By: Scott Westerfeld
Level: YA
Series: Book Two of Succession
A self-proclaimed space opera the Succession series follows a futuristic empire where two people who love each other are trying to stay alive. Captain Laurent Zai is aboard the Lynx, a new type of battle scout ship. He has already rejected committing suicide after the Empress was murdered. The Emperor is not happy and has sent the captain and his ship on a suicide mission in retaliation. Meanwhile, Zai has fallen in love with Senator Nara Oxham, who is in the capitol, where she is on the emperor’s war council. Nara is fighting to keep Zai alive and thwarting the emperor who is so afraid that he will destroy worlds to keep one big secret. Nara is an empath, a side effect of a graphical implant called synesthesia. She can tell the feelings of those around her and sees a war with the Nix as inevitable when there is so much anger in the capitol. But what happens when that anger is aimed at the Senator because she reveals the Emperor’s secrets. This second installment in the series evolves the storyline to a much more complicated universe, I can’t wait to read the conclusion in the third book.
