Catalyst

Hidden Planet, Book 2

By: Anna Carven

Narrated by: John William Maddux

Stranded on a remote planet with no hope of escape.

Stuck in the unforgiving wilderness, where monsters hunt in the skies above.

No signal, no spacecraft, no translator.

Esania thought she and her people were escaping to the sanctuary planet of Torandor. Instead, she's ended up on a wild, uncharted nightmare called Khira, where the violet-skinned savages who guard them are just as poisonous as the deadly flora and fauna.

And the pale-winged demon who's just dropped from above might be the most dangerous of them all.

Contains mature themes.

©2018 Anna Carven (P)2024 Tantor

great

I enjoyed this book so much that hearing the audio book was a must. I enjoyed the performance and skill of the actor

Great dragon sci-fi

I enjoyed the story completely and really would like to see a story about the brother. Loved the whole development of the story. This is a must read for sure

Vampire dragons from space? Weirdness continues

“He was magnificent. Utterly godlike but horribly flawed.”
And I thought book 1 was hard to get my head around. If book 1 was alien romance battling Borgs on a demon ship, this one goes full-on Stargate on a primitive alien planet … if the life-sucking evil alien were instead a hunky dragon overlord. There were a lot of concepts dropped in with scant explanation (Esania is part human, part Priminian, which is some sort of slave owning group from Mars?), characters (including a big bad) who only popped up for a single chapter, and bundles of contradictions that I feel like are the hallmark of this series.

“So, you’ve gone and poked the dragon with a stick. What are you going to do now?”
While I would’ve liked the Stargate theme to have continued, this book lacked the energy, action, and larger cast of that movie and instead focused on Esania and Emeril, with barely more than cameos for the MCs and supporting characters from book 1.

“He was just about the sweetest, most protective, most desirable creature she’d ever known.”
Like book 1, this is an odd combo of 90% cerebral sci-fi (millennia old energy sucking beings on cosmic quests ala Marvel’s Ego the Planet) and 10% campy alien romance. Frankly, the chemistry in this was nonexistent and the measly naughty bits (at 8 and 11 hours) were again weirdly “the universe exploded” metaphysical and cringe.

Just like the first book, there were parts of this that I enjoyed. I don’t know, though. I feel like this author and I are growing further apart and her writing is getting farther from what I enjoy.