Ok, if you’re a fan of love stories plus a lot of action/adventure and a plot to save the universe from another war between two different beings, then this series is for you. Thanks to Harper Voyager for the gifted book.
Here’s more about Eclipse the Moon
Kee Ildez has been many things: hacker, soldier, bounty hunter. She never expected to be a hero, but when a shadowy group of traitors starts trying to goad the galaxy’s two superpowers into instigating an interstellar war, Kee throws herself into the search to find out who is responsible—and stop them.
Digging up hidden information is her job, so hunting traitors should be a piece of cake, but the primary suspect spent years in the military, and someone powerful is still covering his tracks. Disrupting their plans will require the help of her entire team, including Varro Runkow, a Valovian weapons expert who makes her pulse race.
Quiet, grumpy, and incredibly handsome, Varro watches her with hot eyes but ignores all of her flirting, so Kee silently vows to keep her feelings strictly platonic. But that vow will be put to the test when she and Varro are forced to leave the safety of their ship and venture into enemy territory alone.
Cut off from the rest of their team, they must figure out how to work together—and fast—because a single misstep will cost thousands of lives.
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My thoughts
After finishing Eclipse the Moon (the second book in the Starlight’s Shadow series), I have to say that this is the perfect story for anyone who wants to read science fiction, but felt super intimidated by the genre. It’s also for folks like me who don’t like romance novels too much, but prefer ones with a bit more story to them.
In fact, similar to the first book in the series, this focuses more on what’s happening in space than on the romance. Don’t be fooled, the romance readers will get their steamy scenes and emotional roller coaster ride throughout the story, but it’s also such a great adventure story.
Eclipse the Moon follows Kee (the hacker) and Varro (the weapons expert) as they head off on an adventure on their own. They decide to attend a fashion show hosted on Bastion, the space station they visited in the first book. The interesting part of this fashion show is that both Valovians and humans collaborated to create clothing that combines both art and technology together. This is all in an effort to bring their two races together in peace rather than continue to promote harm and war between the two of them. However, Kee has a sinking suspicion that the folks who stole the Empress’s young grandson will also be at Bastion during this time. She heads to the event with Varro in hopes of finding more information on their plans to start another war.
I really loved this adventure and while most of this story focused on Kee and Varro infiltrating the fashion show, saving some key folks from the event, and then helping to track down the traitors, I loved it. I think many folks looking for another found family story may be a bit disappointed to see that it’s only featuring Kee and Varro, but I loved watching them take action, defend the good folks (regardless if they were human or Valoff), and helping track down the villains.
The romance itself was much lighter than the first one. While there wasn’t any lack of romantic gestures and beautiful words, it didn’t feel as intensely as it did between Tavi and Tarron. That’s okay with me since many relationships are different and love is shown in many different ways. It might also be because this was a classic grumpy/sunshine trope and Varro is 100% grumpy.
Since this book is in Kee’s perspective, a lot of what she did was hacking and looking at data to find one piece of information here or there. I think my least favorite part was reading through that because not much is going on aside from her looking through lines of code. It’s not the most tantalizing thing in the world, so I wasn’t that excited to read those parts. However, they are redeemed with all the action as they try to escape the situations they found themselves in and make it back to the Starlight Shadow.
Overall, this was another great adventure for the team and another great love story for me. I can’t wait for book 3!
Simone and Her Books 