Editorial Review: Hachi + Araine // Nightmares | The Dream Series Book 2
With their memories reinstated and reeling from the emotional fallout of recent events, Hachi and Araine need to seek their Tau-born kin scattered across the Sol system in their vaults.
The Founders have given them their duty, to find other Tau-born and wake them, but Hachi and Araine find themselves on more than one tangent that temporarily diverts them - except that every choice has ramifications. While running errands in Europa City, the first stop in their search, Hachi realizes that she is being followed. This is Gemini. Their mother got into debt with the wrong people and now Gemini is liable. The wrong people, in this case, refers to the worst kind of sadist slave keeper.
Unsurprisingly for those who have read the first book in The Dream Series, Hachi does not take kindly to this type of cruelty and soon frees Gemini of the debt they owe. What does surprise Araine is the willingness with which Hachi then takes Gemini up on their offer of a job - a job not just to extract them safely from the planet, but also to hunt down those who paid to watch the gruesome murder of their mother.
In the first example of 'no action without effect' in Hachi + Araine // Nightmares, it seems that Hachi's quests are converging when the shadowy OmniCorp Board of Directors demands their attendance at dinner and through her ability to read the lives of those in her proximity Hachi discovers that one of the board members is one of those she just agreed to assassinate on behalf of Gemini and their mother.
Hachi + Araine // Nightmares explores the inner-workings of the titular characters deeper than in the first book. The reader who first experienced their rediscovery of self is now witness to their examination of what they've found. Hachi continues to deal with her own vulnerabilities that are still present despite the retrieval of her memories and wrestling with the decisions she's making despite not quite understanding why she made them in the first place. The continued development and complexity of the character is bolstered by her interactions with Lamant, Mira, and Amrita while new characters like Gemini and Scarlet offer new opportunities for growth.
The second book in The Dream Series, Hachi + Araine // Nightmares is a fantastic continuation of the story from Book 1. This sci-fi drama shines with a real focus on the humanity of the individuals involved - even when those individuals aren’t exactly human - and will appeal to genre fans as well as series readers.
Hachi + Araine // Nightmares is a high impact Space Opera with plenty of action, interesting characters, and wild adventure.
