The thrilling sequel to In the Orbit of Sirens
THE WORLD OF KAMARIA WILL NEVER BE THE SAME.
In the aftermath of the brutal slaying of a sacred auk’nai deity, Cade and Nella Castus are taken from their home and brought deep into the wilderness. They must make their way back to civilization, traversing dangerous landscapes as they are pursued relentlessly by their captor-a winged abomination.
As Denton and Eliana search for their missing children, they uncover something that will change life on Kamaria forever.
Quinn Giguiere –
An outstanding sequel novel, On the Winds of Quasars does not suffer at all from middle book syndrome. It expands on the characters and world we met in the first book while building up suspense and setting the stakes for the conclusion to the trilogy.
To get it out of the way first, my only real issue with this novel was that the plot recaps/reminders of the first book that were spread throughout the first few chapters were a bit heavy handed for my personal tastes. I prefer more subtle reminders or for the author to just trust the reader to remember. Especially with the brief “story so far” before the book begins, I think the author could have left most of the plot recaps out of the opening chapters and they would flowed better. Having said that, I had just barely read In the Orbit of Sirens so take this opinion with a grain of salt.
Moving on from that, I thought this book was written exceptionally well. There is a time jump of 26 years from the first novel so a lot has happened in between. Time jumps can be risky but Bruno executed it perfectly and I think it was a great choice for this story. Because a couple of decades has passed, the human civilization on Kamaria has grown significantly and allows for a larger scope in the sequel novels since humanity is no longer scrambling for a grip but is now firmly established. Our main protagonists from book one, Denton and Eliana, are still featured heavily but we also have their two adult children Cade and Nella. This is another reason I think the time jump was perfect, we still have the characters we grew to love from Sirens, but we have also added two adult family members who can take the story in different directions. I liked the decision to make Nella deaf and I think it was handled very well. It adds another layer to her character while also increasing the complexity of her interactions, both in normal life and in the dangerous circumstances she is thrown into. This novel also features smaller time jumps just like the first, where we bounce between the present day and the recent past. I think these jumps were written just as well, if not better than in Sirens.
The deeper insight into the auk’nai, and along with them the Song of Kamaria, was another one of my favorite parts of this book. There are multiple plot elements that make auk’nai involvement feature much more heavily in the plot of this novel than the first. Reading about non-human intelligent species is one of my favorite things in SFF and the Bruno has created a wonderful culture in the auk’nai.
While not as heavy in the militaristic combat as the first novel, On the Winds of Quasars was still very fast paced and action packed. I flew through it in a couple of days and never wanted to put it down. It did an exceptional job in building the tension for the final entry in the trilogy and I am eagerly anticipating the conclusion to this thrilling story.