Genre: Sci-Fi Age Range: Adult Star Rating: 4 stars Series: prequel
Blurb:
The cybernetics in her head could save a planet. But when the man who put them there turns them against her in a deadly battle of wills, she’ll have to find a way to save herself.
Alvera Renata considers herself the best bounty hunter on New Pallas and with good reason – her cybernetics give her an edge nobody else can match.
So when she’s tasked with investigating the ancient space station that has been silently watching the planet for centuries, there’s not a doubt in her mind that she’s the best woman for the job. As for the risks? Well, they only make things more interesting.
But what Alvera doesn’t realise is by unravelling the station’s secrets, she’ll be forced to confront some of her own. When the same technology that once set her apart threatens to destroy her mind, what starts as a mission for credits and glory soon becomes a fight for survival – not just her own, but that of New Pallas itself.
Blurb taken from Goodreads. Add to your shelves here.
Review:
THE EXODUS BETRAYAL is the prequel to the Waystations trilogy, set about 20 years earlier, and is effectively Alvera’s origin story, how she ends up in control with the promise “all of us go, or none of us go.”
While the main trilogy definitely has space opera vibes, this book is more of the cyberpunk thriller end of sci-fi. Think MINDWALKER, but less pink (and also adult rather than YA!) There’s advanced technology in heads, shady corporations who are even dodgier once you look beneath the surface, and none-too-legal research.
It’s a fast-paced rider about control as the villain is the very definition of manipulative and gaslighting, trying to convince Alvera that it’s all her fault she’s being controlled by him. That it’s “for her own good” and that he’s trying to help. Villains like that are so awful because they’re so real, and the “romantic” aspect only made him more insidious.
I read this after reading the first two books in the trilogy. That meant there were somethings that happened that I knew would happen. Rather than certain elements being a surprise they were more of a “ah, that’s how it happened,” because I was wondering how certain things were going to end up happening. I wouldn’t say there’s anything wrong with reading this before or after the series, it just depends on whether you’d rather be surprised by events or reading to work out how certain events will happen.
Read my reviews of other books by N. C. Scrimgeour:
Waystations (this series):
- THOSE LEFT BEHIND (#1)
- THOSE ONCE FORGOTTEN (#2)
- THOSE WHO RESIST (#3)
Sifa Elizabeth Reads 