Sent into the past of a planet long dead, Nida and Carson search for a time gate to bring them back to the present.

Even though I didn’t like the first book in the series, I decided to continue, because I already own the rest of it, and they are relatively short. Unfortunately, this book didn’t fare any better. The writing is the first obstacle, as it’s immature and unrefined, sounding like a casual conversation between preteens, and with many short sentences that should punctuate the urgency, but sound ridiculous. The author repeats things over and over again, as if she’s just picked up the book again after months and had to remind us/her of what happened. We know they are on an alien planet, and have traveled through time. We don’t need the reminder so many times through the book and even almost at the end. There are very many continuity glitches and assumptions that come out of nowhere, not to mention that the two main characters never question anything (even the visions, which they weep over). The story itself isn’t terrible, but doesn’t progress. Nida and Carson love each other, though they keep denying it in the worst possible thoughts and dialog. There is no advancement on that front. They travel to a nearby city after adopting the fake skin and clothing of the people, and the people aren’t suspicious though she blushes red instead of green due to her blood color, and any other number of things. Almost immediately, they get in with the resistance, because the entity wishes it, and things go wrong from there. We know because the author continues to tell us this at the end of multiple chapters. I wish the alien planet had seemed alien, but instead seemed like an inept 1940s Nazi city with the same kind of technology, weapons, vehicles, and more. Nida needs a confidence booster, and I think she gets that here, while Carson is a terrible lieutenant, throwing away years of training in the first crisis he encounters, and never thinking things through. It nearly costs him his life, except that Nida conveniently finds her own power for no reason at all at that very moment.

At one time, I would have loved to nitpick my way through a book like this. It would have filled a whole notebook with items to complain about. It’s not worth spending the time. As described above, the writing was terrible, as if dictated by a couple of preteens while talking to each other. As the first book was like that, I wasn’t overly surprised.

I did, however, want to finish it as quickly as possible. The tagline for this series is that Nida is the worst cadet in a thousand years. I guess it’s become a joke for the author, because almost every chapter repeats it, until in the end, Carson admits that she isn’t! I hope the author will now stop using the phrase, which got tired the first time it was used.

The simplistic way Nida and Carson did things was tiring, but in some ways they did think a couple of things through. Nida copied pretty clothing from somewhere, but it turns out that prostitutes are the ones who cover up, and normal women wear thongs. This premise is used to draw laughs (supposedly), and to bring out some sexual tension (which it doesn’t), except that Nida seems to be wearing normal clothes and be fully covered even after she removes it, and it never comes up in combat situations, though she can apparently dodge bullets.

The scenes in the house where they find clothes and learn a bit of the language, and the following scenes in the forest, were interminable, as they repeated the same information and dialog over and over, as if they can reason anything out that way. Finally, when they decide to go, they end up saving a woman (no details as what she might or might not be wearing) from a rabid animal. As if that proves they are rebels, she leads them directly to the rebellion. While the author spent a lot of time telling us that they were on an alien planet and wouldn’t understand its customs, it seemed like they’d been transported to Earth of the 1940s. The world was completely recognisable, described as rectangular prefab buildings, trucks with tires, guns with bullets and blanks, and an industrial smell. It’s a chauvinistic society that covers up freedoms, so it should be difficult to hide a rebellion in the walls and pipes of the city, yet this one does. The author calls it fascist at least once, but there’s no proof of that, either.

At least the rebels are suspicious, but the two people who fight (Cara) and question (Varo) them turn out to be either traitors or possibly aliens themselves. It’s not clear. I’ll be more impressed if Varo ends up being one of the barbarians from the end of the last book. I was hoping Cara would be, also, but unfortunately she was just a triple-agent, pretending to work for the rebels. No wonder nobody came looking for her when she left her post and never returned.

The entire mission was to look for a time gate, so they plan to infiltrate the secret service building, where they think the government might be keeping information on strange phenomena, like everything sucked in and shooting toward an affected person. Why do they make this assumption, that the entity had influence in this time? Maybe it because the entity tells them this, but usually when asked these questions it shrugs the equivalent of its shoulders and says it doesn’t know. That’s too bad, because when Nida taps into its power, she realizes that she can build her own time gate with her mind –no materials necessary. As far as missions go, this one was a waste.

I think the purpose of the story might have been to get Nida so frustrated and so close to death that she had to figure out how to take control of the entity. It obviously doesn’t know what it’s doing. So Nida had to go through a nightmare situation, where she was separated from Carson, allowed Carson to go into a trap with Cara, escaped on her own (disabling Varo), crossed paths with Carson, and allowed him to be caught, which would bring her to the edge, and allowing her to tap the entity. Unfortunately, none of it worked, because the motivations made no sense.

By the time the final battle takes place, with Nida on the roof, captured by Cara, then Carson on the roof, unbelievably caught again by Cara, I was just trying to get to the end. I had to roll my eyes when the magical weapon of the entity stops working for Carson just at the wrong moment. I was expecting some connection to the entity or another explanation, but instead it starts working again when Cara steals it from him. Is she so much stronger than Carson that she could pry it from his fingers, despite it not being protected by his armor? Nida also gets it to work, killing Cara after being hit and bones broken multiple times. No explanation given.

I still don’t know anything about this alien planet, and I didn't retain any of the information given through to the end of the book, except that they are willing to use their guns. I think there might be a mystery here when they refer to Nida being Touched, and visions of the future, but I’m not convinced the author will follow up on it.

Speaking of visions, Nida goes into several trances, each one showing a little more of the vision she sees. It turns out that the Confederation ships will be devastated in a war around this planet in the future. Both she and Carson are driven to tears about the implications, but they never question it, never talk about it, never wonder if or how they can change it, or if they can make use of the knowledge. Again, it's frustrating, because these are things I would expect from a trained military person.

Then we get to the romance. There is lingering unresolved romantic and sexual pseudo-tension all throughout. At least I believe that's the author's intention. None of it works, from Carson's distraction (how old is he, anyway?), lingering touches where they each tell themselves they shouldn't (again, why not?). Nida gets jealous, even though she has convinced herself that Carson can never be hers. These people need a psychological evaluation before going through the Academy.

I'm still not a fan of this author's writing, but I will continue to the end of the series because I already own the ebooks, and given that I'm halfway there, I'll be curious if there's a real ending.