First things first: as a Filipino, it excited me to see Maaraw and Silangan as the names of the so-called Savage Worlds on the Coronam system map! 😉

I also loved the bees. The bees sure were A Thing.

Now, I probably should have read the first book before diving into this to have a full appreciation of the story... but I unfortunately do this to myself sometimes. (Especially since I've always loved the @flametreepress works I've had the privilege of reading.) I still enjoyed it, though! It's well written, but like most scifi books I've read it's easy to get a little overwhelmed by the worldbuilding. Genre-wise, this has been noted as Steampunk / Space Opera Science Fiction and you do get that, but also be prepared that it's all pretty dark.

I must now get my hands on the first book, and then reread this one 🤭

Worthen’s second Coronam novel is well written, like the first, and equally grim. There are, at least for me, no likable characters. While there are characters with whom one can sympathize, it is hard to cheer for anyone. Part of this is the setting - a transposed Elizabethan-like culture in an inhospitable solar system, with warfare, barbarism, counter-reformation, religious fanaticism, and vicious imperialism - and part is the author’s choice not to leaven the dark setting with any humor or light. The mysterious communal bees found on one colony and now spreading between worlds provide a genuine science fiction mystery and make this more than just the Spanish Armada/Francis Drake in space. I will read the next volume to see how the series concludes.

I had enjoyed the previous book in the Coronam series, it had everything that I was hoping for in a scifi space opera. It had a great adventure feel to it and did everything that I wanted. The characters were well done and I wanted to go on more adventures with them.

"He considered not using their bodies, to just give them money, but somehow he thought that such action would be insulting. The women were not seeking charity. They were working and this was their job. Law and morals might stand against them, but history and necessity gave even their base occupation a nobility they would not easily discard. And so he grew gentler and more generous in all ways he might."