another well done entry in the Arcadia series, the characters were interesting and I was hooked from beginning to end. It has a great written style by Ms. Jones and I enjoyed going through this story.

*I was totally enthralled with this book. Perfect mixture of romance and mystery. The book has good pacing and should be a winner in the young adult market

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for the chance to read an early copy of this book!

I'm finding that I really enjoy sci-fi when there are no spaceships. This book reminded me of Lois McMaster Bujold's classic A CIVIL CAMPAIGN in that we're located on a single world with deeply established cultures and clashes, where conflicting loyalties and interpersonal dynamics drive the story much more than aliens and spaceships and space pirates and all the things that really scream "sci-fi" to me but also do not pique my interest.

This is the second book in a series; it worked well for me as a standalone even though the references to past events made me very intrigued to read the previous story! And I was certain that the discussion of a reluctant marriage was sequel bait for the next, but at the end the author's note tells us that a different character is next, up for a chance at redemption. I'm looking forward to seeing how she does it, because from this book it will be very tricky to make us root for them.

OK, on to the concept: the planet Arcadia is distinguished by mountains and plains. The cultures are very different--mountain folk are more formal and elaborate, plains folk are more straight-talking--and each side has been exaggerating the characteristics of the environment, swampy mountains to grow more of a certain kind of tree and dry deserts with giant fields of sheets soaking up solar power. The growing contrast is throwing off the balance of Arcadia's environment and disaster is maybe 50 years away, so obviously that a central federation of planets, the Alliance, is threatening to forcibly remove all of the humans from their home and let the planet restore itself. The climate change allegory was certainly evident, as the main conflict is about a solar energy company Solaris whose fields are depleting the region of all its other resources and life, and there is an existential crisis where they must change and lay off their workers or else risk the Alliance exiling everyone from the entire planet. Our hero Ethan, heir to the Solaris empire, is in conflict with both his father and with our heroine, the union representative Sarwenna, who both refuse to change and to see the long-term necessity in favor of the short-term need for jobs. Again, the allegory is not always subtle, but it was fascinating to see play out in a completely different world.

This book also ramps up the conflict with a suspenseful element, with sabotage and attempted murder that continues to grow throughout the book. I was a little frustrated that the nuanced conflict kind of spilled over into a Heroes vs Villains kind of sequence by the end; additionally, it seems some of the conflict is a consequence of events in the prior book and so that was the only place where I wished I'd read the previous book to have my own read on some characters, because the POV characters are viewing them in a certain way but it turns out that they were affected by something very differently than expected. If that seems confusing, it kind of is! We have very complex characters and loyalties but we also are viewing them through the very distinct and not always reliable lens of our hero and heroine.

The central conflict about the future of Solaris is fueled by distrust between "company man" Ethan and "union woman" Sar. I understand why there is so much tension, but I was very frustrated by how squirrely Sar and her family were--they are hiding a lot and try to do a lot of things without anyone knowing, for reasons I never really understood, especially after some of the secrecy backfired and then they just went back to it. It was particularly galling that Sar hid things from the reader (there's lots of "she suspected who it is and would talk to them later" leaving us in the dark) and Ethan, but then had the audacity to consistently throughout the book accuse ETHAN of keeping (innocuous) secrets and up to the very end refuses to trust him and thinks it's a vast conspiracy to get her.

Sar's paranoia and distrust were really frustrating, and I pretty much always sided with Ethan. I honestly don't think they're the greatest couple but I STILL really liked so much about this book and all of the world building and absolutely enjoyed the reading experience. Most of this book takes place in the plains, with just a few visits to the mountains that completely enchanted me. They live in treetops woven together above the ground, and there's lush greenery everywhere with plants twining through every room and that sounds way better to me than deserts and sandstorms. So I hope that maybe the previous book, which features Caleb (Ethan's brother, a plains person) and Fee (a mountain woman) gives us some more of that world.

This book is a fade-to-black romance. I would say that the sci-fi/fantasy and suspense/action genres are much more prominent than the romance for most of the book, though it's certainly a romance because we do get that HEA and because there's so much of this focus on emotion and relationships. The cover, while striking and gorgeous, did not really give me the genre clues, I only picked this book up because it had a romance tag on NetGalley. So I'm very grateful that I did give this a try because it's so very different from what I've read before, and it's really got a lot to think about. As I've said, I'm now off to read TORN and soak up more of this fascinating world.