If that’s interesting to you, I say don’t worry about its connection to the main series and read it, because I don’t know of another book like it.Joan is at her happiest when she uses her powers - stirring air currents, creating fire, and levitating metal objects - but she learned at a young age that no one in her small-minded suburban town was prepared to accept her abilities. And it’s interesting because it’s on an alien planet, with complex political and racial-hierarchy worldbuilding, and a mix of fantasy and scifi weaponry. If you’re looking for a book that combines a war story with interpersonal and character development, one to tear you down and then build you back up, this is a good one. That doesn’t mean I wouldn’t recommend this book to you if you haven’t read the other books. I think the crossover is mostly fine for someone entering this world for the first time, but the very end sets up the plot of the main series in a way that won’t mean anything to a new reader. And yes, though the main story stands on its own, there is character crossover that is a lot richer if you’ve read Planet Adyn (and I have no idea how much richer if you’ve also read Orbit). The characters I remember from Planet Adyn who showed up here made me want to return to them. Wang offered me an advanced copy of this prequel standalone for review, and I decided to take it - having no idea what I was in for.Īnd now I’m thinking I should really read Orbit. But in the time between then and when the sequel ( Theonite: Orbit) came out, my enthusiasm waned and I just never got around to reading Orbit. I read the first book ( Theonite: Planet Adyn) in 2017, and liked it, though it definitely had flaws. My history with the Theonite world is a little complicated. It’s just going to break your heart before you get any of that hope. It’s about regret and war and how far you can be pushed past the brink of okay and still be able to come back (or not).

Sword of Kaigen is definitely an adult sci-fi. I shouldn’t have been surprised by that, because it is literally subtitled “A War Story,” but it still managed to knock me off my feet.

Mother and son face their greatest test yet, however, when an enemy supposedly long defeated returns. Her fourteen-year-old son Mamoru has his own problems: a new classmate is testing his loyalty to the empire with his strange ideas. What she didn’t expect was how hard it would be to repress her own violent past, or get along with her distant husband. So Misaki knew what she was getting into when she married a Matsuda man. Blurb: For hundreds of years, the Kusanagi Peninsula has been home to the empire’s fiercest warriors, capable of raising the sea and wielding blades of ice.

Planet Adyn by M.L. Wang