Once again, flawless cover art. I love how it's unique but still maintains continuity with the first book. I know they say to never judge a book by its cover, but when I see a book with awesome cover art, I expect that book to be good.

And it was good. But I'm not sure if I enjoyed it as much as Book 1, hence the 4 star rating. I wasn't a huge fan of the whole love triangle thing, even though I had a sneaking suspicion it wouldn't last. It just added some unnecessary drama, in my opinion, even though it ended up being pretty relevant in terms of character interactions during the later parts of the book. The whole 3rd quarter or so of the story seemed to move a little slow for me too, but that may just have been because I got really busy and wasn't able to devote the proper time and energy to reading.

The pace definitely picked back up at the end, and I finished the book in one sitting. We get some plot twists thrown at us and get to see some intense action. One thing I've appreciated about this series so far is how Ms. Salyer writes fight scenes, something I've always struggled with as a writer. Hand-to-hand brawls in particular are very well-done, and as I'm reading I can almost feel everything happening.

One of my favorite things about reading a series is re-visiting familiar characters. It always kind of feels like being reunited with old friends; when the story begins, there's sort of a "where-are-they-now?" effect and you see one of the characters and think "Hey, I know that person!" That's always a lot of fun for me. I've really enjoyed Vitruzzi's character from the beginning but I felt like she really shined in this book.

I've got Contract of War already loaded onto my Kindle and I can't wait to get started on it and see where this story goes! ( )