She undergoes a series of tortures devised by the insidiously brilliant Aseides, who is trying to learn the whereabouts of Athene.Īs soon as I realized that the story wasn’t going to leave that prison and that scenes of torture would dominate the action, I almost put the novel aside. The third novel throws us into Opal’s prison life of routines governed by the ever-present AI known as Dulcetta.

As we find at the beginning of Hidden Solace, however, rescue was not their fate. The book closes with the sisters awaiting rescue by Athene on the surface of a strange planet. Opal’s real quest is to find her sister Clarissa, and by the end of the second book, Opal retrieves her sister who has been in an alien-induced stasis for the past fourteen years. Athene is also hunted by the dominating power of this universe, known as the UFS. The AI is reborn in the image of Athene and becomes a constant companion and protector of Opal. Usually any ship that disappears into that space of unique physics is lost forever, but Opal finds a ship and recovers a sentient AI, a level seven machine, that soon undergoes, with Opal, a disastrous near-death experience. Maybe that will be more clear if I read more.In the first two novels ( Lost Solace and Chasing Solace), Opal set off to recover a lost ship that had entered the alien realm of Null-Space. It appeared to end abruptly and I’m not quite sure what happened. Like most short stories, this one left me with more questions than answers. It did intrigue me enough to consider picking up the first book to see for sure what is going on. There was enough world building included that I was able to understand the story. For fans of the series this short story may fill in some gaps. From reading other reviews, I’m guessing that the main storyline follows Clarissa’s older sister Opal. This is a short story set in a fictional universe that I know nothing about. She has decided that she is going to be as stubborn and noncooperative as possible with these people who have taken her. Her priorities are different than those of an adult. She notices things that the adults around her don’t.

She is an imaginative ten year old who has been forcibly separated from her sister and she is NOT HAPPY.

Lost Solace by Karl Drinkwater