Newly-promoted Captain Brett Butcher is about to achieve his life-long ambition to command a battle cruiser. But before he takes up his new posting, he goes home on leave, hoping to perhaps catch a glimpse of his first love, the unattainable Lady Tarlyn.
When the queen is assassinated in a terrorist attack, Tarlyn’s life is thrown into turmoil when she, too, becomes a target. The last person she expects to rescue her is her childhood sweetheart, Brett Butcher.
As Validor’s Ptorix and human populations face off over a group of islands neither owns, the calls for war grow louder. Torn between love, duty and ambition, Butcher and Tarlyn struggle to prevent an inter-species conflict, while the ember of love that has smouldered for so long bursts into flame. But with planetary peace at stake, both will be forced to choose: love or duty.
When the queen is assassinated in a terrorist attack, Tarlyn’s life is thrown into turmoil when she, too, becomes a target. The last person she expects to rescue her is her childhood sweetheart, Brett Butcher.
As Validor’s Ptorix and human populations face off over a group of islands neither owns, the calls for war grow louder. Torn between love, duty and ambition, Butcher and Tarlyn struggle to prevent an inter-species conflict, while the ember of love that has smouldered for so long bursts into flame. But with planetary peace at stake, both will be forced to choose: love or duty.
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I confess Ms van der Rol is a new author to me and I've had a yen to read her books for quite some time now. She is renowned for her space opera type stories with more than just a touch of romance. Crisis at Validor works very well as a standalone book but it's clearly a world the author has visited before with its mixture of humans and unusual aliens of which the Ptorix are just one of the several encountered in this story. Inter species tensions abound clearly but it's the underhand politics that dominate this storyline and with so much deception and underhanded wrong doings going on, it's a wonder there's any time for romance at all but the author refuses to overlook the obvious!
Okay what did I think? I liked all the complicated sci-fi with its dazzling technology and the descriptions of the aliens are so evocative and, if honest, I thought the tentacles were just a bit yucky! We have a brave hero in Brett who arrives just in time to save the girl (now that's what a hero should do!) but the heroine, Tarlyn, seemed to be blinkered! I'm sorry, but some things are just too obvious and hello, family being murdered here so maybe show a bit more emotion! Sorry, rant over and really it's not an awful book it's just that I think I expected more from the heroine.
Ms van der Rol is without doubt talented and very good at what she does and I'm sure her fans will be over the moon to read this addition to her library. Great world building, with cultural tensions and political agendas causing so much trouble. It's sad but true that greed seems to always rear its ugly head but at least in this story the good guys come out on top.
I will read more from the author and if you enjoy a bit of classic space opera (think Star Trek), then why not give it a go. As I write this, the first in the series Conspiracy (The Iron Admiral #1) is free!
I was gifted a copy if this in exchange for an honest review.
Recommended!!!!
Okay what did I think? I liked all the complicated sci-fi with its dazzling technology and the descriptions of the aliens are so evocative and, if honest, I thought the tentacles were just a bit yucky! We have a brave hero in Brett who arrives just in time to save the girl (now that's what a hero should do!) but the heroine, Tarlyn, seemed to be blinkered! I'm sorry, but some things are just too obvious and hello, family being murdered here so maybe show a bit more emotion! Sorry, rant over and really it's not an awful book it's just that I think I expected more from the heroine.
Ms van der Rol is without doubt talented and very good at what she does and I'm sure her fans will be over the moon to read this addition to her library. Great world building, with cultural tensions and political agendas causing so much trouble. It's sad but true that greed seems to always rear its ugly head but at least in this story the good guys come out on top.
I will read more from the author and if you enjoy a bit of classic space opera (think Star Trek), then why not give it a go. As I write this, the first in the series Conspiracy (The Iron Admiral #1) is free!
I was gifted a copy if this in exchange for an honest review.
Recommended!!!!
