"The most powerful weapon on earth is the human soul on fire"

This is the second book in the Interdependency Sequence, and it has all the John Scalzi trademarks: a fast-moving plot, snarky dialogue, skimpy description, and solid worldbuilding. This last in particular is a high point of the book for me, as there were several revelations about the history of the Interdependency that I hope will be expanded upon in the final book. Presumably they will, as things are clearly pointing in that direction.

The only thing I didn't care for--and to be clear, this is just my personal preference, and not the author's problem--is the multiple points of view. I would rather the book focused on the original three characters: Cardenia Wu-Patrick (now Emperox Grayland II), Kiva Lagos, and Marce Claremont. I can see why the narrative included Nadashe Nohamapetan and Archbishop Gunda Korbijn, but neither they or their chapters were especially interesting. Cardenia Wu-Patrick was the real revelation in this book: her character developed nicely, into a quiet but shrewd and devastating badass. (She's also the source of the book's title, which I had been wondering about; it's drawn from her climactic speech, where she shuts down the treasonous conspiracy to oust her and drops the mic.)

There's a lot more court politics in this book: coups, attempted coups, conspiracies, and all kinds of maneuvering, double-crossing, and backstabbing. The reader's appreciation of the story will to a large extent depend on one's tolerance for this. I found it interesting, and more so as the book went along. This, combined with the revelations about the world, has me looking forward to the final book. 

"Archaeology holds all the keys"

I bought this book sight unseen, because of the authors' previous work in the Starbound trilogy. Due to those excellent books, I have certain expectations of Spooner and Kaufman, and I'm glad to say these expectations were met. This is a damn fine story, and I stayed up way later than I should have to finish it.

This book is set a little closer to our time than the Starbound books (one of the protagonists still carries a cell phone, for example), in a future where humanity is on the far side of climate change. It's implied Earth's fossil fuel reserves have been used up and strict population controls have been enacted, but despite all this the planet is becoming uninhabitable. Then an alien broadcast from another region of the galaxy is discovered and the information therein used to build a "portal" (which sounds like a wormhole) opening to another star system with a nearly lifeless planet called Gaia. The race that sent the broadcast, called the Undying, are--supposedly?--extinct, but Gaia is rich in abandoned fifty-thousand-year-old temples and alien tech. Tech the International Alliance, which apparently rules Earth now, hopes can be brought back to stave off our own planet's decline.

Of course, it's not as simple as this. The scientist who translated the alien broadcast, Elliott Addison, becomes convinced that it was a warning to humanity, and when his pleas to slow down the exploration of Gaia go unheeded, he releases classified information about the portal. Which naturally causes a stampede of scavengers, all on the hunt for alien tech. Included are his own son, Jules, determined to unlock the mystery of Gaia and clear his father's name, and Amelia (Mia) Radcliffe, a scavenger from Chicago who is trying to buy back her sister Evie from indentured servitude.

Jules and Mia are our viewpoint characters, and they're very well done. This is a trademark of the authors, the alternating first-person viewpoints, and they succeed again here. The action begins with both Jules and Mia already on Gaia, in the middle of their respective quests, and the above backstories are revealed as well-placed nuggets set into this mostly fast-paced story. Jules is the naive, well-educated, genius nerd out of his depth, and Mia is the scrappy, hardscrabble math whiz who reluctantly teams up with Jules to attain her own goal. Neither one is telling the other the complete truth, and they have to learn to work together and work through their lies to become a team and survive the ever escalating stakes.

Because there's a lot more to Gaia, and the Undying, than anyone expected. This book ends on a most frustrating cliffhanger, one that made me click right over to Amazon and pre-order the next book. (Which means that it did its job, of course.) In the meantime, there's so much to like about this book--the depth of the character arcs, the fascinating series of puzzles Jules and Mia have to solve as they work their way through Gaia's underground temples, and the understated but effective romance. Judging from the ending, there is a great underlying mystery here, and the next book should upend everything we think we know about this world. Bring it on, please.

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"Whose greatest strength is love and defiance of despair"

This is the sequel to last year's Defy the Stars, which was one of my favorite young-adult books of 2017. In this second installment of what is apparently now a trilogy, Noemi and Abel are apart and living their own separate lives, hers on Genesis and his on the independent freighter Persephone, plying his trade between Earth and its colony worlds.

But Earth, still intent on conquering Genesis, launches a new attack--the plague Cobweb, which Noemi contracted and survived in the previous book. Since she is now immune, the Genesis government sends her through their wormhole Gate to surrender the planet to Earth, in exchange for antiviral drugs. Upon her arrival on the other side of the Gate, she is captured by Burton Mansfield, the dying creator of Abel. He did not send the plague, but he did take advantage of it, surmising that an immune Noemi would be sent to summon help. He intends to use her to blackmail Abel into returning to him and surrendering his mech (Gray's term for "cyborg") body to ensure Mansfield's survival (the reason Abel was created to begin with). When Abel speaks to Noemi after her capture, she tells him what is happening to Genesis and begs him to help her planet. He reaches out to his contacts (again from the previous book)--people he met on the various colony worlds, including members of Remedy, a terroristic organization bent on breaking free from Earth. Both Abel and Noemi surmise, rightly, that the news of what Earth is doing to the people of Genesis will be the last straw, inspiring an makeshift army to rise up and defend the planet.

In the meantime, Burton Mansfield and his daughter Gillian abruptly have to change their own plans regarding Abel and Noemi. They're part of a group of rich, elite Earthers boarding a colony ship called the Osiris, whose launch time has just been moved up. Mansfield and his daughter board the ship, forcing Noemi to accompany them, and the Osirislaunches--going through a hidden Gate to a hitherto unknown planet called Haven. Whereupon it promptly crashes, due to some rich elite idiot not realizing a planet with fifteen moons might require some expert piloting. I'm not going to recap the plot anymore, because the middle of this book has several plot holes and drags quite a bit. But suffice to say that Abel follows the Osiris through the Gate, and he and Noemi reunite.

Noemi and Abel are the stars of this series, and the author's superb characterization of both, as well as the side characters, continues. This book is not as long as the first, and unfortunately it's not as tightly written as Defy the Stars. A lot of the Osiris subplot could have been chopped out, I think. However, it's still worth reading, and ends on a cliffhanger expertly designed to whet the reader's appetite for the third book.

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"You must be the change you wish to see in the world"

Merry Christmas to all, and to all a good night.