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Arcadia #2
Taken
Fix your planet or we’ll do it for you, warns the Alliance—and then we’ll take it from you.
Ethan Winter wants nothing more from life than to run his family’s solar energy business. But that business has been attacked, he’s been imprisoned and brutalised, his planet threatened, and to protect his company he must work with a woman set on fighting him every step of the way. The planet Arcadia’s environment is dangerously unbalanced and the Alliance is demanding they fix it or lose their home world. The Alliance of Human Worlds doesn’t make empty threats.
Union organiser, daughter of a workshop supervisor and a fiery politician, Sarwenna Beren is prepared for a fight from the moment Ethan Winter arrives at her remote desert town surrounded by rumours of change. He’s rich, powerful and heir to the family that owns the town’s main business, a massive solar field stretching deep into the desert. His arrival threatens the jobs of all those who have put their trust in her. Sar isn’t about to let him shut down the one place keeping her town alive.
Then a boy goes missing in the desert and they are thrown together in the search for him—only to come under attack from a strange beam and an unknown flyer that nearly kills them both. Ethan and Sarwenna must find out who is behind the mysterious attacks and why. It doesn’t help that both have their own suspicions about who is helping their attackers. Suspicions that must be kept secret, especially from each other.
You don’t betray family.
Ethan Winter wants nothing more from life than to run his family’s solar energy business. But that business has been attacked, he’s been imprisoned and brutalised, his planet threatened, and to protect his company he must work with a woman set on fighting him every step of the way. The planet Arcadia’s environment is dangerously unbalanced and the Alliance is demanding they fix it or lose their home world. The Alliance of Human Worlds doesn’t make empty threats.
Union organiser, daughter of a workshop supervisor and a fiery politician, Sarwenna Beren is prepared for a fight from the moment Ethan Winter arrives at her remote desert town surrounded by rumours of change. He’s rich, powerful and heir to the family that owns the town’s main business, a massive solar field stretching deep into the desert. His arrival threatens the jobs of all those who have put their trust in her. Sar isn’t about to let him shut down the one place keeping her town alive.
Then a boy goes missing in the desert and they are thrown together in the search for him—only to come under attack from a strange beam and an unknown flyer that nearly kills them both. Ethan and Sarwenna must find out who is behind the mysterious attacks and why. It doesn’t help that both have their own suspicions about who is helping their attackers. Suspicions that must be kept secret, especially from each other.
You don’t betray family.
448 pages, Kindle Edition
Published April 10, 2021
2 people are currently reading
4 people want to read
About the author
Mary Brock Jones
13 books30 followersMary Brock Jones lives in Auckland, New Zealand, but loves nothing more than to escape into the other worlds in her head, to write science fiction and historical romances. Sedate office worker by day; frantic scribbler by night.
Her parents introduced her to libraries and gave her a farm to play on, where trees became rocket ships and rocky outcrops were ancient fortresses. She grew up writing, filling pages of notebooks and filling her head with stories, but took a number of detours on the pathway to her dream job. After four grown sons, more than one house renovated, grandchildren, a career as a government veterinarian (now retired) and a farm to play on in the weekends, her wish came true.
Her books have won an SFR Galaxy Award and made the finals list for the Romance Writers of Australia RUBY awards, the RWNZ KORU awards, and the RWNZ Clendon awards.
You can find Mary here:
www.marybrockjones.com
https://www.facebook.com/MaryBrockJon...
https://twitter.com/MaryBrockJones
Her parents introduced her to libraries and gave her a farm to play on, where trees became rocket ships and rocky outcrops were ancient fortresses. She grew up writing, filling pages of notebooks and filling her head with stories, but took a number of detours on the pathway to her dream job. After four grown sons, more than one house renovated, grandchildren, a career as a government veterinarian (now retired) and a farm to play on in the weekends, her wish came true.
Her books have won an SFR Galaxy Award and made the finals list for the Romance Writers of Australia RUBY awards, the RWNZ KORU awards, and the RWNZ Clendon awards.
You can find Mary here:
www.marybrockjones.com
https://www.facebook.com/MaryBrockJon...
https://twitter.com/MaryBrockJones
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Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews
July 10, 2021
"Taken" is a luxuriant, eco-friendly, science fiction drama full of corporate greed and a dusting of romantic passion.
Read full review in the 2021 Summer issue of InD'tale Magazine.
Read full review in the 2021 Summer issue of InD'tale Magazine.
April 10, 2021
Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for the chance to read an early copy of this book!
I'm finding that I really enjoy sci-fi when there are no spaceships. This book reminded me of Lois McMaster Bujold's classic A CIVIL CAMPAIGN in that we're located on a single world with deeply established cultures and clashes, where conflicting loyalties and interpersonal dynamics drive the story much more than aliens and spaceships and space pirates and all the things that really scream "sci-fi" to me but also do not pique my interest.
This is the second book in a series; it worked well for me as a standalone even though the references to past events made me very intrigued to read the previous story! And I was certain that the discussion of a reluctant marriage was sequel bait for the next, but at the end the author's note tells us that a different character is next, up for a chance at redemption. I'm looking forward to seeing how she does it, because from this book it will be very tricky to make us root for them.
OK, on to the concept: the planet Arcadia is distinguished by mountains and plains. The cultures are very different--mountain folk are more formal and elaborate, plains folk are more straight-talking--and each side has been exaggerating the characteristics of the environment, swampy mountains to grow more of a certain kind of tree and dry deserts with giant fields of sheets soaking up solar power. The growing contrast is throwing off the balance of Arcadia's environment and disaster is maybe 50 years away, so obviously that a central federation of planets, the Alliance, is threatening to forcibly remove all of the humans from their home and let the planet restore itself. The climate change allegory was certainly evident, as the main conflict is about a solar energy company Solaris whose fields are depleting the region of all its other resources and life, and there is an existential crisis where they must change and lay off their workers or else risk the Alliance exiling everyone from the entire planet. Our hero Ethan, heir to the Solaris empire, is in conflict with both his father and with our heroine, the union representative Sarwenna, who both refuse to change and to see the long-term necessity in favor of the short-term need for jobs. Again, the allegory is not always subtle, but it was fascinating to see play out in a completely different world.
This book also ramps up the conflict with a suspenseful element, with sabotage and attempted murder that continues to grow throughout the book. I was a little frustrated that the nuanced conflict kind of spilled over into a Heroes vs Villains kind of sequence by the end; additionally, it seems some of the conflict is a consequence of events in the prior book and so that was the only place where I wished I'd read the previous book to have my own read on some characters, because the POV characters are viewing them in a certain way but it turns out that they were affected by something very differently than expected. If that seems confusing, it kind of is! We have very complex characters and loyalties but we also are viewing them through the very distinct and not always reliable lens of our hero and heroine.
The central conflict about the future of Solaris is fueled by distrust between "company man" Ethan and "union woman" Sar. I understand why there is so much tension, but I was very frustrated by how squirrely Sar and her family were--they are hiding a lot and try to do a lot of things without anyone knowing, for reasons I never really understood, especially after some of the secrecy backfired and then they just went back to it. It was particularly galling that Sar hid things from the reader (there's lots of "she suspected who it is and would talk to them later" leaving us in the dark) and Ethan, but then had the audacity to consistently throughout the book accuse ETHAN of keeping (innocuous) secrets and up to the very end refuses to trust him and thinks it's a vast conspiracy to get her.
Sar's paranoia and distrust were really frustrating, and I pretty much always sided with Ethan. I honestly don't think they're the greatest couple but I STILL really liked so much about this book and all of the world building and absolutely enjoyed the reading experience. Most of this book takes place in the plains, with just a few visits to the mountains that completely enchanted me. They live in treetops woven together above the ground, and there's lush greenery everywhere with plants twining through every room and that sounds way better to me than deserts and sandstorms. So I hope that maybe the previous book, which features Caleb (Ethan's brother, a plains person) and Fee (a mountain woman) gives us some more of that world.
This book is a fade-to-black romance. I would say that the sci-fi/fantasy and suspense/action genres are much more prominent than the romance for most of the book, though it's certainly a romance because we do get that HEA and because there's so much of this focus on emotion and relationships. The cover, while striking and gorgeous, did not really give me the genre clues, I only picked this book up because it had a romance tag on NetGalley. So I'm very grateful that I did give this a try because it's so very different from what I've read before, and it's really got a lot to think about. As I've said, I'm now off to read TORN and soak up more of this fascinating world.
I'm finding that I really enjoy sci-fi when there are no spaceships. This book reminded me of Lois McMaster Bujold's classic A CIVIL CAMPAIGN in that we're located on a single world with deeply established cultures and clashes, where conflicting loyalties and interpersonal dynamics drive the story much more than aliens and spaceships and space pirates and all the things that really scream "sci-fi" to me but also do not pique my interest.
This is the second book in a series; it worked well for me as a standalone even though the references to past events made me very intrigued to read the previous story! And I was certain that the discussion of a reluctant marriage was sequel bait for the next, but at the end the author's note tells us that a different character is next, up for a chance at redemption. I'm looking forward to seeing how she does it, because from this book it will be very tricky to make us root for them.
OK, on to the concept: the planet Arcadia is distinguished by mountains and plains. The cultures are very different--mountain folk are more formal and elaborate, plains folk are more straight-talking--and each side has been exaggerating the characteristics of the environment, swampy mountains to grow more of a certain kind of tree and dry deserts with giant fields of sheets soaking up solar power. The growing contrast is throwing off the balance of Arcadia's environment and disaster is maybe 50 years away, so obviously that a central federation of planets, the Alliance, is threatening to forcibly remove all of the humans from their home and let the planet restore itself. The climate change allegory was certainly evident, as the main conflict is about a solar energy company Solaris whose fields are depleting the region of all its other resources and life, and there is an existential crisis where they must change and lay off their workers or else risk the Alliance exiling everyone from the entire planet. Our hero Ethan, heir to the Solaris empire, is in conflict with both his father and with our heroine, the union representative Sarwenna, who both refuse to change and to see the long-term necessity in favor of the short-term need for jobs. Again, the allegory is not always subtle, but it was fascinating to see play out in a completely different world.
This book also ramps up the conflict with a suspenseful element, with sabotage and attempted murder that continues to grow throughout the book. I was a little frustrated that the nuanced conflict kind of spilled over into a Heroes vs Villains kind of sequence by the end; additionally, it seems some of the conflict is a consequence of events in the prior book and so that was the only place where I wished I'd read the previous book to have my own read on some characters, because the POV characters are viewing them in a certain way but it turns out that they were affected by something very differently than expected. If that seems confusing, it kind of is! We have very complex characters and loyalties but we also are viewing them through the very distinct and not always reliable lens of our hero and heroine.
The central conflict about the future of Solaris is fueled by distrust between "company man" Ethan and "union woman" Sar. I understand why there is so much tension, but I was very frustrated by how squirrely Sar and her family were--they are hiding a lot and try to do a lot of things without anyone knowing, for reasons I never really understood, especially after some of the secrecy backfired and then they just went back to it. It was particularly galling that Sar hid things from the reader (there's lots of "she suspected who it is and would talk to them later" leaving us in the dark) and Ethan, but then had the audacity to consistently throughout the book accuse ETHAN of keeping (innocuous) secrets and up to the very end refuses to trust him and thinks it's a vast conspiracy to get her.
Sar's paranoia and distrust were really frustrating, and I pretty much always sided with Ethan. I honestly don't think they're the greatest couple but I STILL really liked so much about this book and all of the world building and absolutely enjoyed the reading experience. Most of this book takes place in the plains, with just a few visits to the mountains that completely enchanted me. They live in treetops woven together above the ground, and there's lush greenery everywhere with plants twining through every room and that sounds way better to me than deserts and sandstorms. So I hope that maybe the previous book, which features Caleb (Ethan's brother, a plains person) and Fee (a mountain woman) gives us some more of that world.
This book is a fade-to-black romance. I would say that the sci-fi/fantasy and suspense/action genres are much more prominent than the romance for most of the book, though it's certainly a romance because we do get that HEA and because there's so much of this focus on emotion and relationships. The cover, while striking and gorgeous, did not really give me the genre clues, I only picked this book up because it had a romance tag on NetGalley. So I'm very grateful that I did give this a try because it's so very different from what I've read before, and it's really got a lot to think about. As I've said, I'm now off to read TORN and soak up more of this fascinating world.
May 14, 2021
Taken is not merely a great sci-fi adventure. It combines a futuristic setting with strong characters, romance, danger and a surprisingly contemporary theme.
In a time when environmental change is ever in the news, this timely Eco-SciFi novel (and it’s predecessor Torn) is a microcosm of the bigger picture that we are currently experiencing on earth. Man’s use of the world’s natural resources is endangering the environment.
The bulk of this story takes place in Sulwith, a desert community that runs and supports a huge solar farm. The technology of the farm is destroying the environment. As the temperature rises, the desert grows, sandstorms worsen and the local flora and fauna are endangered. In another part of the world, the over production of a particular commercially profitable tree species is having opposite but strangely similar consequences. Increased rain, stronger storms, landslides and the endangerment of the local indigenous species.
While the Alliance of Human Worlds has dicated that the planet must be fixed or there will be a penalty to pay, the families that run the two major corporations are digging in because they believe their livelihoods are threatened. Yet some see the wisdom of perserving the planet even if the path to that effect is both unclear and difficult.
In Taken, Solaris heir Ethan Winter really wants to effect change, but he is up against his father, the corporation and possibly other foes. Sarwenna Beren represents the corporate employees, the innocents whose lives and livelihoods stand to be drastically changed if the corporation is forced to changed. As they work, sometimes together and sometimes at odds, Ethan and Sarwenna come to an understanding that working together may be the only way to win this unwinnable war.
The author has created a richly detailed setting that depicts a world on the brink – of change or ruin. Both the natural enviroment and the people that inhabit it are in peril. The very long story (about 600 pages) is perfectly paced, alternating between the overall environmental conflict, the conflicting efforts of the interested parties and the personal relationships of Ethan, Sarwenna and their families. Those who have read Torn, will appreciate the appearance of Fee and Caleb. However, Taken can be read as a standalone. Both books were phenomenal!
Thanks to the author who provided a copy of her book in exchange for my honest review.
In a time when environmental change is ever in the news, this timely Eco-SciFi novel (and it’s predecessor Torn) is a microcosm of the bigger picture that we are currently experiencing on earth. Man’s use of the world’s natural resources is endangering the environment.
The bulk of this story takes place in Sulwith, a desert community that runs and supports a huge solar farm. The technology of the farm is destroying the environment. As the temperature rises, the desert grows, sandstorms worsen and the local flora and fauna are endangered. In another part of the world, the over production of a particular commercially profitable tree species is having opposite but strangely similar consequences. Increased rain, stronger storms, landslides and the endangerment of the local indigenous species.
While the Alliance of Human Worlds has dicated that the planet must be fixed or there will be a penalty to pay, the families that run the two major corporations are digging in because they believe their livelihoods are threatened. Yet some see the wisdom of perserving the planet even if the path to that effect is both unclear and difficult.
In Taken, Solaris heir Ethan Winter really wants to effect change, but he is up against his father, the corporation and possibly other foes. Sarwenna Beren represents the corporate employees, the innocents whose lives and livelihoods stand to be drastically changed if the corporation is forced to changed. As they work, sometimes together and sometimes at odds, Ethan and Sarwenna come to an understanding that working together may be the only way to win this unwinnable war.
The author has created a richly detailed setting that depicts a world on the brink – of change or ruin. Both the natural enviroment and the people that inhabit it are in peril. The very long story (about 600 pages) is perfectly paced, alternating between the overall environmental conflict, the conflicting efforts of the interested parties and the personal relationships of Ethan, Sarwenna and their families. Those who have read Torn, will appreciate the appearance of Fee and Caleb. However, Taken can be read as a standalone. Both books were phenomenal!
Thanks to the author who provided a copy of her book in exchange for my honest review.
April 11, 2021
Ethan Winter has been threatened and brutalized, now told by the Alliance of Human Worlds that Arcadia’s environment is dangerously unbalanced and it needs to be fixed immediately or their world will be taken away from them. Ethan is the heir to his family’s solar field that stretches into the desert. A union organizer, Sarwenna Beren is ready to take him on in a fight. His arrival with rumors of change are a threat to the jobs of the people who are trusting Sarwenna to protect their interests.
When a boy goes missing in the desert, Ethan and Sarwenna begin a search, but they are attacked by a strange beam and unknown flyer that nearly kills them. They will need to discover who is behind the attacks and why are they doing it? Both of them have their suspicions but have no intention of letting the other know.
The action-packed story has lots of excitement, moved at a brisk pace, and is filled with tension and danger. Neither character trusts the other. Will they be able to work together on this mystery? The attacks are one of their problems, but the Alliance will be a much larger one if they don’t resolve the environment issue. Grab your copy and see if they can put aside their differences to address the bigger problems!
When a boy goes missing in the desert, Ethan and Sarwenna begin a search, but they are attacked by a strange beam and unknown flyer that nearly kills them. They will need to discover who is behind the attacks and why are they doing it? Both of them have their suspicions but have no intention of letting the other know.
The action-packed story has lots of excitement, moved at a brisk pace, and is filled with tension and danger. Neither character trusts the other. Will they be able to work together on this mystery? The attacks are one of their problems, but the Alliance will be a much larger one if they don’t resolve the environment issue. Grab your copy and see if they can put aside their differences to address the bigger problems!
May 23, 2021
Good sci fi adventure with romance
The world building is excellent, the characters are fascinating (especially some of the secondary characters), and the story is gripping. Sar's brothers' interactions with Silas are hilarious. I admit Sar's behavior after the rescue annoyed me; her lack of faith in Ethan was disappointing. Also, as advanced as the medical care is in this future world, the treatment for PTSD seems to be severely lacking. Although, if several characters had been treated, there may not have been a story. I'm not fond of the main character in the next book, Exile, but I'm interested in reading about other Alliance worlds.
The world building is excellent, the characters are fascinating (especially some of the secondary characters), and the story is gripping. Sar's brothers' interactions with Silas are hilarious. I admit Sar's behavior after the rescue annoyed me; her lack of faith in Ethan was disappointing. Also, as advanced as the medical care is in this future world, the treatment for PTSD seems to be severely lacking. Although, if several characters had been treated, there may not have been a story. I'm not fond of the main character in the next book, Exile, but I'm interested in reading about other Alliance worlds.
Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews