Nova, an engineer, lives on the planet Korpillion, one of the few planets deemed inhabitable because it doesn't have any Neron. This blue substance, which is in everything and used for its amazing powers, is something the evil organization Dominion (The Empire or First Order of this story), will stop at nothing to get--destroying entire planets and enslaving most of the population to mine for Neron and killing the rest. But her relatively boring world is about to be turned upside down, when she learns that her overpopulated planet, not only contains Neron, but also that the Dominion is coming, and they're bringing the very last Nero, Valen, with them. Valen, being the Kylo Ren of this series, and the Nero being the Force users of this saga.
" The Nero can do everything that any person in possession of Neron can do, but a hundred fold. Nero are born with a connection to Neron. They don’t have to have solid Neron to have a weapon, they can pull it from the air and make a weapon of electric Neron. They can read your true emotions. It’s said they can read your thoughts if they are strong enough. They can move things simply by manipulating the Neron in everything. Because there is energy and life in everything. I’ve even heard they can see the future."
Striving to get her father and her best friend Zayne off the planet before the arrival of Dominion, Nova quits her engineering job and focuses soley on her black market trade--the production and selling of of illegal Neron weapons to the seedier population, the Neron junkies and the ones with questionable goals. I really enjoyed the many layers to the world surrounding Neron. I thought it was cool that there were beings almost as strong as the Nero, known as the Kinduri, who actually eat Neron, to gain its powers. With black lips, black eyes, and skeletal forms, they are almost as deadly as Nero, and also under the control of Dominion.
Through it all, the only person who understands her is the voice in her head that shows up one day. As I can never get enough of the force bond between Kylo Ren and Rey, this really thrilled me. But I didn't feel like the novel was much of a "slow burn," as the bond between Nova and Valen was already up and running before the series started, so readers didn't get to see it start or develop. Plus, with the shortness of the actual novel, anything happening "slow" still seems pretty fast.
I was, however, disappointed at how short the novel was, with it only taking me about an hour to read the entire thing. But I realize that each segment in the series is known as an "episode," so it's not quite a standalone novel. Still, I really would have liked to read this as an entire full length novel. I would have liked to witness not only the bond developing between Nova and Valen but also to spend more time with Nova and her daily life, before Dominion showed up and destroyed her life as she knew it. Regardless, the book does a great job developing its characters and its world in the limited length it has, complete with the foreshadowing of prophesies.
And it was a complete bonus that the story took place in a unique universe with interesting world building. Though I could clearly make out which character or organization was based on who or what from Star Wars, Neron Rising was still original enough to be enticing on its own.
Neron Rising is a fun, fast- paced novel for not just fans of Star Wars(especially Reylos), but also for fans of sci-fi, fantasy, and romance in general. I've already purchased the second book and I'm eager to see what happens next.
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