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Friday, February 13, 2009

The Killing of Worlds by Scott Westerfield


This is book two of the Risen Empire series. We read book one for January's book group meeting. Three of us thought it was super cool - nanotechnology! space battles! living dead! Basically, your classic space opera. One of us felt it was a thinly disguised romance.

In Killing of Worlds we pick right up with Captain Zai engaging the Empire's dread enemy, the Rix. It is his mission to stop at all costs the compound mind on Legis XV from communicating with that ship. The War Council back on the Emperor's home world of Home needs Captain Zai to succeed - Legis holds the Emperor's secret. Oh, this is SO cool! We have pilots flying microships, we have mega canons, we have impossible odds, we have a mutiny!

Meanwhile, on Legis, Alexander (the compound mind) is quietly gathering his forces with the help of one lone surviving Rix commando and her hostage, Rana Carter. This is SO cool! Alexander is taking over the little sensor robots at the pole in order to communicate with the ship above while the commando works to set up diversions.

I liked this one because it wasn't full of heavy science, it didn't go into excruciating detail about the why fores and where how's of space battle or nanotechnology or trajectories or computer science. Well, not much...he did delve into some specifics on wavelengths that got a bit tedious at the moment (we were in BATTLE for cripes sake!!). But I forgive the author for that. And for the bits of romance, but even those were somewhat okay because they weren't the main focus of the story.

Sigh. I just love a good space opera.

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