SKY ON FIRE

A gifted grad student is drawn into a rebellion that threatens her comfortable existence.

Morgan Enni lives on the most prosperous of the Stavenger space stations, but she doesn’t crave fancy possessions or long for excitement. She also doesn’t mind that she can’t work with æther since she lacks the gene-sense shared by most residents of Katla. Morgan just wants to convince the university to fund her research so she can work alone in her lab. Her investigation into the long-ago collapse of æther overlaps with the realm of politics, but Morgan’s not interested in the bizarre events that happened on Brannick Station (as covered in 2021’s Aetherbound). She’s just going to focus on her academic research, even if it disappoints all the people who want her to be politically involved. But when she returns from her fieldwork, politics finds her anyway. Banished from her precious laboratory, Morgan might as well join the rebellion, who’ll at least fund her research—her family secret is a currency too precious for the rebels to refuse her. Her discoveries about the æther cycle are useful to them, besides. Morgan, who’s comfortably asexual, also discovers her quiet desire for romance among the rebels. The storytelling is heavy on explanation and oddly emotionally distant, but this sequel about one girl’s rejection of an irritating destiny is chock-full of space battles and forms a solid companion to the series opener.

Space opera mixed with resilience and determination in an upended world.