Fast pasted S/F detective set in a world where AI is used to enhance the abilities of select humans and removing the technology (as a punishment) leaves the person at best, depleted.. One human who had his AI stripped from him and a rogue AI team up to find the AI's human host against organized crime, corrupt military and government agencies. Extremely imaginative with the creative application of future technology..

Four stars. I enjoyed this one, Kacey Ezell is a good author and it's great to see another story from her. There were only two things I didn't love about this interesting Science Fiction story. One is that the authors had to lower themselves to Deus Ex Machina to keep the story moving forward and the main tech in the story (the Angels) comes from the cop out of "we don't know how it works because aliens gave them to us."

Far into the future, humanity is scattered among the stars. Recruited to fight a war against a rapacious alien race, humanity won… and lost Earth. On a space station called Last Stop, former soldier Ralston Muck lives a hardscrabble existence as a nightclub bouncer. Stripped of his personal AI, or ‘angel’ when he was dishonourably discharged, he manages his body modifications with a pharmacopeia of barely-legal drugs from less than legal sources.

Singer Siren works in the club, and she still has a fully functioning AI, one which helps her integrate with the club’s systems to broadcast her powerful emotions along with her song. Targeted by an overenthusiastic patron one night, the club owner orders Muck to see her home. Distressed and angered at her AI overriding her body for self-defence, Siren shuts down her AI… which ‘wakes up’ under attack from a virus, flees, and ends up integrating into the only available host with the right interface installed… Muck.

“Angel” and Muck both want to find Siren, for different reasons, and they need each other to do it. With no choice but to work together, they are soon on the run across the space station and beyond. But something’s not right with Angel… AIs aren’t supposed to have emotions. Aren’t supposed to be able to switch hosts. And every AI she comes into contact with seems to be developing the same strange characteristics…

There’s actually an intriguing little romance subplot going on here too, with Muck initially attracted physically to Siren but actually ending up in something of a ‘relationship’ with Angel… an odd one, since the AI doesn’t have a physical presence as such but has the capability, plugged into Muck’s brain, to make him ‘see’ and ‘feel’ her.

Eventually Angel and Muck resolve the inherent conflict of Angel technically ‘belonging’ to a different host, but by now it’s obvious that there is something much bigger at play than they realise. Although at the present time there’s no series title, I’d be surprised if it’s not continued; there’s enough for at least a trilogy here if not more, and an awful lot of questions still to be answered.

While I enjoyed the read, there are a few too many things which are skimmed over or ignored for my liking. I’d read more in the series, though, because I did like the characters and wanted to know more about them. Four stars.

A human war veteran has to work together with a powerful artificial intelligence in a race to find a missing singer, amidst conspiracies that sprawl across galaxies.

So, I requested this from because I was looking to read more from the genre. Both the synopsis and bookcover caught me while browsing (beautiful design!). Upon reading, Second Chance Angel had what I tend to love when going into a story (be that a book or a film or a TV-show), being to learn as I go along, as opposed to being thrown a huge chunk of info here and there every now and then regardless of whether or not it is relevant at the time and in that situation (aside from the given synopsis, of course). For me, learning as I go into a story makes it an adventurous experience. That being said, this genre is not something I am used to, so it did mean I'd had to frown and squint and scratch my head several times at my tablet's screen.

Aside from the main plot (a famous singer went missing and our human, war veteran protagonist became the main suspect so he had to investigate that singer's disappearance himself) and aside from the secondary plot (a virus was infecting the AIs, preventing them from correcting their malfunction), Second Chance Angel did not give any signposts but thrusted the readers alongside the characters in their race.

On the one hand, I liked it because that sort of exposure was my preference when reading or watching. On the other hand, perhaps because this genre is a path less traveled for me, I found the narration difficult to differentiate at times. One example was as Angel, the AI who invaded Muck's body, hesitated between he, we, and I whenever she referred to the actions of the body that she inhabited (invaded). Another example was how we, as readers, would get an omniscient point-of-view on characters other than our main protagonist's, through the AIs. On the other, other hand (too many hands?) I also found both examples really cool and make sense because of one obvious reason: AIs.

Our human protagonist Muck and the AI Angel made one-of-kind pair of investigators and their interaction was done well, it felt realistic (for whatever that's worth coming from me, since I did say this genre is not my usual genre). The PTSD that Muck struggled drew me deeper into his character, although I wished I could've learned about how someone who grew up in a religious order that shunned technology, ended up becoming an enhanced AI soldier - since this is the first book in a series, maybe in the next one? It was both a comfort and an eerie thought that one day "robots" would be that sentient and that essential in our everyday lives...

The main characters were not the only interesting ones - there were intergalactic arms dealers, also an alien crimelord - just to name a few. The mystery side, the intrigues while having to dodge hostilities and form alliances were engaging. The inclusion of advanced technology and logistics had me rubbing my knuckles to my forehead a bit, a few times, but it did richly add to the atmosphere that was this intergalactic civilization. This first book had built a complex foundation of political webs that you'd want to explore further in books to come.

Congratulations to the authors and thank you to Blackstone Publishing and Netgalley for this ebook ARC - it was a solid read to the start of a series for me, thumbs up!

I liked the premise of the book and I was curious about the story. Throughout the whole story I wanted to know how the story unfold. The book is a page turner. The story was entertaining, but unfortunately, it lacked depth. In everything, it should have been a little more: there was little told about the world the story is playing and the background stories of the characters were also far too short resp. not existing. So somehow everything remained on the surface.

The story has potential and should there be a 2nd instalment, I will read it. But I hope for more depth and background information.

I give 4 stars as the story has entertained me and I had a good time. I hoped till the end for more information, at least from Muck the main character. But that was not the case.

Sadly, I just couldn't do it. Couldn't get past the fourth chapter or so. SUCH weak world-building, confusing dialogue - all the characters sounded alike in syntax and there was no context. I didn't even know they were in a space station until the main character left - they could have been in any random location for all the set up there was. I'm sorry, I wanted to like this - I truly did, but just couldn't do it.

Barber and Ezell have written a superb read with Second Chance Angel. Well worth the time and a true page turner!

I had a hard time with Second Chance Angel - the switching of characters without corresponding drastic changes in diction and tone left me occasionally confused as to which protagonist was speaking, the setting didn't feel unique enough to really set the story apart within the crowded SFF space, and nothing grabbed me right off the bat. I've noticed that while some books with multiple authors can pull it off (The Expanse series comes to mind), it seems like more often than not something gets muddled and confused. I didn't find any grammatical or continuity errors in Second Chance Angel, it just didn't inspire me to read any further than I had to to finish and review.

I stopped reading around the 70% mark and didn’t finish it. The review is based on the book that far.

Second Change Angel is one of those unfortunate books that don’t give the reader any roadmap to work on when it comes to characters, time and space—and space. I put the latter in twice, because apparently it takes place in a space station, though we only get a confirmation of that when the main character leaves the place. Until then, we could’ve been on a random planet or a moon just as well.

Time is somewhere in the future after a devastating war with an alien race that has blown up the earth. The war was apparently long, but the earth has been gone for only seven years. Does this upset the remaining humans? No, it doesn’t. Maybe they’re too far removed from the home planet already. Maybe the human race has spread so far that the loss of the planet doesn’t matter. I don’t know, because I don’t know where we are in relation to the earth and how long ago humans have left it. Space travel is sort of fast, and although it depends on tricks like slingshots around a sun and using a planet’s gravitational force for deceleration, I got the notion that we’re far, far from our solar system.

Place is a space station that seems to be built to accommodate humans, though not by humans, if I got that right. The place is so poorly described that all I have are weird, confusing and frustrating impressions that don’t really make any sense when put together. The place is apparently huge, because people travel by vehicles. It’s built on one level, with very tall houses rising from it, so that the ceiling has to be high, but it’s also curving. The ceiling is apparently non-transparent, because the place is artificially lit. But despite all this, there is only one level below ground? How does that even work?

Characters are the greatest weakness, and I didn't care for any of them. There are four point of view characters, three of which are AIs. That was why I initially chose the book, having read and loved books like Murderbot Diaries where the AI tries to cope among humanity, but remains essential alien to it. Unfortunately that wasn’t what I got.

The AIs are very human-like with emotions and petty grievances, and inability to concentrate on more than one task at the time. They are gendered and very stereotypically at that. LEO, a male, is a law enforcement AI and SARA, a female, a station administrative AI. Both behave according to their assumed gender as well. The station AIs have their own mystery plot unfolding concerning a virus or some such that cause their emotions and prevent them from correcting the malfunction. They also provide a bird’s eye view on some characters, so that we learn more than just the main character’s point of view.

The main AI character is a personal AI called Angel. Developed for soldiers, personal AIs are mainly supposed to enhance their users’ physical and mental abilities during the battle, but the war is over and the AIs remain. Angel belongs to a former special ops soldier Siren who works as a lounge singer in a seedy bar. She goes missing and somehow Angel ends up in the body of another former soldier who has had his AI removed as a disciplinary measure.

Angel is a female and behaves like one to get her way with her new host, like making him feel like he’s being caressed by her. She’s manipulative and doesn’t hesitate to take over the host’s body when she feels like it with no regard to his right to govern his body—nor is that philosophical question brought up in the narrative. She sulks and is in general a great nuisance and a very annoying character. As an AI, she’s a failure. As a narrator, she’s really difficult to follow, because she wavers between I, we, and he when she describes the actions of the body she inhabits.

The only human character is Muck, the former soldier whose body Angel invades—uninvited, I might add. We don’t learn anything about him initially, and titbits about his past spring up only when the plot so requires. For example, he needs a rescue on a desert and it so happens that the religious order that saves him is the one he grew up in. Wouldn’t that have made a great starting point for building his character? How does a man who grows up with an order who shuns AI technology end up becoming an AI enhanced soldier? Maybe the answer is given at the end of the book, but I didn’t get that far. At some point Angel also informs him that the memory he has of the events that led to his disgrace are altered. It’s a meaningless titbit at that particular point, but maybe all is revealed in the end—and hopefully it links with the overall plot somehow too. I don’t know. What I know is that it would’ve been more meaningful if Muck had even remotely suspected it earlier.

All in all, Muck is a spineless character in a thug’s body who is pushed this way and that by Angel. He’s seemingly in lead of the investigation that Angel forces him to do, but that’s about the only thing that distinguishes him in any way.

What about the plot then? Siren goes missing without the knowledge of her AI who somehow gets booted off her body and ends up in Muck’s, so she forces him to investigate the disappearance. Do they start by investigating who might have the technological skills to remove an AI? No, they go after the biggest drug baron. Do they search the most obvious places for her, like the station itself? No, they head off the station to a planet the drug baron directs them to. Do they find her there? No.

This is where I stopped reading, by the way. The events so far had been so illogical and stupid and filled with out of the blue attacks and pointless detours, like getting weapons from an arms dealer Muck then never even uses before they get blown up. The secondary plot with the station AIs about the virus infecting them might have been more interesting, but they were so annoying characters that I couldn’t really care.

The task of making sense of the plot wasn’t made any easier by the narrative that was mostly dialogue between talking heads. Most of the time there was no indication about who was talking—not a single ‘he said, she said’, or even the occasional action beat of ‘she smiled’, ‘he nodded’—so that I had to actually count the exchanges to figure out who was saying what. This was made infinitely more difficult by the file I received from NetGalley that was dismally formatted, with paragraphs that either had no indents or had indents in the middle of the sentence, and dialogues that bled together in endless rows.

So, all in all, a disappointing experience. Why, then, did I give it three stars? I don’t know. It had some draw that kept me reading despite the difficulties, like the struggle with PTSD Muck and Siren dealt with—though that was soon forgotten—and really imaginative aliens—who were all criminals, by the way. And who knows, maybe it redeems itself in the end. I couldn’t make myself finish the book, but I don’t want to rob others the chance to find out by giving the book only two stars. If it improves, let me know.