A review by iam
Hold Fast Through the Fire by K.B. Wagers

5.0

Book 2 about the NeoG pulled me in just as much as book 1, was an absolutely delightful series that I do not want to end!

It plays about 2 years after the start of the first book, and comes with some changes to the crew: Rosa finally got promoted and is off to a new position, with Nika taking her spot as new commander after having worked with Intel for a while. Ma is finally retiring, and Jenks is taking up his spot as chief, and a new spacer Chae joins to fill the empty spot.

With these changes comes plenty of tension: both Nika and Chae have secrets they are hiding, which are endangering not only their crew and missions, but also their personal relationships.

The stakes in this one felt much higher, which gave the book a much more serious vibe, and overall darker and less light-hearted feel.
There's still plenty of the fun readers got used to in book1, including the boarding games, but there's several more hard hitting scenes.

Again, I loved the casual queerness, especially with Chae as a nonbinary character being a POV character now. The one thing that I found a bit strange is that when a character is binary trans, they are always described as "the trans man/woman" rather than as just "the man/woman".

Still, so, so much fun, and I was very disappointed when I realized book 3 isn't released yet. I cannot wait to read it, and I will definitely fall into a reading slump now that the series is over for the time being.