I’ve now finished Honour’s Knight by Rachel Bach, which is the second book in the Paradox trilogy. This review is quite vague as I want to avoid any spoilers, which is something that can be difficult when reviewing later books in a series.As I said in my review of the first book, Fortune’s Pawn, this is a science fiction action type of book, with a really cool female space mercenary as the protagonist. Devi fights in a suit of powered armour, she loves her guns and she is full of ambition. She’s a great character and I really liked her narration, she’s a character I could really get behind.In the first book Devi took as job as a guard on a spaceship with a reputation for running into trouble, and she found out that something strange was going on with the captain Caldswell and the captain’s daughter Ren. Devi also fell in love with the ship’s cook Rupert, another character with secrets to hide. At the end of the first book she learnt some unsettling things about Rupert and Caldswell and ended up getting her memory wiped.In this book Devi struggles to figure out what is going on with her missing memories and the strange creatures she keeps on seeing around the ship. Eventually she gets her memory back and learns the truth about Rupert, Caldswell and Ren. This places her in the middle of a secret war and she must choose which side to fight on and figure out who she can actually trust and how to do the right thing.I really enjoyed this book. Much like the first book in the series, I really liked the plot with its balance between action and mystery. I loved Devi, she’s a great character. I also like the setting of the series, and this book explored a lot more of the alien species and planets, which I really enjoyed. Again the only real negative for me is that the romance was a bit too heavy handed and unbelievable, that’s the only thing I disliked about the book. Overall I am really enjoying this trilogy, and I liked this book a lot. I am going to start the third book, Heaven’s Queen, and I am really looking forward to seeing how the story ends. So far I would really recommend these books for anyone who wants an action-packed, fast-paced and fun science fiction series. Honor’s Knight is the second book in Rachel Bach’s Paradox series and picks up immediately after the events of Fortune’s Pawn, with Devi burying her skullhead partner, Cotter on the partially terraformed planet Falcon 34. She can’t really remember how he died, or how she got a massive stomach wound she’s still recovering from. And if we were suspicious of Brian Caldswell after the events of Fortune’s Pawn, the prologue to the second book leaves no doubt that Caldswell is into some heavy and disturbing intrigue and should not be trusted. Neither, for that matter, should the cook, Devi’s former lover. That aspect of their relationship has disappeared down the memory black hole and the only thing Devi feels for him now is uncontrollable revulsion.In fact, there’s a lot Devi can’t remember, and much of the book’s first half is her telling us that. The amnesia plot is a little overused and quite a bit of Devi’s interior monologues while she tries to remember what we know perfectly well feel like filler. We get several pieces to the old puzzle as well as a whole new aspect of it, but the pre-dénouement could have been more efficiently handled. Devi’s BAMF-ness gets kicked up a notch, mainly because the plot isn’t dragged down with the over-wrought OTP romance of the first book. The issue here is not that Devi can’t be a BAMF and have a sex life/romance too, it’s that the OTP romance of the first book was written in such a way that it distracted from the rest of the narrative, and in that sense acted as filler too. Some OTP steam still lingers in book two, but fortunately there are other, more interesting things happening this time around.Much of this book is concerned with the virus Devi picked up from the lizard ghost ship and with Caldswell and his creepy daughter Ren, which has a whole new, disturbing dimension less than hinted at in the first book. Since Devi’s character is pretty well set, we’re in for a solely plot-based ride – what crazy action is she going to take in this situation? How is she going to get herself out of that one? Let’s see how much Devi can have thrown at her by this plot-machine before she breaks! And yet we know she won’t, because she’s Devi. She can have the weight of the survival of humanity and the possible destruction of all living things on her shoulders (like we didn’t see that coming) and still be her reliably intrepid self. That reliability is what allows us to gleefully follow her through one disaster after the next. While none of the other characters grow or change much either, our perceptions of them certainly do as we get to see previously hidden aspects of their character in an effort to add complexity to what were otherwise fairly stock, flat characters. (I want to know what’s going on with Mabel’s cat - it’s conspicuous enough to feel like a Chekhovian gun.)Coming back to this series is like coming home to your favorite things and curling up with them and a warm blanket. You have your Firefly (and a bit of Dollhouse), your various animes/mangas (most notably Akira), a little bit of Star Wars – all of the best things in things in Nerdom rolled up into one exciting book that you just want to devour. This book is a known entity and total comfort fiction. I can’t wait to get my hands on the third and final book, Heaven’s Queen, which came out in April.
What do You think about Honour's Knight (2014)?
For some reason, this one dragged a little bit for me. Still loved it, but not as much as book 1.
—cantbe4real
Still great in spite of the Space Twilight love story.
—1434
