Stormjammer: Book 2 of Shai (Raconteur Press)
by J. Kenton Pierce
Centuries ago, an orbital barrage set off a caldera on her world which led to the Long Night. But the ash and harsh winters are clearing.
Small but lethal, Shaifennen Roehe has a fun way of speaking and a very sharp mind. She’s one of my favorite characters in fiction. In this book she’s sixteen years old, and starts acting as a proxy for her mother who runs Twelvety Town and the new New Vermont Prefecture.
At the start of the book she’s now a member of the new town’s militia, which is concerned about a neighboring town thinking along the lines of conquest that increasingly worries them, especially since Greenline town is now building airships. Fighters are also necessary due to huge swarms of dangerous indigenous “bugs” called skizzers.
The skizzer swarms are supposed to hibernate through the northern winters, but as the planet thaws they are not hibernating…they spend the winter breeding. When one of those huge swarms hits Twelvety Homestead, Shai has to take command. Their losses are heavy. The answer to why the swarms have gone wrong is somewhere on the Southern Continent, and Shai is going to find it.
But the Southern Continent is full of dangerous flora and fauna. And it holds not only huge surprises but also new allies, a way to deal with the swarms, and a possible way to deal with the orbital defense AI called Damocles that is holding all of them hostage.