Injured agent Lièrén Sòng should want to return to interrogating criminals for his covert unit for the Citizen Protection Service, but being sidelined gains new appeal when he makes friends with a woman and her son. Imara Sesay, road crew chief and part-time bartender, breaks her ironclad rule never to get close to customers when she asks Lièrén to teach her son how to control his growing … telepathic talents. Can Lièrén stay alive long enough to save Imara and her prodigy son from the agency that wants them?
Covert agent Lièrén Sòng is recovering from a near-fatal crash. He should want nothing more than to get back to using his talents to interrogate criminals for the Citizen Protection Service, but he’s making unexpected new friends with a woman and her son. Imara Sesay, road-crew chief and part-time bartender, breaks her ironclad rule never to get close to customers when she asks Lièrén to teach her son how to control his growing minder talents.
Unexpected deaths in his covert unit make Lièrén suspect he isn’t a lucky survivor, he’s a loose end. He should pull away from Imara and Derrit to keep them safe, but when the local CPS Testing Center is entirely too interested in Derrit’s talents, Lièrén must make an impossible choice. Can he stay alive long enough to save Imara and her prodigy son?
Buy Minder Rising today and come along for the ride! Includes a free sample of Overload Flux.
Minder Rising is the second of the new Central Galactic Concordance series. They can be read in any order, though Minder Rising takes place after the events in Overload Flux.
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The Central Galactic Concordance series:
—-Overload Flux (Book 1) – standalone
—-Minder Rising (Book 2) – standalone
—-Zero Flux (Novella 2.5) – sequel to Overload Flux
….Pico’s Crush (Book 3) – coming Jan. 2016
more
After devouring the previous two entries in this series, I was salivating for the latest sci-fi adventure into this exciting, colorful, and intriguing future world in the distant stars the author created. If you want it to make some sense scientifically while keeping the wonder of the inexplicable beside an action, suspense, and romance blend that will keep you turning pages, here you go.
Minder Rising is a standalone story connected to a series through the world of the Central Galactic Concordance. It shifts focus to a new setting and new characters, but just as much danger, suspense, future fun, developed characters, and slow-burn romance as the previous two (I say two because there is a prequel that is worth the read).
Lieren Song works for the Citizen Protection Service which is an organization to protect the people with mind or Minder powers from being in danger, but also protect null humans from the dangers of Minders gone bad. He is part of secret mission unit who track down the really bad ones. He has two Minder powers that he can employ in his work.
Unfortunately, he is put on light duty and office work while he recovers from a mission gone bad when his partner died and he nearly did. While he is recovering, he encounters single mom and bartender, Imara Sesay and her twelve year old boy who has strong Minder gifts. He spends time with regular people for the first time since he was sent away to train his Minder gifts for service and realizes his life is missing quite a bit.
But then he starts to realize that someone is disposing of everyone in his unit for an unknown reason even while he gets suspicious of the testing the CPS is doing on children to determine their Minder gifts, the strengths, and who gets placed. He has always been loyal to the system, but now sees that things aren’t adding up particularly when Imara’s son is on the verge of being tested and someone keeps trying to kill Lieren. Imara doesn’t want to get involved with Lieren no matter how wonderful he is because he is not sticking around and she has to think of her son.
Another brilliant entry in the series. The plot is layered and well paced, exciting, but also develops well. The characters are, again, what drives the story most for me. They are involved in the action, but also progress through growth internally.
Lieren is an interesting hero. He’s one of those little seen beta heroes. Sure, he’s part of a special policing force who go after the big bads, but he’s an interrogator who is brought in after the capture not a soldier. He’s a rule follower and does his duty to the best of his ability. His loyalty to his team and his purpose are his whole life until the HALO jump fall that nearly kills him and brings him to the point of change. He’s gentle, kind, polite, and self-effacing to a fault. He doesn’t have to be in charge and, in fact, doesn’t want to be. He is not threatened by Imara. He respects her quick analytical mind and planning ability and follows her lead several times without it being a difficulty. I loved that he didn’t change in personality even as he worked through a crisis of conscience and fought for his life and those he cared about a few times. He has honor and integrity which gets used against him at times, but Imara and Darrit and his new circle of friends he is forming see this as strengths.
Imara is a great counterpart for Lieren. When she was married, she let her husband lead and trusted him to make the decisions and provide. She learned to step up when he was gone for her son and herself. She never wants to go back to that helpless and passive woman she was again. She works two jobs that require her to be tough and decisive and now fears her son’s strong Minder talent when she is a low level Minder. She has strict rules about not getting involved with someone who can’t commit to the long haul so tries to keep the attractive Lieren in the friend category. He is tough to keep there the way he warms her heart by being good to her son and herself.
There is a mystery and also a political intrigue element like the earlier ones. These drive the action to a pulse-pounding big scene and some good twists. Even though this is a standalone story, I could see how it fit perfectly with the other stories like they are all pieces of the same puzzle and each adds to the overall picture.
Nicole Poole’s narration work is excellent as usual. She wowed me with not just all her voices including gender, but the woman had to add in accents from Indian to Scottish and more than one Asian language with some phrases. She didn’t miss a beat. And, her grasp of tone and pace was spot on. I can’t imagine enjoying this series without her telling me the stories.
In summary, this was another abso-fab entry in the series leaving me thirsty for more. Having sci-fi and suspense mashed with romance is the best blend ever and I highly recommend these.
I was excited to move on to the second book in this series, and it was a real treat! This novel follows Lièrén Sòng as he rehabilitates and figures out the mystery of what happened to him and his fellow CPS coworkers during a brutal shuttle crash. There are conspiracies in every shadow and it takes a while but eventually Lièrén realizes that CPS has been lying to him as well. And then there’s Imara Sesay, a woman he comes to know who works the bar at the hotel where Lièrén is staying to convalesce. Their subtle romance really worked for me and kept the story moving. I found that in my off hours, I was thinking about this book a lot! And each time I set the book down, I couldn’t wait to get back to it. I can’t wait to read more in this series!
What a fantastic read!
With great world-building (the city of Spires, with its high transparent platforms and pilars, made me think, in reverse, of the underground city from Asimov’s Caves of Steel), a cleverly crafted plot, likable and relatable characters who will learn a lot about themselves (I especially enjoyed finding out about all the talents the characters possess, and how they use them while interacting with each other), I can only recommend this book.
Sure, the romance takes a backseat compared to the first book in the series, but it suits the story and both main characters’s personalities. I couldn’t imagine them going a lot faster or doing much more! It was just the right balance to make them believable.
So I’m off to read the next novel!
Being idealistic, naive and gullible is painful enough when dealing with scammers, but when dealing with co-workers and friends? I’m sure it hurt Lieren to discover that his so-called co-workers and friends made him their patsy. At least, his acquaintance with Imara and Derrit made him sit up and recognize his problems, but white knight that he is, Lieren could not just deal with his problems. He had to take on theirs as well. Lots of bureaucratic convolutions, political shenanigans, personal introspection and not-so-panicked action make this science fiction romantic suspense police procedural a read not to put down.
I enjoy all of Van Natta’s books in this series. They can be a bit predictable taken individually, but I like how they are tying a larger story together. I still liked the first one (“Overload Flux”) the best, but I enjoyed this book’s characters nearly as much.Truth be told, I’d give it a 4.5 if I could, but I can’t, and it probably deserves more than a 4. And while there is a bit of romance, many of these characters are both broken, and at the same time pretty kick-ass. Give the “Central Galactic Concordance” series a try, It isn’t typically what I would read, but I have enjoyed it. You might too.
I enjoyed Overload Flux, the first book in this series so much, that I dived right into book 2 after I finished it. Minder Rising has a very different tone and focus than the first book in the series, but I think the different approach totally worked here. We get to see a whole other side of the universe and a different perspective and it was great!
I had a great time reading Minder Rising. Minder Rising is quite gently paced and I mean that in a positive way. The plot points slowly emerge and progress and I loved seeing how it all played out. Where in book 1 the focus is more on the suspense and mystery and there’s some action as well. This one is focused more on the characters and their stories and a hint of suspense. Which works great for this story and I really enjoyed the book and I thought it was interesting how different the tone was compared to book 1.
It’s told from dual point of views, Lièrén got hurt in an accident and slowly he starts finding out truths and discovered that makes him doubt the CPS a bit more. Where Imara has a son who has a very strong minder talent and later in the book he has to go in for minder testing and the CPS becomes very interested in him.
I loved the character driven nature and the gentle pace of this book. I didn’t connect as fast with the two main characters as I did with the main character in book 1, but the more I read the more they grew on me. And by the end of the book I was really fond of Lièrén and Imara and the side characters Derrit and Rayle were great too. The character really come to live in this book and I enjoyed reading about them and seeing them all interact with each other.
It was interesting to see Lièrén slowly figure out the truth of what happened to his field team unit and also some things that were going on in the CPS. He is quite the naive character at first and it’s sad when that gets broken and he realizes what’s really going on around him and how much he didn’t notice at first. I liked how his personality was this fun combination of quirkiness and a sort of formal polite behavior that was uniquely Lièrén. At the end of the book he has to choose between his job and helping the women and kid he grew to care about and I was so curious to see how it all would play out. And I can only say that the conclusion was very satisfying and resolved all the plot point in a great way.
Imara is a great character too, she cares a lot about her son and she is a very confident and capable character. I liked her filer minder talent, which seems so handy and fit her. And there’s a great twist surrounding her character later in the book. I liked how determined she was to do the best for her son, with working two books and also what she does later in the book to protect him. It really shows how far she is willing to go for him. I liked seeing that. Derrit was fun to read about too, I liked seeing him interact with his mother and Lièrén.
The romance is a very slow burn, but it worked here. I liked how they slowly got to know each other and even when they realized their mutual attraction it took them a long time to act on their feelings. I wouldn’t have minded a bit more time seeing them as an actual couple as now there were very few scenes with that. And they made for such a great couple, I just wanted a bit more of it. But I am hoping we’ll get to see them again in later books. I did think they were great for each other and this author really writes her romances well. Imara resists Lièrén for a long time because he is a transient, but she falls in love with him anyway as her heart doesn’t listen to her head. And Lièrén knows his job will take him away from here and while thought he was fine with that he realizes he wants more out of his life.
While it’s set in the same world as book 1, there is very little connection between the two books so far, but there are hints in how it all ties together. I think there is an overarching plot line that’s slowly emerging and the main telling about that is done in the epilogues actually. There were a few times where they mentioned the case Luka worked on in book 1 as that’s connected to Lièrén as well and Imara has met Luka, but that’s basically it. I am very curious to see how the series progresses and if we will see the main characters from the first two books again.
I loved how we learn more about the world in this book. Because of the different setting and focus and Lièrén working for the CPS, so we learn a lot more about the CPS. It also was great to see more of this big planet which was the center of all the politics. It was a very different part of the universe we got to see and at the end there is a bit of other parts of the galaxy we get to see as well, which was pretty intriguing. The whole world feels so real and well thought out, even tough there is still so much to discover, which makes me even more excited to read more books in this series.
To summarize: this was another awesome book. It has a gentle pace and slow build romance that totally worked here. The tone and focus of this one is very different than book 1, but I liked how this provided a very different feel of the world and what’s going on. While the main characters took some time to grow on me, by the end I was really fond of them and was sad to say goodbye to them. The slow build romance fits the pace of the book, although I was sad we didn’t get to see more of them as a couple. The storylines surrounding Lièrén and the CPS and some difficult decisions he has to make were very interesting and I also liked how the plot line surrounding Derrit’s minder talents progressed. This book gives another view of the world and I enjoyed my time spent with this book and learning more about this world. All in all this was a great book and I am hoping to pick up the next book soon.