Chasing The Shadows (Sentinels of the Galaxy #2) by Maria V Snyder

Chasing the Shadows by Maria V. Snyder
Series: Sentinels of the Galaxy #2
Published by Harlequin Teen
Published on 18 November 2019
Genres: Science Fiction, Young Adult
Pages: 448
Format: eARC
Source: Netgalley
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RRP: $19.99

New York Times
bestselling author Maria V. Snyder returns with the next page-turning instalment of the new sci-fi series: Sentinels of the Galaxy
Year 2522. Lyra Daniels is dead.
Okay, so I only died for sixty-six seconds. But when I came back to life, I got a brand new name and a snazzy new uniform. Go me! Seriously, though, it's very important that Lyra Daniels stays dead, at least as far as my ex-friend Jarren, the murdering looter, knows.

While dying is the scariest thing that's happened to me, it morphed my worming skills. I can manipulate the Q-net like never before. But Jarren has blocked us from communicating with the rest of the galaxy and now they believe we've gone silent, like Planet Xinji (where silent really means dead).

A Protector Class spaceship is coming to our rescue, but we still have to survive almost two years before they arrive - if they arrive at all. Until then, we have to figure out how to stop an unstoppable alien threat. And it's only a matter of time before Jarren learns I'm not dead and returns to finish what he started.

There's no way I'm going to let Jarren win. Instead I'll do whatever it takes to save the people I love. But even I'm running out of ideas...

'Smart, witty and full of heart, Navigating the Stars had me hooked from the very first page!' - Lynette Noni, bestselling author of The Medoran Chronicles

I received a copy of this book from Netgalley in exchange for an honest review. This does not affect my opinion of the book or the content of my review.

Chasing the Shadows is Book #2 in the Sentinels of the Galaxy series by Maria V Snyder.

I’ll be honest, the first part of the novel was kind of hard for me to get in to. There was an overhanging threat over everyone’s heads, but it wasn’t immediate enough to be particularly concerned for Lyra – or Ara, as she is called in this book. She spent most of the early part of the novel running between her various duties and training, which I didn’t find particularly engaging. Lyra’s narrative voice is phenomenal though: she’s maturing, funny, and dreadfully sarcastic. It’s a real change in voice from any of the other Snyder characters I’ve read!

Because this is a second novel, we miss out on some development of relationships that have by now been established. That’s OK, because Ara and Niall are really, really cute together. What I love most about them is that although they are just so into each other, they are respectfully waiting until Ara turns eighteen, and although they’d rather spend all their time making out with each other, they have more important things to do. I love that push and pull between both of their desires, jobs, and maturity. Beau is Ara’s platonic friend, and he’s a great foil to a jealous Niall, as well as being a great mentor to Ara: he’s diligent, egotistical, with a little bit of sass.

I loved how more of the Terracotta Warriors were explored in this novel since we had so many questions left over from the first! Their mysteries are being discovered, and it’s all thanks to Ara. It’s a mixture of sheer dumb luck and her amazing ability to be in the right place at the right time.

Ara has a kind of magical gift with the Q-net that she doesn’t really understand. Like I said in my review of Navigating the Stars, if you enjoy Snyder’s other books, you’ll probably enjoy this aspect of it well. The tech and practices of using the Q-net are vague enough to appear completely magical: they basically treat it like an all-knowing super-aware intelligence they can tap into. Similarly, Ara thinks really broadly about her problems, but the answers just always seem to pop into her head. It’s not that she’s a special snowflake: god no, too many people hate her, she has both of her parents who treat her like a normal kid, no one takes her word as gospel, and her problems require actual solutions that no one just hands to her (annoyingly, she’s always right): but she’s unique, and I think that’s what Snyder is really good at writing.

i enjoyed this book, possibly not as much as the first one due to the slow pace at the start of the novel and the general feeling that we were all just waiting for the bad guy to attack. I enjoyed Ara’s continuing development and I’m looking forward to the third book in the series!

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