DNF. 

The author has an amazing imagination and there is clearly a very enjoyable story to be found in this book, but I’m just not able to get past the many inconsistencies that constantly pull me out of the story.

A few examples from the 20% of the book I read (very mild spoilers):
 -  A ragtag group of semi-legal scoundrels are willing to accept that a kid owns a super advanced starship because he took refuge in it a few hours before they arrived to fix and pilot it for him (the fact that he somehow owns the ship is repeated again and again);
-  The same child, who lived in a society devoted to raising livestock, doesn’t know the meaning of the word ‘sterile’ but is absolutely comfortable with terminology like ‘gravity’, ‘planets’, and ‘universe’; and
- The fact that an incredibly diverse multiversal society would break down sentient beings into only two categories - Human or Xenid.

I believe this will end up on a whole lot of year end lists. For me, it will probably fall into the debut author list. The book is really good, it has an Ann Leckie sort of vibe. Great world building, great descriptions, and entertaining plot. I've always been a sucker for any plot line containing a multiverse component. This story has an abundance of new words/terms and concepts as well as being and creature. While I was most of the way through this, eBook ARC, I realized there was a glossary at the end. Knowing this first would have made understanding portions so much easier if I had read the glossary first. On the whole this is a fun adventure and interesting book.

Thanks to Orbit, and #netgalley for an advanced e-copy of the book in return for a fair and honest review.  This book is the debut novel by Essa Hansen, who has an absolutely incredible imagination.  The book starts off with a fantastic and horrifying adventure sequence where the main character’s world is upended.  The story then becomes a lot about the main character’s growth as a person in how he interacts with his newfound pseudo family and the world (and the universes).  Yeah you read that right, universes plural. I try not to give too much away but this was a nice touch in order to give the worldbuilding even more complexity.  The main character literally has to grow up at an accelerated rate, and the alienation he feels from this could be analogous to what a lot of teenagers and people in the early 20s may feel as they begin to navigate the wider world. I don’t know if that is what the author intended but I drew that from the story. Oddly, the valuable Gloss, which ostensibly plays a huge role in the story, is secondary to the struggle of wider powers of the universes, and how the main character interacts with them, which I won’t spoil here.   There are neuroatypical characters represented here, and even the main character feels like an ‘alien’ to the situation in which he is in, so it is a difference in many respects to space operas where the protagonist is self assured and it feels like different types of people are well represented.  There are hints of Orson Scott Card in the interaction Caiden has with the Nophek given his history with them, and then he felt like a hero in a space opera who had self doubts, almost in the way a Marvel superhero would.  Trying to come up with additional comparisons is tough but Ann Leckie would stand out, given the types of characters involved.  With a story scope the size of universes, characters that feel Marvel-like, and an author style that is unique but feels a bit like Ann Leckie, or Orson Scott Card or even Timothy Zahn.  The action scenes are top notch. Recommend strongly-put it on your to read list.

Nophek Gloss is the hard to pronounce title if the first volume of a brand new science fiction series.  The title refers to a little gem that comes from the skull of a rare animal and powers spaceships.  Like the spice in Dune, the gloss is valuable beyond imagination.  It's a coming of age novel, although the hero of the story bargains to age six years immediately and kind of gets to skip adolescence.  Of course, like with many space operas, he is welcomed into a crew of misfits and there are space stations filled with all manner of beings.  Within the squares of the chess game being played out are genetic design, mind control, and ships that ply routes not just between between planets, but between universes where different physical rules apply.  Nevertheless, for this reader, it never quite achieved believability within its universe-building.  That lack of realism detracted from an interesting book that began with incredible excitement as the main character struggles to survive among hungry beasts and marauding slavers.

A compelling story set in a rich multi world build, 
This first book by Essa Hansen will fill your imagination as you follow young Caiden through a perilous and sudden journey into adulthood. This is not your typical coming of age story and contains harsh worlds where it is grow up fast if you want to survive.
while I found the story often made me stop and re read due to the unusual definitions of words I thought I knew,  I still found myself devouring the book in a day, I just had to know what happened next! 
October 2021 is a long way away for the next installment of this Trilogy.
just a quick note that I got a chance to read an advanced copy of this book.