Six years ago, Aliens called the Pylorians arrived on Earth. They claimed to be refugees. They claimed to be peace-loving. They claimed to have just barely escaped total annihilation from their enemies.
They lied.
The enemy followed them. In response, they created and grew a race of “disposable soldiers” to combat this enemy. It worked for a time. But then the soldiers threw off their programming, rebelled. After taking over the Lunar base, they are now negotiating for their future. And for their fated mates.
Ambassador to the Pylorians, Catriona (call her Cat), is stuck between a rock and hard place. The Pylorians are using her father as a hostage to control her. Her boss can’t, or more likely won’t, help her. She’s left with just one option, make a deal with the Lunar rebels.
Zorak is a guardian. A commander. As second-in-command to his race, he protects the back of his leader. But as soon as he sees Cat, he knows she is the one. His fated mate. And he will do anything to help her.
This is a really fun and sexy sci-fi romance from a new-to-me author. The world building is quite frankly fascinating. I’m already wanting more from this world. There’s a lot of really great sci-fi tropes in play here including: Alien Invasion, Space War, Cultivated Soldiers, Sentient AI, and so much more. The tropes are woven together well with the romance plot and I felt that one complemented the other.
The action is fast-paced and exciting. With both Cat and Zorak getting their own character arcs and places in the plot. Cat is a competent heroine. While she’s not a fighter, she is a natural diplomat and is able to use her ability to negotiate when brute force fails. She’s smart, intelligent, and possesses a lot of common sense. Even better, when she proposes ideas the militaristic men listen to her. It’s a lovely change of pace. Zorak is an alpha hero, but he doesn’t cross the line into a-hole territory. He is protective and eager to mate with Cat, but he respects her decision and isn’t afraid to articulate what he wants while at the same time not pressuring her for more than she’s willing to give. He’s big into consent. And I found myself saying “good boy” a lot in this book.
There are two things that keep this from being a perfect read for me. The first is that there’s just a few too many technical errors for my liking… an “our” instead of “or” and other issues like that. The second is that as the start of the series I feel like we started in the wrong place. I wish I had seen the rebellion, the initial throwing off of the Lunar Raiders’ chains. In its place, we get a lot of infodump early on. It’s interesting to be sure, but I wanted to see it.
That said, I’m absolutely hooked on this series and am invested in the rest of the characters and the over-arching story.
Four stars.
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I received an ARC of this book Via NetGalley
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