The Icarus Twin (The Icarus Saga #2) by Timothy Zahn

 

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Category: Adult
Genre: Sci-fi, Space Opera
Content: Clean

 

For years Gregory Roarke and his Kadolian partner Selene worked as crocketts, combing through the atmospheres of uninhabited worlds for places that might be colonized or hold valuable resources. Now, they quietly work for the Icarus Group, a top-secret government organization hunting for portals created by a long-vanished alien race, portals that can teleport a person hundreds or thousands of light-years in the blink of an eye.

Roarke and Selene are searching one such possibility when they find that someone appears to be stalking them. They evade their pursuers and return to find that a man named Easton Dent has been searching the Spiral’s databases for the names Gregory Roarke and Icarus.

Roarke reluctantly agrees to meet with him. But that first contact is cut short, and hours later Roarke is arrested and accused of Dent’s murder.

More importantly to Roarke’s Icarus Group overseers, that brief meeting also confirms that Dent was in recent contact with a portal.

But the alien Patth are also searching for such portals, and they are also on the trail. It’s now a race . . . and the Patth have resources and ruthlessness far beyond anything Roarke and Selene can match.

 

This is the second book in the Icarus Saga series and I enjoyed it. It started out with a bang and just kept going. I still don't think these are quite as good as The Icarus Hunt was, but I very much enjoy the characters in these books. I like that characters from The Icarus Hunt cross over into these at times as well. I do think that Roarke's "As my father used to say..." shtick is overused, but it's still amusing. One thing I love about Zahn's books is that there are always twists that surprise me, and this one was no exception.

To quote another reviewer on Goodreads, "This book, like the other Icarus Saga novels, follows the Puzzle Box format of storytelling. Not only is there a mystery, but it changes throughout the novel in a more complex way than even the most complex Agatha Christie novels. But like Agatha Christie novels, Zahn lays everything out at the end of the book neatly for the reader and characters to understand." 

This describes why I love Timothy Zahn's books. I hadn't really put the pieces together of why until I read this review. I enjoy the puzzle box type of mystery, and I enjoy sci-fi/space adventure  books. Blended together it makes for great reading.