My second series by Jenny Schwartz and I am beginning to love this persons brains. Uncertain Sanctuary is, as of yet, still my favorite. But the writing, and editing, has really improved in the last year. The only thing that is really wrong is that these books desperately needs another 100 pages on them. All her books are short, but with brilliant ideas that I personally think is quite unique.

The Adventures of a Xeno-Archaeologist is no different, featuring Nora as the female lead. She has secrets, secrets that her mother drilled into her the importance to stay hidden. Yet here she is, sticking her nose into things, encountering a first-human encounter with a seemingly lost alien race, an now android who wants to join her on her adventures. Said android might just pack quite a punch when it comes to intelligence gathering and hacker abilities. Things no human could imagine was possible.

It's the sort of slow-but-fast story that features many slice-of-life moments which somehow ends up being a tale of some pretty high stakes games.

Minus points for a kind-of-cliffhanger, but Uncertain Sanctuary was the same: Three short books in a trilogy which could just as easily have been released as a single book.

a bit chewy but glorious world building and characters

Hard SciFi is not my normal bag, but I picked this up after Schwartz’s most recent book came out and I devoured it in three hours. The world building here is a bit tough in the beginning. There is a lot of ground to cover. That being said, I dunno how to do it better than Schwartz does. The characters are compelling. The world is interesting and the complications are delicious. I love it. Happily bounding on to the next book. Do recommend if you are a fan of complex worlds and characters with depth and humor.

I throughly enjoyed this book. The plot is fascinating and totally draws you into this new world. The world building is amazing, we learn a lot in this first book about the distinctions between different factions, their space-faring past and their current politics and motivations. One of my favourite parts was learning about the different alien species that they have discovered, even if they are sadly extinct.

I would have liked to see more interaction between Nora and Liam in this book but I don’t think it necessarily takes away from the story. This book was to me sci-fi first with a romance sub-plot, that I hope will grow in the following books. I really liked Liam’s crew and their teasing.

The writing is good. We learn a lot but it never feels like an information dump and it really sets the stage for the conflicts and everything that is going on. One thing I’m most fascinated by are the lenses and the way that space travel works here, can’t wait to learn more about the rivers and black holes!

This was a great opening book, both the plot and the cast of characters capture your attention. It maintains a great balance of revealing enough to interest you but leaves stones unturned for the reader to discover in the next instalment. I’m looking forward to book 2.

Solid premise, but too many plot lines and details throughout the series. The romance subplot doesn't seem to fit with the rest of the story. As far as space operas goes this is promising. There's definitely potential and I kept reading to see how everything unfolds

The plot is interesting enough but good Lord is it slow. The terms are all a little overwhelming and confusing and it took a while for the background to be explained.

Basically, seven colony ships of humans travelled through a blackhole millrage and got stranded wherever they are now because a "Valpori lens" prevented them from going back through it. The humans were lucky enough to find six habitable planets. The story started with a war just having ended between the Palantine and Capitoline.

Liam is the captain of the battlecruiser/crew that captured the Palantine Crown Prince Dominic which essentially ended the war. A peace accord has been agreed upon through the marriage of the crown prince to a Capitoline princess and as a result, the battlecruiser RC Genghis Khan was exiled to the border. They meet Nora there who has decided on a solo life as a tagger but turns out has abilities that require her to be careful and stay inconspicuous. Nora gets a sidekick in an alien AI in the form of the android Jonah (very J1N-esque) and by the end of the book she has a 9-year old girl tagalong.

I am curious enough to want to read the next book because I want to find out what's really brewing in the zone in/near the Border Station and how Liam's and Nora's relationship is going to develop (of course, the romance is important). They haven't really spent much time yet but it seems they just can't help thinking and being concerned about each other. Nora saved Liam by destroying a combat android without his knowledge while Liam intercepted a notorious cutter tailing Nora's ship carrying illegal weapons.

I certainly hope the next book has a better pace, clearer explanations on the history of things, and definitely some spice in the romance department.

A start to a series and not quite a complete story on its own imo. I enjoyed it, though I'm not sure I'll be picking up the sequels. I liked the detail and thought the author put into the world building, and overall the writing was fine, though it was awkward whenever it dealt with the sole child character, Aria. Aria was not a believable child, and the adults' reactions to her felt like caricatures of regular behavior and emotion. But that was a relatively small portion of the story. The book was lighter on romance than I expected and I felt that it would've been better if the overt romantic elements were left out completely. Subtlety is always the way.