Deviana Morris has lost her mind, literally. There’s a blank where memories should inhabit space as a result a battle with an alien and enemy she barely remembers. That is on top of fighting for her life and realizing she might be the key to humanity’s salvation in the galaxy because of the occasional spreading of a black ink-like substance across Devi’s skin. You know, typical for a power-armor wearing bad-ass space-mercenary.

Honor’s Knight picks up where Fortune’s Pawn left Devi and her companions. A battle has been fought and Devi is burying one of her allies. Her boss, Captain Brian Caldswell, keeps asking about Devi’s lost memories and Rupert, the chef and Captain Caldswell’s seeming go-to-guy, is giving Devi the cold shoulder. Even worse, whenever Devi looks at Rupert she literally gets sick to her stomach. Not all of her memories are gone, and when she begins seeing phantoms, Devi becomes more concerned about her sanity until Caldswell believes what she has to say about the strange creatures few people can actually see. As Devi comes to learn, Caldswell is very high up in the ‘secret’ military organization known as the Eyes; an organization tasked with ridding the galaxy of these destructive creatures known as phantoms.

Devi wants more than the destruction of the phantoms, rather, she wants a whole new approach that will get rid of one of the main tools for destroying the phantoms. The Daughters of Maat have an ability to destroy the phantoms, but the cost is sacrificing the life of a young girl and tearing apart the family of the daughter. Throughout the novel, Devi struggles to regain all of her memories and to fight through what she sees as the corruption in the various organizations who set themselves with combating or controlling the phantoms. Devi comes across Brian’s old partner John Brenton and now rival, himself the leader of a paramilitary organization. Through it all, Devi’s character is consistent with what we learned about her in the previous novel – head strong, committed, a force to be reckoned with, and one who battles both physically and verbally for what she sees as right – even if the plot twists her around quite a bit.

Bach ratchets up the politics in Honor’s Knight and dials back the romantic element a bit. There’s also an ongoing discussion in the novel about the price of security and safety, in that can the fate of humanity be measured against the life of innocent girls who lose their identity and humanity? A difficult question to answer, and sometimes the easiest answers prove to be the incorrect answer in the long run. In other words, war breeds difficult moral choices, which leads to drastic consequences. The black ink-like substance afflicting Devi also happens to be like kryptonite to the phantoms, but Devi has little control over it and when it comes out on her skin.

There’s more action in the novel and Bach opens up the universe to a greater degree, bringing the phantoms more into the folds as the most alien creatures thus far encountered. At times described like bright firefly like creatures and other times, the larger creatures seem like something out of a Lovecraftian nightmare. In fact, what comes to mind are the Drej, the blue alien creatures from the animated film Titan A.E. (An animated film with the classic Don Bluth look and feel that deserved a much better fate at the box office than it received.)

While the romantic element takes a slight step back, it is still present and the tension between Rupert and Devi is palpable from the early disgust Devi feels whenever she looks at him to the time her memories of him, and her relationship with him, are resolved. This stage of their relationship works well enough in this novel (n case readers haven’t read the previous volume), but is very rewarding for readers who are familiar with these two characters.

With the Paradox series, Rachel Bach is crafting a sequence that hits so many of the right buttons – compelling characters, great plotting, thought provoking and difficult choices. Bach does some interesting things with character, giving readers a strong woman in a role most often associated with male characters and she does it so well. Readers who enjoy Elizabeth Moon’s Vatta’s War novels would very likely enjoy these books.

I know one more novel about Devi is soon publishing, I just hope it will not be the last novel about these characters and this universe.

Highly recommended.

© 2014 Rob H. Bedford

Orbit February 2014

Trade Paperback ISBN 978-0-316-22108-5 384 Pages

Book 2 of The Paradox Trilogy (http://www.rachelaaron.net/books-paradox.php)

http://www.rachelaaron.net/

Review copy courtesy of the publisher, Orbit

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