Blurb for A Tide of Galaxies, Becca Mionis
“Seems our lives have turned out a bit unorthodox, even by spacer standards.”
Captain and Xan are fugitives of the law. Seb is mortally wounded. Quin has all but given up. Port Percebe, a hidden settlement on Titan, is their last refuge. With the help of a cyborg doctor, a rival-turned-ally, and a hacker with a secret, the crew starts to pick up the pieces… but the Atlantis can’t stay grounded for long. When Captain learns the only way to unlock the secrets of his mission is to complete it, he and Xan set out for one last journey across the stars. Or so they think.
“A captain is not a captain without a ship. And I still wear that mantle, though this time by choice.”
Completing the mission was only the beginning. After discovering new worlds and new secrets, Captain and Xan return to find Port Percebe under siege by the SEA, now in league with Dr. Omen. To take it back, they’ll need the help of none other than Captain Leon Akade. The only problem? He’s on the one world they were never destined for: Earth.
It’s a race to not only save the last free port in the Solar System, but also to fight for their future… and the future of the galaxy.
My Review
The expanse of the universe only hinted at in the nearly bottle-piece setting of An Ocean of Stars is fully unfurled in this dramatic conclusion to the Atlantis Chronicles by Becca Mionis. And it is officially out TODAY!
Fleeing the maniacal control of Dr. Omen and the Space Exploration Alliance, or SEA, Xan, Captain, Quin, and Sebastian hide on the fringes of the Solar System. They escape to Port Percebe on one of Saturn’s moons, where they encounter old antagonists and surprising allies.
After breaking with Dr. Omen, Captain digs for ultimate answers about his synthetically engineered life aboard the Atlantis and Xan has to reckon with the consequences of her decision to cast her lot in with him against the only society she has known.
Sebastian faces a life-threatening injury that only equally life-threating surgery can hope to heal and Quin redirects her energy toward continuing innovation while coming to terms with the fact that the most important problem is one she can’t solve.
With Sebastian’s recovery uncertain, nothing to do but wait and pray, Xan and Captain use the time to go in search of the Edenic planet Dr. Omen had mapped for the Atlantis to reach in fifty years. Because technology has developed faster than light travel (FTL) in the meantime, they can reach it in a journey of a months instead of decades.
Only now, the SEA also has that technology, threatening the sovereignty of the free port. The SEA is a solid, corporate-type antagonist of the soulless institution variety. While its motivations are predictable and its agents forgettable, it looms frighteningly large with its reach and resources. I was particularly interested in how other branches of the SEA might come into play, but it seems that they are pretty much independent of one another, which made the SEA’s overall threat less powerful.
In other aspects of the worldbuilding, there are strong explanations provided for the pivotal technology, the geological makeup of planets, and the innovations concocted by the protagonists (i.e. Quin, girl genius) that give a real science fiction feel. Yet, the balance is such that I wasn’t bogged down in technical details which I may or may not have understood or cared about anyway. (Looking at you, Andy Weir). The science parts are imaginatively handled with novelty, ease, and just the right amount of plausibility, which made reading along feel grounded while still keeping it moving.
The journey to the uninhabited planet is of course fraught with unsettling revelations and unexpected encounters. It gave me strong vibes of Voyage to Venus (Perelandra) by C.S. Lewis as well as some Andromeda lost-in-space-and-time kind of developments. What happens to people cut off from their worlds? What could a scenario for restarting society in isolation look like? There are some interesting philosophical considerations and parallels with Dr. Omen’s plans to colonise a planet with his own family versus an actual model of survival with limited numbers in a vast universe.
But lest it get too heavy, Xan is there to lighten the mood with her voice and commentary. The balance between Xan’s narration and Captain’s in his more formal logs creates a good tension as they explore together… and explore each other. Yes, it is a romance, or more specifically, romantaSCI. Perhaps more romance than I’d personally prefer, but I did love the full inclusion of our second couple, Xan’s younger sister Quin and their longtime friend Sebastian. They steadily got more of a role throughout book 2, A Sea of Worlds, and now are firmly in main character mode. Quin’s struggle with feeling her feelings and recognizing love when she sees it is equally charming and heart-wrenching.
It might be that the start of a relationship is more interesting than the development of an already established one. I understand the need to keep some kind of conflict and interest going after the initial swoons but I sometimes found Xan and Captain’s conflicts verged a bit toward that circular trend, especially because I thought they already had come so far.
Captain, pilot, botanist, inventor. What couldn’t this boy do?
Forgive me, apparently.
A Tide of Galaxies
However, the conflict arises from ongoing issues, a lot of which are beyond their control, and they are still two barely-twenty-year-olds trying to figure life out. And their lives in particular are pretty “unorthodox, even by spacer standards.” The spiral, if there is one, trends upward and never leaves them exactly where they started so that by the end, the outcome is satisfying.
And Xan gets her character arc moment! I couldn’t have been more thrilled. Part of what I wanted to see more of in book 1 is Xan’s self-awareness growing beyond her insouciant voice. The challenges and obstacles in this book really bring her character to the fore, as Captain also learns to read and interpret her better. Maybe better than she knows herself. They really are soul-mates.
Yet, I found Captain’s ultimate determination of his own identity to be the emotional heart of this finale. Having started with such a close identification with Xan, I wasn’t intially sure how I liked that but the moment is built with great care and meaning. (I’m trying really hard to avoid spoilers so please forgive the vagary! Be intrigued.)
More than a son, less than a clone.
A Tide of Galaxies
Characters go through the wringer in this one: family expectations and abuses, medical trauma and body alteration, ghost ships and empty worlds, earth landings and space battles. And that’s without getting into the secondary characters and their dynamics populating the colourful Port Percebe and beyond.
There are some more adult themes and content in this book but it is overall handled with care and subtlety. This is the maturation of a well-cultivated trilogy.
And yes, that is a botany metaphor. IYKYK.
Thanks to Becca for providing me with an advanced reader copy in exchange for an honest review!
Check out A Tide of Galaxies on Goodreads and TheStoryGraph, and head over to Becca Mionis’ blog and Instagram to see what she’s up to!
Fictitiously Yours 