City of Ruins is Kris Rusch’s sequel to Diving Into the Wreck, which I reviewed back in June. It carries forward the story of from Diving into the Wreck, with the Boss now running an organization committed to acquiring as much of the stealth technology as it can to keep it out of the hands of the Empire and maintain the balance of power. There’s are reports that seem to indicate there might be stealth technology on a planet instead of in deep space, and while the Boss is skeptical, she pulls a team together to go and investigate.
To say “it’s complicated” is an understatement. The planetary government has secrets it would rather not be discovered. The Boss and her team make discoveries that include stealth technology, but definitely not the kind of find they were expecting. Rusch weaves in a completely independent plot line, except it’s really not, and I don’t want to say more than that because it’d be a spoiler. There’s a major earthquake, a first contact sequence, one heck of a chase scene with a “nick of time” escape, and what you end up with is a really fun, high energy romp.
The reader (and the Boss) also take big leaps forward in the understanding of the stealth technology and the ancient history that these derelict ships came from, and the history of how things got to this point in time becomes much clearer.
She also does something I love, and which happens all too rarely in series books — she brings this book to a perfectly satisfactory ending while at the same time clearly setting up the structure for future books and showing hints of where this series is going to go in the future. Too often authors fall too much in love with the overarching story arc and forget to tell the series as a set of solid independent stories, but Rusch avoids that trap. Both City of Ruins and Diving into the Wreck are in depending stories within a larger story, rather than extended chapters.
Oh, and Rusch leaves a subtle but clear sign that uber-loner Boss is going to find her reality complicated even more than expected in future books by a personal relationship. How Rusch handles that should be fascinating….
These books are fun, high energy action adventure science fiction. You don’t need to think too hard, but they don’t fall apart if you poke at them and consider what’s going on underneath the chase scenes. Solid entertainment and well worth your time to grab a copy and spend an evening with them. For best results, read them in sequence, but both books do stand alone if you choose not to.
Highly recommended.
This article was posted on Chuq Von Rospach, Photographer and Author at City of Ruins by Kristine Kathryn Rusch. This article is copyright 2013 by Chuq Von Rospach under a Creative Commons license for non-commericial use only with attribution. See the web site for details on the usage policy.