This book is the second in Matthew Duncan's 'New Terra Sagas' series and it's as much fun as its predecessor but in a very different way. Whereas that was primarily fantasy with a smaller plot strand that's military science fiction, this is primarily military science fiction with a smaller plot strand that's fantasy. That's fine and it works because, while I don't know for sure that Duncan served in the military, I'd be shocked if he didn't. This feels authentic, written by someone who lived this life for a long while, even though he clearly didn't serve on an Alliance starship.

I started out my previous review by pointing out how my first impressions weren't good, so this follow-up has to start with an update on that situation. The good news is that Duncan resolved some of those problems. The cover art isn't pixellated and the text on the front and back covers follows suit. The paragraphs are now indented and the spacing between them is gone, at least for the most part—for some reason the fantasy chapters on New Terra do have that paragraph spacing until, well, they don't any more. The bad news is that there's still an inconsistent use of smartquotes and the proofing still isn't great. To highlight that, there's a "their" for "there" in the very first paragraph.

However, as with the first book, the text grabs us quickly. There's a strong sense of place and a strong use of emotion too, even as early as the first couple of pages, even without much in the way of description to push it. Sure, there's a little clumsiness early on and, even later, there's a feeling that some exposition should have been covered through clever use of dialogue, but the story finds its feet quickly enough and it starts to flow until we're utterly engrossed and don't want to put the book down.

The core of the story, this time, ties to the TSS Phoenix, the oldest starship in the Alliance fleet, so we're firmly in military science fiction territory. If you'll recall, this is the ship that we spent time with in the first book, the one that was home to Commander Roy O'Hara and remained so for his colleague Juan Gonzalez. This story starts seven years on, with Roy now resident on New Terra, married to Princess Katreena and father to three kids. He's a long way from the Phoenix metaphorically. Juan is a long way from the Phoenix physically, because he wasn't on board at the point when it leapt twenty-one thousand light years off course during its journey home.

That's a long way, so in Alliance space, it was believed destroyed in an enemy attack. It survived that attack but was seriously damaged and its QSG, or Quantum Speed Generator, which is the drive that provides the ship with the equivalent to hyperspace or warp speed, overloaded and so they find themselves a long, long way from home. For a while, it seems like this book is going to revolve around the attempts under Capt. Roche to repair the ship and skip home in whatever short jumps they can maintain, with most of that journey being through enemy space.

I should add here that the enemy has changed. The Serkin race of lizard aliens was defeated at the end of the first book, so they've skipped on out of focus and the So'larie, a race of octopoid aliens previously enslaved by the Serkins, has taken advantage of their absence to take over a large empire. While they look wildly different, they act in exactly the same way. If I was to hurl out a serious concern about this series that goes beyond proofing errors that might be obvious to me but really aren't unusual in self-published books, it would be that Duncan seems to have no intention of building his enemies like he builds his heroes.

Alliance characters are well-drawn and worthy of focus, whichever plot strand we're following. Serkin characters and So'larie, however, are really just interchangeable cartoon bad guys which only exist to be the enemy. There's no attempt to build their culture or background or even to consider this story from their perspective. The only time we get a tiny glimpse of detail, it's to underline why they're the bad guys because they still use this particularly aberrant weapon or some such. I can't be 100% sure, but I don't believe that any So'larie character here has a name or a line of dialogue.

Given that, we spend almost no time in their company. There are four plot strands here, which makes this twice as ambitious as the first book, which only had two.

The first is the core story with Capt. Carl Roche and the Phoenix. We learn a lot about him, as this novel builds, as we do Commander John Dobson, his First Officer; Commander Sam Ryan, the Chief Engineer; and his wife, also the Chief Medical Officer, Dr. Carol Gould. About halfway through the book, they encounter a military contingent from the traditionally insular Eirerinia Colony under the command of Col. Sheila Kaminsky, and they become part of the team too, just as well-defined and explored.

The second is the one we expected all along, with Roy and Katreena caught up once more in an array of prophecies that revolve around them and incursions from outside. King Waldron tells Roy what's been going on in and outside the atmosphere of New Terra, with seventeen ships, so far, brought down. They're supposed to be isolated, almost quarantined, and the concern is that the Alliance is going back on its promise. More importantly, it seems to have done that for the past year. Of course, it isn't that simple, but Roy and Katreena soon figure out what's going on and what to do about it.

The third features Commander Juan Gonzalez, formerly part of Roy's team on the Phoenix but now sent on a mission to gather intel for the Deep-Space branch of Military Intelligence. Given the occasional nod to 'Star Wars'—most evident here through the Star Weapon sounding even more like the Death Star, even though it looks very different—I'm sure there are bunch of Juan Solo jokes here, especially given that I'm writing this in early May just one day after Cinco de Mayo and Revenge of the Fifth, but I won't go there. I'll just add that Juan isn't alone on his mission, but it's one undercover ship and he's commanding it.

The most unlikely and most risky of the four but very possibly my favourite is one that unfolds on the Phoenix at a completely different level in the command structure. A good chunk of the crew had been evacuated before the QSG spiked, so the ship is understaffed and that state of affairs becomes most obvious when Capt. Roche realises that he has to get the flight deck up and running. There's only one deck monkey left on board, Crewman Bradley Hamel, there due to a malfunctioning shuttle, and so he's quickly promoted to Chief's Assistant and tasked with restoring the flight deck to working order.

Whatever that title means, he's at the other end of the command structure from Capt. Roche and the important officers in the first plot strand. He's already been taken under the wing of Crewman Debra Hall and her friend and colleague Crewman Maria Someone or Other, whose surname I couldn't find. Of course, he has a crush on Deb but Maria finds feelings for him and so things get a little complicated, all the more so when Bruce arrives with the Eirerinians. The floundering romances are surprisingly fun, if hardly deep, but what matters is that this trio of characters feel utterly real and they're incredibly easy grunts to relate to.

As you might imagine, plot strands one and four soon connect, strand three eventually likewise and, by the end of the book, strand two kinda-sorta. The latter never becomes quite as solid a connection as in the first book, but for good reasons and everything wraps up as it should, with neat bows on each of the plot strands and a teaser for what's going to come next in book three, which I'm assuming will shift the balance back from the sci-fi focus to the fantasy one that led the way in the first book. It feels like the Phoenix's story is done and the series as a whole will continue to be about Roy and Katreena.

I like these books and, only two in, it's clear that Duncan is growing as a writer, both in skill and ambition. These were his first two published books and his only two at the time I bought them, at what was then Phoenix Comicon in 2016. I'll be tracking him down at what is now Phoenix Fan Fusion next month, when I'll pick up the rest of this series, which reached four books with 'The Prophet's Stone' and 'The King's Stone', along with whatever else he has on his table. His most prolific series right now seems to be the 'Lt. Reilly' series that's reached at least six volumes.

I'm also going to try to attend his 'Indie Authors' panel with authors I know like Dani Hoots and Tam Chronin, even though it's been relegated to an awful slot. If you're there, I'd recommend it even on Friday morning at 10:30am in room 225B. I hope to see you there, if I can get out of bed early enough to make it possible. If not, check them all out on the vendor hall floor. I will. ~~ Hal C F Astell

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