A young woman falls in love with an enemy intelligence agent after stumbling across an alien invasion fleet, while tensions deteriorate and war begins between their two space federations.

So much fun, and so well written. I was caught up in the story from the start, though I didn’t understand half of what was going on. But the author managed to put it all together quickly enough for me to figure things out. The main character Alex was the most fun to watch, headstrong and eager to explore, to get away from her mother. The interaction between her and Caleb, intelligence agent for the government that killed her father in war, was so interesting. The author managed to circle the romance angle for a long time, but it was because the two were cautious, even though they were very strongly attracted to each other from the start. We probably didn’t need the overt hints that they were distracted by each other’s physical traits, but it was cute, and didn’t get sappy. Unfortunately, I thought that Caleb went too extreme in his nanny care of Alex when she was shot. The potential breakup, fortunately, didn’t last long, as these two are too practical not to be honest with each other. I love reading about smart, practical people. It doesn’t mean they are without flaws, but instead they have to get into more difficult situations to make it interesting. And these two were very interesting. There is a lot of technical information in the book as well, from astronomy, physics, starship tech, artificials, weapons, and more, which satisfied a very large part of science in this science fiction series. It kept my interest up, especially as it was written so believably well. The rest of the book shows how people are manipulating the Earth Alliance and the Senecan Federation into war. Alex and Caleb see it right away, but too many people want war to avoid it. I understand the need to spread out the blame, but there were a lot of characters to remember in this part of the book, and they were scattered in chapters separated by a lot of Alex and Caleb (not a bad thing as there was more of them). Some characters only appear in one, maybe two short chapters in the entire book, and I had to flip back to recall some of them, even though they were all very well developed. The book has me hooked enough, now, that I’m going straight to the second one. Again –so much fun to read!

I enjoyed Asterion Noir, a future set of books written by this author in a different galaxy, but part of the same pantheon. They were good, but not nearly as much fun as this book. I wasn’t expecting to enjoy it so much that I would continue on to the second book in the trilogy right away.

Most of the fun comes in the form of Alex and Caleb stuck together on her crashed ship, where they are immediately physically attracted to each other, but try to resist. At first, Alex has Caleb tied up because he’s the one who shot her down, though her superior firepower destroyed his ship. Being an intelligence officer, and having interfacing technology built into his fingers, he cracks the security, but waits until she refuses to see reason before showing her that. There is a lot of very good, very intense back-and-forth while they are stranded. They are from opposite sides of a war that ended in a stalemate when she was young, and she deduces quickly that he’s from Intelligence. For his part, he knows who she is almost from the start, daughter of a military director and a deceased starship captain.

He wins her trust little by little, and because she can’t make all the repairs on her own. He’s technical oriented, so he is a lot of uses to her, and she bosses him around to great effect. She knows she’s not in charge of him, but he goes a long with it because it’s his only way off the planet. His suggestion that she make up missing hull material to fix the hole by taking scrap from his old ship leads to the discovery of a new alloy by one of her friends later on. And with every fix, every breakfast or supper he makes, every astronomical observation, they grow closer, until when they leave the nebula, they are emotionally reliant on each other.

Alex was a young rebel who lashed out at her mother when her father was killed in the Crux War with Seneca. We are introduced to her mother in a scene that sets the stage for later, but takes a while to come around. We are also introduced to Alex’s best friend Kennedy, a genius who works at a starship development company. She’s continuously trying to get Alex to gain a sex life, which is on Alex’s mind all throughout her confinement with the very handsome and smart Caleb.

Interspersed far and wide between the very interesting scenes between Alex and Caleb are other characters, who are manipulating the two governments into war. One kills and takes the appearance of a low-level government functionary, killing a high level Earth politician and making it look like the Senecan government was to blame. A criminal organization goes to great lengths to masquerade as an Earth fleet that bombards a Senecan colony, followed by an attack by Seneca on an Earth military base. War is declared, and human is busy fighting human. Other characters benefit from this, like the powerful smugglers. Others who have more information from both governments are more suspicious. But with war, the suspicious reasons for the start of the war lose priority, especially when the most suspicious people end up dead.

At least one high level politician on Earth, and somebody in the Senecan government, are in league with aliens, who demand this war. I wonder what they hope to gain if the aliens wipe everybody out…

The aliens had tried to keep Alex and Caleb out of the Metis nebula, where they were hiding their portal and amassing their fleet, through different opperatives. Caleb’s ship was damaged in an attack as he was investigating, which is why he immediately attacked Alex, thinking she was a pirate, too. Earth’s government tried to recruit Alex, and when that failed, a private contractor tried to convince her to take another, very lucrative job away from the nebula. But both characters are stubborn, and went with their initial feeling that something was either wrong or valuable there.

So when Alex’s ship is repaired, and they make their way to the pulsar, then beyond, they see the alien fleet coming through the portal. It scares them so much that they record a few minutes’ worth of footage and spectra before racing away as fast as they can. Being out of communications because of interference in the nebula, they have no idea what has transpired in the rest of the galaxy.

Alex races back home to Earth, against Caleb’s wishes, but when she finally relents and offers to drop him off at an independent world, he decides to stay with her. I love the way these two characters grow. They belong together, they enjoy the company , they both want more, but they are afraid to commit, though they both want to.

On Earth, Alex brings Caleb into security headquarters under a false name, and when his cover is blown (by an anonymous tip), her friend Richard is forced to arrest him. There is a huge argument with her mother and with Richard, where they discuss the convenience of the timing of both Caleb’s arrest and the setup for the war, when a very scary-looking alien fleet is preparing for unknown actions in the galaxy. She presents her data to the scientific advisory board, then decides to abandon Earth to get more data. It’s obvious by this point that Earth’s bureaucracy is too slow and in denial about this kind of threat, which is probably very realistic. Even though she’s the daughter of a well-known military director, she’s still an outside agent, an unknown. Of course they have to verify things on their own. The message sent to the Senecan government receives the same treatment, even though Caleb gives it his highest priority. The special ops team that is sent to investigate is destroyed instantly on observing the aliens, so no word gets back to them.

Having rebelled to the highest degree after her father died, Alex has a lot of friends in shady places. One of these provides her with a hacking routine to her enhanced biometrics that allows her to break Caleb out of the high-security military prison. Maybe it was just a temporary holding cell until he was sent to a high-security prison. The author didn’t dwell on the escape, because that wasn’t the point. It was a little far-fetched, but worked well because of the audacity and confidence with which the author presented it.

Then, of course, they get to give in to their passion and consummate their relationship. They are both so high on adrenaline from the escape that any resistance they still had evaporates. The sex scene is steamy and well-written, satisfying on many levels, especially in the way they finally admit that they are in love.

They go to Seneca, escaping Earth in a way that’s also believable and understated. I liked the corridors idea, giving spaceships a calm tunnel from which to ascend or descend to/from orbit.

On Seneca, Alex gives Caleb’s boss some classified material, as well as her data on the aliens. Shortly afterward, they are attacked, and Caleb’s boss is killed. Caleb manages to kill all their attackers, but Alex is shot. This also begins what I consider to be the weakest part of the book. Alex is in shock, and Caleb interprets it as a reaction to his lethal skills. He gets her back to their rented ship and treats her wounds, and his evasion of her questions gets her upset. Thus follows the classic misinterpretation where they almost break up. Fortunately, they are both smart and practical people, and they come to terms with what he did and her reaction pretty quickly.

I think my favorite part on Seneca was the glowing sea, where they go the restaurant after touring under water. Each planet was unique, with its own touch of culture, some simple, others complex, but this one was my favorite.

They gather her spaceship from Caleb’s old friend Mia, who broke into Alex’s ship to give Caleb unlimited access to all functions as a favor. I wonder how Alex will respond to that breach… Supplies gathered, they decide to go through the portal to discover where the aliens came from, and their motivations. When they arrive at the Metis nebula, the alien fleet is gone, presumably to attack human colonies. They plunge through the portal to who knows where…

The book ends on a cliff-hanger, but that’s not what made me continue the story through to book two. I’m thoroughly enjoying the characters and especially the way the author weaves her tale. I honestly want to learn where the story goes from here, but I especially want to track Alex and Caleb through their great relationship.

There is also a lot of technical detail in this book. It could easily have degenerated into a tawdry romance, especially as the number of sex scenes increased. But the author kept it very reasonable, and wove a lot of very nice science and future-science into the story. I loved how Alex knows her ship inside and out, how she needs to know computer science to connect with it, astronomy to do her job as a prospector, engineering and mechanics to perform repairs, and weapons to defend herself. Each of these was given a lot of detail, but not so much that it overwhelmed any other part of the book. Character, story, politics, romance, each got their part. The book is incredibly well balanced.