Bogormen

Title: Gratuitous Epilogue (Touchstone #4)
Author: Andrea K. Höst
Genre: Sci-fi
Rating: 5/5
# pages: 128
Date read: March 2016, March 2017, March 2019, March 2021, September 2023

What happens when the plot ends? A relentless barrage of weddings, babies, and planetary colonisation! Meandering through the two years following the conclusion of the Touchstone Trilogy, this self-indulgent collection of family reminiscence is more saccharine than dramatic, with the most action to be found in snowball fights.

For those who truly just want to know what happens next, no matter how mundane, read on for the everyday, ordinary lives of psychic space ninjas playing house.


Best gratuitous epilogue ever :) It didn't answer as many questions about the Powerstones etc. as I had hoped, but I hardly minded, because I LOVED how much to ended up focusing on Cass' family back in Australia... ever since finishing "Caszandra" I'd been slightly disappointed that we didn't get to see her Mum's reaction to the letter.

Having a diary entry per month worked out well, and allowed the epilogue to spread out over 2.5 years without seeming too drawn out. I loved the weddings and seeing the children grow... and the last chapter had me in tears.

Totally awesome ending to an excellent trilogy.

Title: Lab Rat One (Touchstone #2)
Author: Andrea K. Höst
Genre: Sci-fi
Rating: 4/5
# pages: 232
Date read: March 2016, March 2017, March 2019, March 2021, September 2023

In the months since Cassandra Devlin walked onto another planet, she has grappled with everything from making blankets to helping psychics battle the memories of monsters. Not able to find a way home, she has instead gained friends and a purpose.

Unfortunately, that purpose brings with it the pressure of being more than a little valuable, and those she has befriended are also her guards, ordered to explore and control her abilities to find out just what it is a touchstone can do.

Test subject was not the career path Cass had been planning.

With no privacy, too-frequent injuries, and the painful knowledge that she must always be an assignment to her Setari companions, Cass can only wish for some semblance of normality and control.

And as her abilities become more and more dangerous, tests and training may be the only thing capable of protecting Cass from herself.


Very obviously the middle book in a trilogy, and as such took me ages to read. Not because it was dull, but because most of it was spent figuring stuff out (about Muina mostly) and that meant there was a lot of literary 'waiting around'. I still loved Cass though, and found it interesting to read how she slowly got more and more settled in her new life.

And of course the end was very satisfying and gratifying, and meant I'll pick up the third book right away.

Title: And All the Stars
Author: Andrea K. Höst
Genre: Science fiction
Rating: 5/5
# pages: 247
Date read: December 2012, January 2015, January 2022

And All the Stars is the story of an alien invasion. Madeleine has skipped school in order to paint her beautiful, androgynous cousin, Tyler. However, this put her in exactly the wrong place at the wrong time to be targeted by the mysterious onslaught of an alien invasion.

In a world gone mad, Madeleine has to trust the odd group of people, fate has thrown her way, and together with them try to find a way to rid the world of the alien invasion without getting possessed themselves along the way.

To might delight, And All the Stars turned out to be "Tomorrow, When the War Began" (John Marsden) meets "The Host" (Stephenie Meyer) - two of my favourite novels with regards to both atmosphere and plot. What I assumed at first would be a fairly straight-forward science fiction novel, threw me with its twists and turns and managed to surprise me more than once.

There are three things I especially appreciated about this novel:
1) The characters. Both the characters and the relationships between the main characters turned out to be a lot more complex than I had anticipated, and Madeleine's transformation from being self-sufficient to having to trust and rely on other people was very well done and believable. Madeleine and Noi, Madeleine and Tyler, Madeleine and Fish, Noi and Pan... None of them were left for the reader to think up themselves, but eloquently described through their interactions.

2) The atmosphere. This is where the comparison to "Tomorrow, When the War..." is most apt. It was just as thrilling, and left me just as much at the edge of my seat. I found myself imagining only too vividly what such an invasion would be like.

3) The fact that it - in spite of my original fear - turned out to be a stand-alone novel. There are so many series being published these days, that a true stand-alone novel is a rare treat.

For these, and many other reasons, And All the Stars blew me away. I can't remember when I've last had this strong a reaction to a novel, and it's well placed to be labelled my "Best Read of 2012".

Reread in 2015: Not quite as blown away by this as when I first read it, but I'm going to leave it at 5 stars just the same. A very, very good read :)

Reread in 2022: I'm going to downgrade the rating to 4 stars because for some reason it took me ALMOST NINE MONTHS to finish it this time around. Granted, some of that was a SERIOUS bout of corona fatigue that made me not want to read anything at all, but still - no 5-star book should be that easy to put down for that long.

I don't even quite get why... the plot is good and is right up my aisle, but something about the writing kept me at a distance, and I never got fully invested in the characters or the plot... and since I'd already read it before, I didn't have any urgency to see what happened next. But to be fair, I think that's got a lot more to do with my headspace while I was reading it, rather than the quality of the book itself.