Rae's sister is obsessed with a fantasy series involving a Cinderella style heroine loved by all. In this series, both the spoiled king and his loyal best friend fall for her, creating an angst ridden love triangle before she's assassinated. With his queen dead, the king takes up his prophesied role as Emperor with vicious ruthlessness. Rae and her sister argue over which of the two guys are ultimately the better character, but her sister always gets annoyed with Rae because even though she is only 20 years old, she is dying of cancer and often doesn't remember the character names and plot points. No one else visits Rae anymore though, until a stranger offers her the chance to enter the fantasy world in the series to get the Flower of Life and Death to save herself. She doesn't really believe it, until she wakes up pain free in a character's body. Too bad the body belongs to the heroine's evil step-sister, scheduled to be executed in horrible fairy-tale style the next day. There are so many directions this plot could go, but it skips over most of the obvious to create a bazaar and oddly serious look at literary tropes and real human emotions.

I picked up Jespa The Space Trader because it is a stand alone story about a small crew on a trading vessel trying to make ends meet. Now that I am done, I am hoping it is the start of a series because I enjoyed it enough to want more. There isn't anything new here to fans of the genre, but it is an excellent blend of world building, slice of life, and character development, with your standard fare of sci-fi mixed in for good measure. The main character is Captain Albert Mead, a retired banker who liquidated his assets to buy the trading vessel, Jespa, because he wanted to turn it into a home in space for him and his 3 kids. Unfortunately, only one of those kids remains with him, Monica, who has reached womanhood aboard the ship and now wants to be a captain herself. Join Captain Mead, Monica, and a handful of others as they do their best to prosper in a solar system that is preparing for war.

I continued going after the first book of Defiance and the series keeps getting better. The writing has improved a bit but the real reason I keep going is that the further Zac progresses and learns about his unique heritage the deeper the story gets. The initial story of a thirty year old marketing exec being inducted into a System run universe and fighting alone to overcome an alien demon incursion isn't remarkable for the genre but we like rooting for the mortal underdog as he blunders his way along. Except it quickly becomes clear that Zac isn't exactly the underdog when it comes to his amazing luck and hints that his mother wasn't from Earth. His background is truly unique and it gradually appears that his cultivation and advancement will effect the entire multi-verse. Nope, no spoilers here, if you want an idea of what's going on you have to read book two.

Void Wraith Origins is a prequel series to the popular six book long Void Wraith Saga series, which is highly rated and well reviewed, so I figured why not start from the chronological beginning? The first book in this series, Dryker's Folly, details the event that starts a war that will put humanity on the brink of extinction. A strange signal originates from Pluto and the closest ship is a mining vessel under the command of a washed up ex-military man, Captain Dryker. But before he can even get there, a fleet of alien ships arrives in our solar system, The Tigris, show up because they are also interested in the signal from Pluto. They appear near our sun because they possess a technology that allows them to use stars like wormholes. Of course our space fleets jump them, but they are militarily superior to anything we can muster. Except, of course, conveniently for the discoveries being made by Dryker on Pluto, which might hold the key to victory against these Tigris invaders. Very few would pick Captain Dryker to be the one human to be in a position to defend us against the Tigris, but he might just turn out to be the right man for the job.

Zac is camping with some friends when Earth gets inducted by the Multiverse System. Since Earth doesn't meet the Multiverse standard, it is fused with three other worlds to create one larger planet composed of random pieces of terrain from all four worlds to create a D-grade world. This is theoretically a great opportunity for potential Cultivators, since most worlds are inducted as F-grade. The first thing that happens is that one third of the populations are deemed potential Cultivators, i.e. they can naturally absorb enough cosmic energy to efficiently improve themselves, and are teleported to Tutorial Villages. Sadly for Zac, he's in the other 66%. All he got was the message about the induction and then a message that he's in the exact spot where something else is supposed to materialize and the System can't merge them. Since two beings can't occupy the same spot they have to roll for it, with Zac rolling 1-100 and the "Herald" rolling 1-100,000 because of its level. Who said the Apocalypse would be fair?

Demir Grappo is a powerful glassdancer and a successful military leader, even at his young age. Despite these innate talents and abilities, he has a solid moral compass and he shows unusual compassion to the rebellious factions that he is sent to put down. Such talent and promise breeds jealousy, and when a political rival maneuvers to turn his greatest military victory into a bloody massacre caused by his own troops, he mentally breaks. The emotional toll of what happened under his command is just too much to bear and Demir walks away from everything, including his eventual inheritance, to live out his life as a grifter. That is until his mother, a powerful political figure and head of his family, is murdered on the city streets. Demir returns from exile to use the resources of his family to uncover the truth about his mother's murder, and of course things get complicated very quickly.

Unholy Island, the mostly forgotten neighbor of Holy Island, is a strange place that everyone quickly forgets, except the few granted sanctuary there. Esme Gray escaped an abusive marriage and found her way to the island because their previous Ward Witch had died, and ridiculous as it seems, it's now her job to run the guesthouse while she maintains the island's protections. Luke Taylor has been searching over a year for his missing twin brother and follows a rumor that leads him to Unholy Island, where a suspicious murder leaves the island in need of a Book Keeper, which he finds a strange term for someone who runs a bookshop. Then there is the kindly old mayor Tobias who was the island's first resident so long ago he barely recalls his true nature. All three of them are weaker than they should be, but together they form a tenuous bulwark against the end of the Earth.

The planet Anjiin may have human inhabitants, but fossil and DNA records reveal that humans are not native to the planet. How they got there, though, is information that has been lost over time. None of that matters when the Carryx arrive, instantly killing 1 out of every 8 humans, and then subjugating the brightest and best humans into service within their hive-like society. The invading force is comprised of a hierarchical structure of multiple alien races, and unfortunately, all of them are physically superior to humans. The story follows a group of researchers who have recently made some important discoveries just before the Carryx arrive. Their skills are valuable to the Carryx, so they are taken to another planet and tasked with doing some research work that is not outside their expertise. The Carryx society has been built over centuries entirely on the backs of enslaved alien species, so they know how to subjugate a race. Resistance is truly futile. Carryx culture is also so different from human society that the researchers don't actually know what is actually expected of them. What is clear though, is the price of failure is extinction for humanity.

Some of the characters from Ancestral Night make cameo appearances, but Machine isn't really a sequel. The story follows Dr. Jens, who enjoys her job on an interstellar ambulance crew dealing with a wide variety of medical emergencies. Some of these involve humans but there are so many species here that every call for help is a new challenge. The AI that runs the ship decides to take one last call before heading to the central system, the equivalent of jury duty in the US, and they find two ships locked together with the biological beings unconscious and the ship AIs confused and acting strangely. The take all of them back to Central Hospital and soon all sorts of things start happening in the usually boring station. Someone actually attacks them, the AIs forget things, and there are power failures for no reason, which could be deadly for the patients. But what Dr. Jens finds strangest of all is that there is a ward restricted to only a few personnel and no one knows who the patients are or what treatment they are receiving. Somehow it connects back to those two ships and the crippled AI, so Dr. Jens is determined to find answers.

Eight years in the making, the adventures of Xavier "X" Rodriguez finally come to a close, and despite the fact that this moment is clearly overdue, it is still bittersweet. Nicholas Sansbury Smith writes a lot of post apocalyptic fiction, and if you described each of his series to me, this is the one I would be the least interested in. When I reviewed the first book in this series I wrote "I found that I was able to put aside the improbability of it all and just enjoy the thrill ride. The characters were interesting, the scenario was unique, and I thought it had a good mix of grit, heroism, and despair. So if you want something different, but not too deep, then put on your radiation suit get ready to dive - The Hive needs you." So, now that we have reached the end of this thrill ride, does the finale deliver the ending this series so richly deserves?