Where Peace Is Lost

A Novel

By: Valerie Valdes

Narrated by: Rebecca Mozo

A brand-new space fantasy novel from master world-builder Valerie Valdes! A refugee with a secret, a dangerous foe, and a road trip that could either save a planet or start a war.

Where peace is lost, may we find it.

Five years ago, Kelana Gardavros lost everything in the war against the Pale empire. Now Kel Garda is just another refugee living on the edge of an isolated star system. No one knows she was once a member of an Order whose military arm was disbanded and scattered across the galaxy. And no one knows that if her enemies found her, they might destroy the entire world to get rid of her.

Where peace is broken, may we mend it.

Kel’s past intrudes in the form of a long-dormant Pale war machine, suddenly reactivated. If the massive automaton isn’t stopped, at best it will carve a swath of devastation that displaces thousands of people. At worst, it will kill every sentient creature on the planet.

Where we go, may peace follow.

When two strangers offer to deactivate the machine for a price, Kel and a young friend agree to serve as their guides. The journey through swamps infested with predators and bandits is bad enough, but can they survive more nefarious dangers along the way? And will Kel’s fear of revealing her secrets doom the very people she’s trying to protect?

Where we fall, may peace rise.

©2023 Valerie Valdes (P)2023 HarperCollins Publishers

Great character development and easy to follow

Entertaining and engaging. Kept my interest. A little short in length, which keeps people wanting more.

perfect!

Can anything be better? I don't think so ... this book is perfect! The story is interesting. The characters are interesting. I love everything about it.

A very good story and an Amazing performance

I loved how each voice was so unique. You could tell exactly who was speaking so well it was like having an ensemble cast! This is a very cool universe with characters I hope to see more of.

An OK beach book, I suppose

Meh. The world building was pretty good, and I admit I want to know what happens next. The plot has enough inventiveness to keep it from being a retread, even if the arc is obvious.

However, the writing is tortured and juvenile. There isn’t any coherence to the naming of people, places, or things. The personal journey seems a lot like freshman year in college, both in content and prose. And the narrator butchers the pronunciation of simple words, like cache and gunwales. The editor obviously missed it to

As curious as I am about the story, it was so hard to get through this one that I won’t be reading the next.

Lots and lots of ruminating on war

This was lighter on action, humor, and alien life/planets than I hoped. Instead, its focus was on four humans uniting to defend a community. Three of the four have secret histories grounded in warfare. There’s a lot of inner thoughts, and outer talking, on dirty deeds committed for or against The Pale …
and this, by far, got the most screen time.

There’s uneasy alliances, redshirt death, and danger flirting that leads to fade to black romance. It was all at the YA cozy level. There’s one main character, Luna, who goes by ‘they’ and an occasional reference to preferred pronouns and gender identified by clothing colors. It never got too preachy and worked fairly seamlessly with the story.

As much as I enjoy a good cozy mystery, however, I like my military sci-fi more gritty. Or snarky, I could also go for snarky Firefly crews and heist capers. This had only a few snarky crumbs. There were a few crumbs about the single planet used as the setting, including a few crumbs about the society, vegetation, and alien animal life. And, there’s a bit more heft to the super-soldier pasts and talk of armor with wings. But nothing painted a sci-fi picture that captured my fascination. I’m still not sure if Kel was some sort of religious symbol, or just a really high level space knight.

I wanted The Demolisher to be scarier, like a giant robotic kaiju. I wanted a cool alien humanoid on the team. I craved an antagonist with menace, but only got Lazaran, a low rent thug in The Pale, working an extortion racket. I don’t regret the listen, but it was on the underwhelming end.

Might I get a second book? Perhaps if it too is offered on sale.
More likely, I see there’s a new Firefly out later this year, and that’s more my style.

Slow and steady -- no edge of the seat

And I liked it like that. The narrator's voice was fabulous, but between the author using favorite words again and again, and the narrator mispronouncing words, I kept getting pulled out of the story. And along about chapter 21, it was pretty much the same stuff for a while. All this aside, it was a good story and I listened to it pretty much straight through. And I might listen to another one of hers, with the same narrator, if I get a chance. My guess is this will be a series, which, IMHO, would be a mistake. Again, if you want edge of your seat or non-stop blood and guts, this isn't the book for you, as always, YMMV.

Good world building

They were interesting characters that I wanted to know more about. The narrator mispronounced a couple of words, which is annoying, but not enough to really distract from the book. We don’t find out the backstory of one of the main characters which leads me to believe this may be a series. I would probably buy the next book.

Excellent story well told.

This audio book is a gem. Super well performed it elevates the book to great heights. I loved this book and how it was read.

A fun adventure

Good story, interesting characters, and a sense of hope that i miss. An enjoyable intro to a new series, I hope.

Relatable Characters

It did take a bit for me to fully engage in this story, but it was certainly interesting enough for me to keep reading, and then I was hooked. It felt like I was adventuring right along with the characters. I’m hoping for a sequel.