An Officer's Duty (Theirs Not to Reason Why, #2) (utgåvan 2012)

While not a romance, I want Ia to have romance. Incredibly engaging, so much information and yet not enough. I want more and can hardly wait for the next one.
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The book continues straight from the previous instalment in the series. As with the previous instalment we follow Ia as she tries to navigate the flow of time and chose the path that leads to the survival of the galaxy hundreds of years from now.

It is generally a fun and entertaining read. There are a few bits, especially the first parts, which are perhaps not so thrilling. The first 100 pages, where Ia visits her family on her home planet, is even a bit boring. Luckily it is a reasonably large book (450 pages) so there is plenty of material left once one has gotten through this part.

The rest is in some sense similar to the first book with a period of military training followed by some actual duty. This is the fun part, both the training and the actual duty. As before Ia is somewhat of a übervoman and a badass one at that.

In this book we actually get to know a lot more of what the dangers that lay ahead are. They are still far away in the future though and Ia have a few details to deal with before that, like winning a couple of wars that are about to break out, so I would say that there are plenty of material for more books.

The book ramps up the action rather exponentially towards the end and here is also when we get to know quite a few things about the imminent future. In these parts of the book Ia makes sure no one forgets why she is called Bloody Mary. She also reveals that precognition is not her only abilities and towards the end I got a bit of a superhero feeling over the entire story. I was not to sure if I liked all of this über-stuff but in the end I think it worked out quite well.

After this book I definitely want to read the rest of the story so I am going to dive straight into the next one.
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I freaking ADORE this series and am dying to read Hellfire which is being released this month.

Excellent, mind-blowing, reality bending, Dune--like military sci-fi with a kick-ass, gorgeous, tough heroine who is trying to save the Universe. I loved it to bits and expect everyone else to rave about it. This is also one of the very few books with 10 out of 10 rating for me this year. And I can't wrap my head around it, because I can't stand the same author writing paranormal romance, but she is awesome in sci-fi. *shrugs*

See my review of A Soldier's Duty. ( )

Ia starts getting in deeper - she gets shifted from the Marines to officers' school, and then out to a small ship on Blockade duty. Which means frequent battles, of various sorts, from shootouts ship-to-ship to boarding actions. We get a lot less detail on her fights, and a lot more on her plans - or at least, the actions taken to support her plans, she doesn't tell anyone what she's doing and why. Then a final battle (in detail) - her officers are snatched and sold to the Salik, and she arranges to be snatched and sold herself. Battling through lots of "frogtopuses", plus some anti-psi machines that are a figurative and literal headache to her - they block her foresight, which makes getting out of there a lot harder - she extracts a great many prisoners and wipes out Salik high command in the process. And once she's done the bare minimum of recovery, she's got the real battle - she has to convince the high council of her powers, and that she needs a free hand to save the universe. With complications such as another Feyori Meddler, and the assistance of the anti-psi machines to back her down to where her gift can be measured, she succeeds...more or less. Next book she gets to actually take action with her new free hand. There's also a major new complication added from her school days - a classmate, and roommate, to whom she's actually attracted - and possibly because of that attraction, her gift refuses to perceive him. Ia needs to avoid him to keep her vision(s) clear, but that's not what she wants to do (or what he wants her to do). ( )

I'm not sure what it is about these books. An almost all-knowing heroine sounds a bit boring, wouldn't you think? But I'm not getting bored, instead I'm reading all these books in a row. Even though you know more than usually that everything is going to be ok, you still want to know how everything is going to be accomplished. And even though Ia has a very strong precognitive gift, this doesn't mean things can't go wrong, or that all Ia has to do is arrogantly blaze her way through everything. The path she follows requires both small and large acts, and she cannot do it all by herself (clearly, since the situation she is trying to avoid lies 300 years in the future). I like how everything is very gender-neutral, as in no male chauvinism, and that it is one of those rare books that doesn't even make a fuss about how equalitarian it is. I'm curious to see how everything will play out, and I don't mind at all that Ia already knows. ( )