D.L. Young is a Pushcart Prize nominee and winner of the Independent Press Award.
EMPIRE AND ASHES SERIES
War is coming...interstellar civil war
A conflict of unimaginable scale threatens to end ten thousand years of Realm primacy.
Desperate to avoid bloodshed across the Great Arm, the empire's top spymaster takes matters into his own hands, undertaking a secret high-risk gambit to save the peace.
Jeryn Lorsi, the spymaster's apprentice, is hardly ready for an operation of this importance. An ex-black marketeer turned spy, Jeryn's no hero.
But when tragedy strikes their peacekeeping mission, that's exactly what he'll have to become.
CYBERPUNK CITY SERIES
Sprawling megacities, rogue AIs, black market tech, modded mercenaries, and pulse-pounding stories filled with unexpected twists. If you love action-packed near-future thrillers, you won't want to miss this series!
DARK REPUBLIC SERIES
For fans of Mad Max-style futuristic thrillers. In the wastelands of the near-future, rival factions wage battles over territory and precious resources, killer drones fly overhead in search of prey, and everyday life is a desperate scramble for survival.
This book is even better than the last. Absolutely fantastic space opera. It's chalk full of new aliens, better action, ancient civilizations, and everything in between. If you're a fan of space opera, you should read this book!
Everything I wanted more of in the first book is in this one. We have Jeryn fighting with his blade, Akono (his master) dolling out wisdom as only a master can, and all the misadventures of being a fugitive with a hyper-advanced space craft.
From the very beginning of this book we get a blistering pace that continues nearly through the entire book. Those slow periods are necessary to catch your breath before going right back into the fun bits. I massively appreciate Author Young's pacing in this novel as he clearly appreciates the necessity of the relaxing period before the storm.
All the way around, this is a wonderful book. I don't want to give spoilers, but please pick it up as it's even better than the first. I am extremely excited for book three!
I It's painfully clear the author read Steve Perry's Matadora series and thought "cool I'll write a series about a super spy who only uses a knife too."
And we got this
We deserved better. Perry's knife series was silly, and this is becoming no different.except it's based on a stupid concept - knife wielding superspy messiah - and that makes it so much worse .
Being unoriginal is bad enough. At least copy something good.
I get it ever since Sten hid a crystal knife in his wrist. fanboys have been trying to imitate the series. Look at wrecking crew, which is Sten gender flipped.
But making it about the cool knife and figuring a way to make knife combat superior when there's...you know, guns.... misses the point. Cole and Brunch were writing a critique of power and the flawed conncept of a Star empire. They actually said it in the afterword of the last book.
Yet every knife fetishist who've tried to copy them based on their blade obsession have created incompetently plotted, poorly thought out inconsistent shallow novels.
And the trend continues. It's notable that Steve Perry, the writer who this author rips off, IS NOT mentioned as an influence
I will finish the series, but I can't recommend it to others
One Example: Long discussion; we can't let the state get our high tech ship. We fly the ship up to the state navy and give it to them. We say oops. We shouldn't have done that. We work to escape.
Yes, the escape is a significant plot element that branches the story in a new direction. But the reason for the branch. Giving away the ship after we just agreed not to?
Too many of this kind of event going on. Ruins the believability of these intelligent characters.