Fun fact: This will actually be my second time reading this book. Why? Because the final book, Exile’s Throne, is on my 2020 Reading List and I need a refresher course. A lot happens in this book, but I couldn’t remember all the details or the character’s names. So I started fresh with The Empress Game; now we are here, and in the future I will have finally, finally finished the series.
Cloak of War (2016)
Written By: Rhonda Mason
Genre: Science Fiction
Pages: 352 pages (Paperback)
Series: The Empress Game (Book 2)
Publisher: Titan Books
The Premise:
The bloody tournament to determine the new empress of the intergalactic empire may be over, but for exiled princess Kayla Reinumon, the battle is just beginning. To free her home planet from occupation, Kayla must infiltrate the highest reaches of imperial power. But when a deadly nanovirus threatens to ravage the empire, it will take more than diplomacy to protect her homeworld from all-out war.
A few spoilers from the first book.
Discussion: While the first book switched between two points of view, this one gives you four. First is our heroine, Kayla, the Wyrd Princess who has kicked a lot of ass, got her ass kicked, and found her once-thought-dead brother Vayne. Yet at the same time, she’s still stuck as Princess Isonde, navigating the Imperial Senate to try and free her homeworld after Vayne and the other Wyrds escaped. She’s a bit like a tiger stuck in a cage at this point, since she has no way to get back to her own part of space, but at the same time can’t abandon her place as Isonde until (hopefully) the real princess recovers from the toxin she fell to in the previous book. Kayla wants to help her world, but at the same time she was never meant for all the politics here. Making it worse is being blackmailed, having people around her die, and getting attacked more than once. She’s got a rough life, but she powers through it, looking for the light at the end of the tunnel when she can be home with her brothers again.
Then there’s Malkor, a member of the Imperial Diplomatic Corps, trying to do everything he can to keep Kayla safe and discover who knows their secret about cheating at the Empress Game. The discoveries his group made at the end of the previous book reveals some uncouth agents in the IDC, and he hopes he’s able to take care of the whole issue without watching all of the IDC go down in flames. Personally, I haven’t seen anything useful that the IDC does, at least in the larger scale of things. They helped make the coup on Kayla’s planet possible, thus leading to the death of her family and imprisonment of others. Clearly no one does anything useful on Altair Tri — the planet where Kayla was hiding originally — where slaves are bought and sold regularly, and law is basically nonexistent. I like Malkor, and I like his unit, but the IDC hasn’t impressed me in any way, so I shared Kayla’s frustration with Malkor’s loyalty to the organization, especially when he keeps finding more and more agents — important ones up high — in on the assassinations and abductions that happened to Kayla’s family, among other things.
Vayne, Kayla’s twin, is off on a spaceship, having escaped along with Corinth and other Wyrds after the Imperials blamed them for bringing the nanovirus to the planet. He’s a very angry person, and I don’t blame him. He has been through some awful things that we don’t ever see, but are only hinted at. But it’s not hard to get the gist. I only feel bad for him that Dolan died so fast, which means Vayne can’t take out some aggression on the dude before finally killing him. Hey, I like good revenge, what can I say? Making things worse is that the ship he’s on isn’t even going back to a planet where he can be safe, but instead they end up on a long-lost warship that may or may not be full of crazy people. Poor Vayne. Seriously, this guy does NOT need this. Though I am very curious as to where this particular story thread is going to lead.
Cinni is the latest addition to the cast of characters. She doesn’t get many chapters, but instead gives us quick glimpses into the current climate on Kayla’s homeworld of Ordoch. She’s a resistance fighter with plenty of issues of her own. I’m honestly not sure how her story ends. It’s one of those seems-obvious-but-might-be-misleading final sentences. I hope she makes it into the next book and sorts out her issues. Maybe she will, because it does feel a little odd to introduce her here only to kick her back out again at the end. But only a little. She is a necessary vehicle to see important sides of the story at this time, but perhaps not in the future. I guess I’ll know once I pick up the next one.
As usual Kayla is my favorite, tearing through whatever she needs to get through in order to save people she loves (both figuratively and literally). It was nice to see folks finally give Isonde a few hefty pieces of their minds, and there’s definitely plenty of set-up going for the last book. I feel it’s going to be quite the ride.
In conclusion: I had a good time with this second installment and have plenty of questions going into the third. And given how colossal the issues are, it’s going to be very interesting to see how they’re all sorted out. And then there’s also the other question of Kayla and Malkor — will they be able to stay together? Frankly, I think Malkor and the rest of his unit should just stay on Ordoch. Maybe be the go-betweens for the Imperials once they sort their nonsense out. Just as long as I get my happily ever after. That’s all I ever want in a story.
And yes, the title of this review is 100% a Star Wars reference. Appropriate given that in The Empire Strikes Back the heroes get their asses handed to them for two hours straight, which is essentially what happens in this book. With the exception that if Leia were Kayla, she would have absolutely rinsed Boba Fett. But if you want to understand that reference, you’ll have to read the book.
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