Books: The Dreaming Stars By Tim Pratt (2018)

“Ancient aliens, the Axiom, will kill us all – when they wake up. In deep space, a swarm of nanoparticles threatens the colonies, transforming everything it meets into computronium – including the colonists. The crew of the White Raven investigate, and discover an Axiom facility filled with aliens hibernating while their minds roam a vast virtual reality. The treacherous Sebastien wakes up, claiming his altered brain architecture can help the crew deactivate the swarm – from inside the Axiom simulation. To protect humanity, beleaguered Captain Callie Machedo must trust him, but if Sebastien still plans to dominate the universe using Axiom tech, they could be in a whole lot of trouble.”

While not quite as impressive as The Wrong Stars, The Dreaming Stars does have some good moments, with characters moving the plot along and giving the reader more world building. That’s what makes this and the first book work, with well constructed, believable band of humans (and aliens) fighting to prevent the universes destruction by the Axiom. However, there is little action until we get to the last quarter of the book, where Callie, Ashok and the unstable 500 year-old Sebastien enter a VR world straight out of World of Warcraft and other computer games.

And while Tim Pratt continues the world building, we do get a lot of rehashing about what happened in the first book. I mean, it’s not enough to say you can skip over The Wrong Stars, but for someone who had read that book, I wondered why we were going over the same ground again. It just made me feel this middle book of a trilogy was just setting everything up for book three –as if he did not have enough material for three, so he stretched out the second. Still, this does have a beginning, middle, and an end, leaving us with hints as to what’s to come. I appreciated that Pratt is changing up the crew, as well, but I also sense everyone will be reunited for the conclusion. 

So I was a bit disappointed that this book was less intense, less exciting than the first, I will undoubtedly be here next year awaiting the next tome.  It may want be a cousin to The Expanse series that publisher Angry Robot hopes for, but it may never achieve that status. Its fun read, with queer characters, a female captain and unstable men; a SJW worst nightmare really. Good, but forgettable.