More serious and settled, I guess, than book one, but still a grand space adventure. ( )

Who says you need a recap and setup? You're the second of a trilogy. Your readers have already done the first, or why are they here? Let's pick this story up and be attacking a planet within 10 pages. C'mon man. This is pulp at it's best.

Mars Xi evaded capture by the military research team who shaped her, and honed her psychic abilities into near god-like powers. But can she rescue her friend from a max security military prison before he loses his mind and his identity?

This is a small book with a big story to tell, but it's remarkable how thoroughly White manages to (re-)establish characters and set the scene before the explosions begin. Void Black Shadow homes in on the horrific processes the government uses to craft its super soldiers and ups the ante by making the stakes personal.

Our villains are military doctors who refuse to consider that even criminals and dissidents have rights, and prison guards who enjoy the sharper end of their job a little too much …and the prison turns out to be perfectly designed to protect them from Mars’s inhuman abilities. I’m not a big fan of prison narratives (and Shadow adopts many familiar tropes), but having established Mars as an unstoppable force, White does well to rein her back in, injecting tension back into the proceedings.

Where Gravity simply stacked up the bodies with a merciless, remorseless Mars at the centre, Shadow – thankfully – begins to turn the lens on how monstrous her actions are. Mars almost always reaches for violence as a solution and never embraces half-measures. Does fighting a deeply dystopian force really excuse the mass murder she routinely engages in?

I appreciated that Corey was prepared to step back and critically examine his protagonist's hard-boiled choices - and I look forward to seeing how that theme is developed in the final instalment.

Full review ( )

After reading Killing Gravity I immediately sought out the next book in the series. Void Black Shadow by Corey J. White is the second book in the Voidwitch Saga, and a great second installment to the series.

The Voidwhich Saga is a series of novellas about Mars Xi, a woman raised from childhood to be a weapon of the state. Imbued with incredible power which even her captors didn’t fully understand, she is now free. MEPHISTO, the ones who created her, have taken a friend hostage. And Mars will stop at no lengths to get him back.

The second book in this series differs greatly in tone from the first. This contrast is made all the more stark when reading these books back to back. Void Black Shadow tackles the horrors mentioned but unseen in Killing Gravity and brings them to the forefront of the narrative. The feeling of pure adventure and the wholesale destruction Mars wreaks with little recompense in book one are gone. Instead, Mars must confront her actions since escaping MEPHISTO including the literal of thousands she’s slaughtered while trying to evade recapture. The majority of this novella takes place within a prison made for only the most egregious criminals. It is dark in a way the first book was not. Mars might murder her enemies in the way most heroes in large action/adventure science fiction movies and TV shows do, but she does not partake in the sort of torture and cruelty her enemies specialize in, and that is something we see firsthand here.

While I was unsure how I felt about this shift in tone and pacing at first, it is definitely to the story’s benefit. Mars is a main character whose plans do not always turn out the way she foresaw. The line between self-preservation while on the run from objectively evil individuals/government states and committing similar atrocities is one that is blurred, but one Mars must confront. I greatly respect the book for taking the time to delve into this so well. What I expected was another fun romp through space with a main character slowly healing from a lifetime of hurt tracking down her old enemies and exacting revenge with a few bumps in the road. This? This was not what I expected, and it was wonderful because of that.

If you don’t like darker stories that include things like torture, this might not be for you. Nothing in here was particularly bloody or gory – no more than the first book at any rate. But the darkness, the psychological torture, and the palpable sense of fear in sections might not be something for every reader, so do be warned if you think this might not be for you.

I do wish we saw just a little more of some of the other side characters. Yet, because of the book’s first person narrative, that was largely impossible. Hopefully we will get more story with Squid and Pale in the next novella.

Speaking of the next novella in the Voidwitch Saga, I am absolutely going to be reading it. I cannot wait to know how this wraps up. There are a number of subplots that haven’t been wrapped up yet, but are edging closer to a conclusion, and while I want to say that I feel like I knew where the story is going those same ideas proved to be totally wrong in relation to this book. In all, I would definitely recommend reading Void Black Shadow by Corey J. White and the Voidwitch Saga overall.

I received from the publisher in exchange for an honest review.

This review was originally found on Looking Glass Reads, a book review blog. ( )

This review and others posted over at my blog.

Not only was this a fantastic follow-up to Killing Gravity, but this book exceeded my expectations and the ending really threw me for a loop!

Mars – lovable, smart-mouthed, powerful, thieving, murderous Mars – is back and I’m in love. I’m a fan of fucked-up antiheroes, so it didn’t take long for Mars to worm her way into my heart. She makes rash decisions, has incredible telekinetic powers that she uses to murder hoards of people, but she’s got some morals in there and she’s stuck by her new friends because it’s the right thing to do but also because inside she’s secretly really lonely.

You need to read the first book before you read this one, because the plot picks up where the first leaves off. The gang needs to save Mookie and he’s been banished to a prison planet, due to the fact that he went AWOL years before – but he was only caught because Mars was taken in by Squid and his crew. Mars harbors a lot of guilt over that and decides the best way to break Mookie out of prison is to land herself in a cell.

The plot kept up a good pace and I loved watching (er, mentally visualizing) Mars friggen destroy everything around her. We meet a few more members of MEPHISTO to hate and get a look at another planet. The ending also kicked my ass. I kept trying to guess how Mars would fix everything and I’ll tell you right now, I was wrong, dead wrong. This book took some hard turns and they felt natural and right (well, in an awful way for the characters.)

If you liked the first book and you like prison breaks, I think you’ll like this book. If you’re interested in prison breaks and telekinetic space witches, then you should check out the series. I’m so upset I have to wait for November for more! ( )