wide intergalactic war, civilians and former combatants are desperately trying to pick up the pieces of their lives, just as a new threat emerges from the shadows. (Well, it doesn’t really emerge. By the end of the book, the threat remains firmly ensconced in the shadows, which as a reader, I found somewhat problematic.)

This is a difficult book to rate properly, because it didn’t really feel like Book 1 in a series. It read more like a prologue to Book 1: it introduced the characters, fleshed out the worldbuilding, introduced some hints toward the overarching plotline, then . . . ta-da, The End.

Which is not to say it was bad. Far from it! This was my first Marko Kloos book, and it won’t be the last. (Which, as a reader, is probably the highest praise I can give.) The prose is clean, fresh, and perfectly styled; the work flowed effortlessly, in that particular manner that only truly talented authors can manage. The story has enough potential that I very much want to read the rest of the series.

Had I been able to go straight from this to Book 2/3/whatever, I might not necessarily have found the lack of plot resolution so jarring. (Also, two of the POVs wouldn’t have felt quite so , , , bare bones.) As it was, I read to the end, then I wanted to double-check to see if my e-ARC file was corrupted. The book does not end on what feels like a full-book storyline. It’s the sort of ending that has you expecting to turn the page and see “Chapter 1”.

Recommended, but be aware: very much the first part of a series, even more so than readers accustomed to reading series might expect.

As a long-time fan of Marko Kloos' Frontlines series, I was excited to get ahold of his new series. There are some marked differences from Frontlines with this book, chiefly that this book is in 3rd person and told from the points of view of several different characters. Overall, this book definitely felt like a "book 1" in a series. It is building towards something and does a good job world building (or solar system building, as it is), but by the end I was still kind of waiting for something to happen or some big reveal to be made. I'm sure it will all start to pay off in the next book. There are a couple of land and space battles included, but again it seems like it is mostly just whetting our appetite for things to really kick off in later books.

Finally a Sci-fi that didn't leave me feeling stupid.
A war criminal, Aden, has spent the last 5 years imprisoned on Rhodia. One year longer than the war went for. The time has finally come, he is out, it's time to head home, to his planet Gretia. Deciding to take the long route, he buys passage on a cargo ship. All goes well until they are hit by pirates and left drifting in an escape pod.
Indina is on her second tour of Gretia. Keeping the peace and enforcing the treaty, she and her team are out on a regular patrol when after years with no hostile activity, they are hit by weapons unlike any they have seen before. The loss of her team hits her hard and she is recalled to the city to work with the local police.
Dunstan and his crew are almost ready to head back home for leave, when something comes up on their radar. Unsure of what it is, they assume the worst. But even following the rule book doesn't prepare them for what comes next.
Finally we have Solveig. Daughter of the man whose company built and supplied weapons for the war effort. He is no longer allowed to run the company, so it's fallen to her to meet her fathers high expectations and keep the company afloat.
Who are the terrorists blowing up protestors, police and medical personal? Who are stealing the ships? And why when the peace has lasted so long is everything looking like it might fall apart.


While there is plenty of action in Aftershocks, it's a character driven story. We delve straight into Aden's experiences, he gives us a sense of the universe. The planets, the technology, the way the war has affected the people. Through him we get a real sense of before and after. This is all done so naturally, that a large portion of the world building is completed before you are fifty pages in. I never once felt bogged down with information, it flowed. Every word that we got was required with no filler in between. As the rest of the characters are introduced the worlds are fully fleshed out. The temperament of the people on the street, the peacekeepers in the air and on the ground. The tension starts to build and it continues slowly for the rest of the book.

I said it at the start, the technology and the way it was discussed didn't leave me feeling stupid. The technological aspects weren't overly in-depth, which works for me as a lot of the time it goes over my head. I loved the different planets. They were all harsh and the people all had to adapt, meaning on one planet there is only one small continent split down the middle by a mountain range, another is so unbearable that the people have to live underground and then you have the planet that has perfect living conditions. And yes, it was the Government of one of those planets that started the war. It's easy enough to guess which one I'm sure.

The characters were all well written, distinctive in their voice and natures. While I appreciated all of them and their role in the way the story winds together, I enjoyed reading Aden the most. Not all characters got the same amount of page time which worked well. Using the characters, Kloos was able to bring the planets and the story together in a cohesive way. As the book progressed, I did find that certain terms were repeated, which I didn't like but that was only in the last half. I found his style of writing easy to read, and while the story did feel slow, I liked it.

POSSIBLE SPOILERS AHEAD... YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED.

My issue was the ending. Um... What The Fuck was that?
I still don't know how I feel about it, and while I enjoyed this book, I'm concerned about what book two will be like. Will the pacing pick up? Will there be more consistent action? Will there be answers? The book didn't feel complete.
I'm conflicted.

I received an arc from the publisher via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

Thank you netgalley for the ARC. This was a truly fantastic character driven space opera. I am so happy that Marko Kloos took a break from Frontlines to write this series. I am so looking forward to book #2.