After I enjoyed book one. I felt this was disappointing.
It just did not work the way book one had.
I was not interested at all.
The characters felt more flat. Not as much growth as I would have liked.

The World:
The world of this book is definitely my kind of sci-fi. It's expansive enough that it feels like it's in different parts of space, but it's small enough that it doesn't feel to complicated or overwhelming. I liked that there was a lot of time given to Arcadia this time and the setting there. But, at the same time, we see new worlds in this book as well and these new worlds are so well described. I could literally imagine them as I was reading, which is always what I love most about world-building.

The Characters:
I think the characters in the book (some of them) were what I loved the most about this novel.

Nor and Valen: These two are such great characters. I was really kind of confused in Zenith as to who Nor was or why she was even in the book. In this book, it felt like the opposite to Zenith. This book was really Nor and Valen's story of how they wanted to bring their people over to Mirabel and the steps they were taking to get there. Valen in particular felt like a really multi-dimensional character in this book.

Darai: Darai felt like a new character to me. Of course he appeared, very minimally, in the previous book, but in this book he played a more key role. Especially at the end, it was refreshing to find out Darai was the real villain because it felt like a twist I hadn't seen coming but one that made total sense with how his character had been developed in this book.

Andi, Dex and the Crew of the Maurauder: To be honest, I didn't love these characters in this book. The crew kind of fell into the background until the last few chapters and felt a bit like plot devices. Andi and Dex's relationship grew in this book, but their story didn't really feel developed which made the romance on their part fall a little flat. Honestly, I found myself skipping over their chapters a lot and gravitating more towards Nor and Valen's.

Arachnid: This was an unexpected addition to this book, but not an unwelcome one. A kind of nemesis, kind of ally that ended up being both and neither. I really liked Arachnid's inclusion in this book.

The Plot - Why Was It a 3-Star Read for Me?
For me, this was where the book really fell down for me.

I loved loved loved Nor and Valen's story. Their plot and their relationship and everything about their chapters were great. Sasha and Lindsay really took the seeds they had planted in Zenith for both Nor and Valen and grew them into a proper story that I ended up really enjoying. Even the ending, though tragic with Valen's death, didn't feel forced or twisted. I loved the progression of their plot.

However, Andi and Dex's stories didn't read well for me in this book. Either the chapters felt quite repetitive with the same ideas and concepts being repeated e.g. Andi being the Bloody Baroness ready for death/Andi willing to die for her crew, or they were very slow and didn't seem to add much to the story. There were quite a few times in the middle of the book where I got to the end of Andi and Dex's chapters and realised I could have skipped over them and still understood the story.

For me, the book really felt like it should have mostly been Nor and Valen's stories, but because Zenith was Andi's story there needed to be that connection. However, I felt there could have been more development for Andi and Dex that would have made it feel like their story was interwoven with Nor and Valen's rather than completely separate until the end.

How It Follows on from Zenith:
It was a good follow on from Zenith. There was enough context given at the start of the book that I didn't feel like I had to re-read Zenith to understand this novel. What I also really liked was how this book picked up on threads that had been planted in Zenith and developed them into a proper ending (even if I didn't love the final few chapters).

I initially DNF this book, but decided to give it another go because I really loved book one and Andi as a character and I needed to understand how her story continued. I did enjoy this book, but not as much as I did the first book, possibly because the focus of this sequel was more on Nor than on Andi and the crew. I loved the way Andi and Dax's relationship progressed and how fiercely Andi continued to fight for her crew. It was well written, I just preferred the focus on Andi and not Nor. I would definitely read any other books in this series, this one just wasn't as big a hit for me as Zenith

Nexus follows on from Zenith. Androma is no longer Bloody Barooness, her ship is gone, and her crew don’t trust her and are captured. Her life is spiralling out of her control. Queen Nor is going after what she wants most, to rule the galaxy and she is getting what she wants as she does control majority of the Mirabel Galaxy. Andi and her unlikely ally Dex, will do anything to stop her.

I was so happy to receive an e arc of this book because I previously reviewed an arc of Zenith so was happy to see this through. This book wasn’t as action packed as Zenith but I still thought it was a decent read. Like the other book, it is told through multiple points of views. Like I have previously said, I don’t get on well with this because sometimes I just loose where I am or whose head I’m in. Even with a header telling me on the chapter page. To be honest, I would have liked more from this book in that the characters bonds and relationships wasn’t exactly built upon in this second book. The story was fast paced which I liked so I could fly through it but that meant that the story and plot was underdeveloped.

As many people have stated, this writing isn’t exactly the greatest and last year both Sasha and Lindsay was slated because people thought the only reason this book was popular was because of them being influencers, and I get that. I have met Sasha on multiple occasions so I was waiting to see how this would play out and to actually think that people slated her because the publishers saw that they could make money, I think that’s really sad. That being said, I do think that both books could have done with more editing and being refined in the fact that it just wasn’t enough. What I mean is that the writing was just missing something that could have made this series a lot better.

Overall, I love Sci fi and I love Sasha and Lindsay.

3 out of 5 stars.

This book wasn't bad by far but still not great I think with a little tweaking it would have been amazing as the first was but still, I did thoroughly enjoy it the characters where just as amazing and the plot was good it followed on well from the first book.
The story its self was set up beautifully and flowed really well I loved pretty much most of these aspects and did end up enjoying this book a fair amount.

Thank you to Netgalley and the publishers for letting me read this book. There has been many controversial but i quite enjoyed the first book and this book, I enjoyed some of the characters but in this one there where some characters P.O.V’s that could of been left out. The plot building and world building where a bit of a let down but I didn’t find it terrible. Overall like the first book I did enjoyed this book despite something’s being a little let down, but I would still recommend this book possible to readers that are coming from children books into YA these books would be a good stepping stone for them into YA. I give this book 3.5 stars

Thank you NetGalley and HQ for providing me with a copy for review.

Nexus is the sequel to Zenith and is the second book published by Sasha Alsberg and Lindsay Cummings. It is the conclusion to the duology that follows Andi, a powerful leader known as the Bloody Baroness across the galaxy, and her crew.

This is a very typical YA science fiction series and has all the general elements and tropes that you would expect, spaceships, technical space language, a huge cast of characters, a dash of romance, and lots of drama. 

The characters are much more well rounded and developed in this book and you begin to learn more about some of the secondary characters that weren't as prominent in the first book, such as Lira. The characters are very strong-willed, especially Andi, and they know exactly what they want out of their lives.

This book was equally as brilliant as the first book in the duology. Fast-paced, action-packed, yet very easy to read. This would be a brilliant sci-fi gateway book for teens and young adults. With excellent relationships and strong friendship groups this read has some brilliant messages.

I just can’t do it. I slogged through the first half of this book desperately hoping for a reprieve from the repetitive and painfully deliberate prose but there isn’t one. This book has almost all of the same issues as its predecessor, with uncomfortably familiar themes from popular YA series and poorly explained, descriptive world building. With that said, the character development was much better, but the gaping plot holes and lack of explanation of really important components has plagued me for far too long now.

Androma has lost her title as the Bloody Baroness (thank goodness, because that name was awful from the start!) and is now a fugitive. Queen Nor, vicious Queen that she is, rules the Galaxy through mind-control and seeks to destroy Androma at any cost. Well, she seeks to destroy basically everything because she’s just that kind of messed up character. I actually really like her; she’s a joy to read about.

So Androma and Dex, now stranded on some ice planet of indeterminate nature (indeterminate because somehow people are managing to survive here despite gas giants, a lack of solid ground and let’s not forget that they’d be dead already because of pressure/gravity) . Is it just me or this expecting a level of suspending your disbelief that just can’t work – we need an explanation, however tenuous, of how these people are managing to survive in legitimately un-survivable conditions. I’m not big on space settings anyway, but you can’t ignore everything, fail to consider any space-related complications and expect readers to just accept it; if you’re developing a world set in space surely some space-related research needs to take place?

To their credit, the authors have taken some of the negative/constructive feedback provided to them from Zenith because the problems with their superficial and outright cringey characters have improved somewhat. I still don’t like Andi, Dex or their weird romance but I do really like Andi’s crew; they’ve been much better developed in this book with more prominent personality profiling to delineate them more clearly from each other now. They’re still cringey, but I guess that can be overlooked. Equally, Nor is a much better villain with genuine motive and unpredictability which is great – what’s the point in a villain who doesn’t really feel like a threat?

This series is just too dramatic and mashed together with not enough of a step up from the previous book to improve its standing. A heroic girl, an (allegedly) swoony love interest and an enemy hell-bent on destroying the galaxy with only one person who can stop them? We’ve seen it and we’ve seen it better. It’s a real shame because there has been obvious growth in some areas within this series from Zenith to Nexus which lead me to believe future work would be much better – perhaps Sasha’s “Project Red” will be a massive step up. But, as with many readers with an ever growing pile of fantastic books to read, I’m just not sure I’ll be able to commit myself to further disappointment.

ARC provided free from Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.

Zenith was one of my favourite books of 2018 and I am just going to come right out and say it here and now - Nexus is one of my favourite books of 2019! I am so happy that the publishers and Netgalley allowed me to have an ARC of this beautifully written, wonderfully plotted space fantasy extavaganza! I adore anything vaguely Firefly-esque and this had everything for me. I'm new to tge whole double author set up, but there was no difference in change of style, or language so it felt like such a cohesive collaboration just like Zenith. I loved returning to the Androma Cycle and cannot waot for more by this pair!!! Absolutely loved it. I have no hesitation in giving this long awaited (feels like I waited forever) book five stars! ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

Today, I’m going to be giving you my thoughts and feelings on Nexus, the second book in the Androma Cycle [which I can never seem to spell because I always want to say Andromeda instead]. This series has received a certain amount of controversy, mostly centred around wondering if one of the authors did more of the work than the other, and if the book got published just because the authors are booktubers with big audiences. I know there was a big thing where big booktubers who knew the authors personally didn’t review the first novel, and some people speculated that it was because they were too close to the authors to review the novel and say it was bad. The book got pretty negative reviews on mid-level and smaller booktube platforms, and then high ones with people who were big fans of Sasha’s channel, but I wanted to try and give it a chance and see what I thought for myself. It’s super difficult to judge the series based on Goodreads reviews, mostly because people are five-starring and one-starring it before they’ve even read them, based on prejudices. Besides, I always like to form my own opinion based on my own reading, rather than what everyone else says.

In the end, I actually really enjoyed Zenith. It wasn’t the best written book ever, but I thought it was pretty good, especially given the fact that, as far as I’m aware, both authors are debuts. It’s not a bad thing, and the lack of experience is less to do with the age of the authors as it does with how many books they’ve previously written and/or published. The book was funny, the pacing was okay, the characters were a little stock [I believe the phrase some people have used is ‘it’s Throne of Glass in space.’] But yeah, it wasn’t a bad read, and I enjoyed it enough to pick up Nexus.

It took me a little while to get around to though. I just wasn’t feeling it. When I did get around to it, I read it quite quickly, but that’s probably because I was visiting family and didn’t have much else to do during down time.

Nexus starts with a strong pacing. There was a big cliff-hanger at the end of book one which kind of hones the first section of the second novel. There’s a lot of set-up here, particularly as there are a number of characters who get their own POV chapters. However, even though it isn’t necessarily action-packed in the first few chapters, there’s a lot of tension and high-stakes and intrigue from the get go. During this section I really did find myself turning pages faster. The set-up for the start of the novel was amazing, and honestly, if Nexus had continued in that vein, I would be giving it an incredibly high review score.

There were some character POVs that I personally could have done without. I wasn’t a big fan of the Lira ones, although they were essential to understanding the plot. Same with Valen. I get why he was important, but also he was kind of meh? I think the authors do some elements of character well- they are all very distinct from one another. However, they’re almost exactly the same characters as I could find in a whole host of other YA books. In particular, there’s definitely some Lunar Chronicles and Illuminae characters who sort of get some minor changes and wind up in the pages of this series. I was there for the female friendship though, that was cool.

I did still love Andi. I know, I know, she is VERY similar to Celaena [I cba to check how to spell that], but I still enjoyed being in her head. She’s one of those wonderful grey-area characters, and I am sorry but I am such a fangirl of books with antihero protagonists. Andi’s given a lot of development, and I like that there’s a clear character arc in Nexus for her. She visibly grows as a person, which I was so there for.

The dialogue is good. I’m not amazing at writing dialogue, so I’m very appreciative when someone gets it right. There’s a lot of jokes and funny little throw-aways, and I think the book does a good job of giving backstory and information essential to the story in the dialogue in a way that sounds pretty natural. It’s probably the biggest strength of the series as a whole.

The world-building is where we run into a few problems. The world doesn’t seem particularly developed, and there was some white-room issues going on from time to time. Much of what we do get is kind of dropped in, without any kind of context or foregrounding. For example, there’s a scene where Andi and Dex battle a kind of monster, and although they seemed at least somewhat aware that it existed, the readers don’t, so it comes very out of the blue. By contrast, Jay Kristoff’s and Amie Kaufman’s Aurora Rising involves a similar fight with a monster, however we get drip-fed little snippets of info about the monster woven into earlier chapters, so when we get to that scene it’s got a lot of suspense and we’re on the edge of our seats because we know how dangerous this monster is. It has a reputation. Not so much with the creature in Nexus. Obviously, this is only one example, but there were things like certain phrases and things like food or special objects which were only again, sort of dropped in without context, meaning I came away a little bit confused, rather than feeling like I understood the world a bit more. Also, I just couldn’t wrap my head around planets being treated like countries. We never got much of a glimpse of scope, so I don’t know if maybe these planets are like really tiny, but logic says no and I just can’t fathom a single leader of a whole planet.

Writing-style wise, there is some clear improvement from Zenith. There are less confusing similes, there’s less repetition. It’s still not perfect, and there’s scope for development, but again I’m willing to appreciate that the authors are just learning the ropes still. I do wonder a bit about the influence of the booktube personas, since I do feel that if a non semi-famous person [at least in the book community] turned in a novel like this to an agent or publisher, they’d probably be given a list of changes to make or would take a while to get it accepted. I’m not saying the series doesn’t deserve to be published, just that maybe it needed a bit more development first. The plot, for example, was another big issue thing for me. I liked the plot of Zenith well enough, but Nexus takes that very old trope of someone who wants to take over the universe using mind control and runs with it. There is some complexity there. Nor isn’t the standard bad guy with a bad guy laugh, but she’s not so different that the plot is refreshing. I did enjoy the plot of Andi trying to get her crew back, but the rest of it was a bit meh for me. I’ve seen it done before, and much better.

Overall, I’m giving Nexus a 6.5 out of 10 stars. I thought there were some technical improvements over Zenith, and I am fully understanding of the lack of publishing experience both authors have, but ultimately the plot sagged a bit for me after the initial set-up excitement. The high-stakes stuff was cool, but it borrowed heavily from some already over-used sci-fi tropes and didn’t really add much to the genre. It was an entertaining read, but it wasn’t amazing for me.

A fun read and a great sequel to Zenith, it really didn’t disappoint and it felt like you’d never left, the writing and story is so good you just jump back in the world immediately. Fast paced plot again and a book you don’t want to put down .

Thanks to netgalley and the publisher for a free copy for an honest opinion

Zenith had some great ideas and character outlines but fell short for me, it just seemed lacking in too many areas and I mourned that lost potential. Nexus, however, seems to have thrown off any shackles placed upon it by its predecessor and is a much better, interesting and enjoyable read. A warning that this review will probably be comparing the two works because the difference is so pleasingly apparent. I would say, despite this being a sequel you don't absolutely need to read Zenith beforehand because it recaps the events that have unfolded previously although it does make it a little easier to know what's happening from the get-go; that being said although this review will be spoiler free for Nexus there will be spoilers for Zenith.

Although I missed having the crew around for a larger part of this book than previously I think it actually really worked and I found Lira much more interesting in Nexus while she was away from Andi, the same goes for the Bloody Baroness herself who also was much improved. In Nexus, Andi is still very (understandably) focused on her friends devoutly it feels much more in the right place here and I think giving Andi a much more direct purpose she cared for really worked out well as well as giving her a legitimate reason that made sense as to why she's so important in the fight against Nor. Her space pirate persona is, thankfully, much less overhyped this time around, even with there not being a huge amount of action involved and don't even get me started on Dex becasue I actually liked him in Nexus which was a nice surprise, I think the events of Zenith really caused him to see what's important and to grow a bit more of a spine without making him too overconfident to a fault. All the characters in-fact were much improved and although characters don't have to be likeable for them to be good I think it is preferred that we understand their motives which we got in truckloads during Nexus and I couldn't be happier about it. 

There is a little romance in Nexus but it isn't a huge plot point and I enjoyed it all the more because of that. Romantic scenes didn't feel out of place or as flat or frustrating as it had done previously and I actually enjoyed them and the paring as a whole. 

The writing was much improved which makes sense, whether it be a result of the collaborating authors working together better after already writing one book with each other or perhaps experience over time? I found there were a lot less clunky sentences and I didn't find myself having to reread parts to make sense of them which I experienced in Zenith. Apart from a small part in the middle, the pacing was spot on and towards the end especially I found myself reading frantically, desperate to know what happened, there was some good tension building for sure. I really enjoyed the ending despite having worried that I was getting perilously close to the end of the book with no clue as to the outcome (a good thing, it just makes me anxious!). 

Overall, Nexus was a good read and one I would be happy to recommend, I absolutely loved reading it and would say it's definitely worth giving it a try even if Zenith fell short for you as you may be pleasantly surprised! Nexus is out now on Kindle and releases on paperback in the UK on June 13th.

This was a decent follow up to Zenith. I think the world and concept of this series is really unique and well done however i find it occasionally be a bit predictable and trope heavy.
That being said this was definitely a fun read and i read it pretty quickly because i was so invested!

As someone who absolutely loved Zenith despite everything, I was really looking forward to the sequel and luckily, I was not disappointed! I wish it was longer because somethings did feel rushed and crammed but overall, I loved Nexus!

This duology is such an intense, high stakes sci-fi but also ends up being really fun and unique too! Although the writing isn’t the best writing ever, it’s still so engaging and fun to read about. I’ve grown so much love for all of these characters apart from Dex, although, I did grow to like him throughout Nexus and I thought this book was a really good way to round off all of these story arcs!

Although, again, I do feel pressured to make the disclaimer that I do not watch either of these two ladies on YouTube and I feel that even now, people are up on their high horses about the fact that if you really enjoyed this series, you must be watchers but I’m generally not I just really loved this duology and I think it’s shitty for people who didn’t like it to crap on people’s opinions just because they didn’t like it!

Overall, Nexus was a really wonderful end to this saga and I’m really excited to see what these two authors do next as it will be sad to see them not working on this series anymore but I’m looking forward to future works from both of them!

If you like sci-fi and enjoy a high stakes series with great characters, an engaging storyline and some fun heist elements then I highly recommend this duology!

Arc was kindly provided by Netgalley but all opinions are my own!