My Sci-fi detour, started with the Warrior Wench, continues with the second book, Victorious dead. Which keeps the pace of the first book, being an action-packed and fast-paced story.

The book starts with some delay after the fifst book, giving Vas and the rest of her crew a bit of time to recover. Apart from fixing her ship and getting some new faces in her crew, that means looking for the cryptic message her dead-and-not-dead second-in-command left her, as well as looking for the parts of her former ship, the Victorious dead.

The mystery with Deven’s “death” takes a good part of the beginning – and this brings both mysteries and humor but I can’t tell much about this subplot without spoilers. I can say it gives a hint into how Deven’s talents manifest.

Then, Vas gets a message she wouldn’t expect – an order of space nuns that once trained her sends her a recording of their last stand and urges her to recover something from the wreckage of their world.

And just realizing what that something is turns into another challenge, though it soon becomes obvious it is tied to all the mess going on in the universe.

In the meantime, the rest of her people residing on Vas’ private planet managed to put their former ship, Victorious dead, back together – and with all the mess going down, having a second ship will come more than handy.

To have something to do between solving the mysterious “last gift”, Vas and her crew take on a simple retrieval job – only to end up deeper in the current mess as explosions rock the world, spewing out a strange substance. After not-so-small amount of steal and fighting, they escape the planet and make a quick detour to help a fight on a small world, only to be, again, met by the mysterious “gray suit” mechs that’ve given them a lot of trouble already, while also trying to retrieve another clue on the same world.

This all brings them back to the exploding planet – and realize the substance it’s spewing is connected to the reemergence of the Asarlaí. The book then leads to a final fight between several factions and Vas will be more than glad to have two ships under her command, as well as the help of Marli’s ship.

---

Read date: 18.-24.4.2021
Published: 10.7.2017
Goodreads/Amazon rating: 4,40/4,7
My rating: 90% (same as book one, rounded up down this time on Goodreads)
Length: 408 pages (Kindle edition)
My highlights

---

The book keeps the similar pacing and spirit as the first one, and seems that it won’t change for the third. Of course, with the way this book ends, it’ll be even thougher fight, especially after the losses suffered in the finale. And it seems that the third book, Defiant ruin, keeps the theme of naming books in this series after a spaceship.