Crisis at Validor

Ptorix Empire #4

by Greta van der Rol

Newly-promoted Captain Brett Butcher is about to achieve his life-long ambition to command a battle cruiser. But before he takes up his new posting, he goes home on leave, hoping to perhaps catch a glimpse of his first love, the unattainable Lady Tarlyn.

When the queen is assassinated in a terrorist attack, Tarlyn’s life is thrown into turmoil when she, too, becomes a target. The last person she expects to rescue her is her childhood sweetheart, Brett Butcher.

As Validor’s Ptorix and human populations face off over a group of islands neither owns, the calls for war grow louder. Torn between love, duty and ambition, Butcher and Tarlyn struggle to prevent an inter-species conflict, while the ember of love that has smouldered for so long bursts into flame. But with planetary peace at stake, both will be forced to choose: love or duty.

Genres: Science Fiction Romance

200 pages, Paperback

First published January 14, 2015

About the author

Greta van der Rol loves writing science fiction with a large dollop of good old, healthy romance. She lives not far from the coast in Queensland, Australia and enjoys photography and cooking when she isn't bent over the computer. She has a degree in history and a background in building information systems, both of which go a long way toward helping her in her writing endeavours.

Reviews

[Cheesecake · Rating 2 out of 5]

Meh
It was predictable except when Tarlyn the h, did tstl stuff. Then it was annoying.
GVDR has been a fave author of mine for a while, but this isn't one of her best. It has all the components (intrigue, action, good pacing), but it just fell flat anyways.

Brett returns to his home world before he returns to the fleet as a newly minted Captain.
But everything goes sideways from the get go when a terrorist attack kills the queen and her sister. Brett manages to save the queen's cousin, his lover from school days, from being abducted.

From that point on they are on the run, to save Tarlyn's daughter and then to help save a young Ptorix who is also in danger.

The bad guys were pretty cookie-cutter and the intrigue was obvious and not very intriguing.
The romance was not satisfying either. They were lovers in their youth, but came from different sides of the track so Brett left to join the fleet and Tarlyn stayed to do her familial duty.
Now they are instantly in lust/love again like no time has passed. Very little discussion of their past spouses. Especially hers. There's no hard feelings about their parting in the past. It's instantly all water under the bridge.
Tarlyn was one of those women who needs to be rescued and then does stupid things. She wasn't totally useless, but she wasn't that smart either. Hence her needing to be rescued over and over.
Brett comes across more like a boy scout than a fleet captain.
I did love the world building. That was as exceptional as usual. I especially loved the 'dragon' characters.

Safety is good.
Tarlyn married the man her family told her to marry. There's really no info given about him except that her daughter loved her father very much and he died a few years ago. I didn't get the feeling that Tarlyn had any feelings for him.
Brett says he married his wife because they feel into deep lust for eachother. Not really what I want to hear, but OK. If he can lust after his wife (whom he is recently divorced from) then I would have liked Tarlyn's marriage to have been more passionate too. Brett has a daughter as well but she lives with her mother and her mother's new husband.
One of the bad guys (a total baffoon) keeps trying to get into Tarlyn's pants. He just gives everyone the creeps though.

[Mei · Rating 5 out of 5]

I love how Ms. Van Der Rol writes!
Her books are for me like chocolate! :)

They're all very similar to one another, but I love them all the same. Usually I don't like when the series becomes repetitive, but here I don't have this problem.

What I particularely enjoyed is that the Ptorix are included and that they're not the bad guys! I loved it!

Here we don't have any doubt about who are the good and who are the bad guys: it's clear from the start!

I'm looking forward to reading another book in the Ptorix series!

[Laz the Sailor · Rating 4 out of 5]

Accidental re-read. I forgot to write a review the first time, and then decided to keep reading even though I realized that I'd done it before.

This is an exciting off-shoot of the Iron Admiral series. Some good political intrigue, with slightly cardboard villains. Very exciting action scenes. Throw in a cute kid and a few dragons of various sizes, and you've got a fun story.

There is one sex scene which seems to be tossed in to click a genre box - I would have left it as fade-to-black as there wasn't enough sexual tension to support it. However, they were deeply in love so the lust felt natural.

The ending was a bit rushed, with the resolve glossed over, but everything ended well. I'll keep track of this series.

[Babydoclaz · Rating 4 out of 5]

Awesome adventure, some intrigue and romance and a really fun read!

[Marta Cox · Rating 4 out of 5]

I confess that this is a new author to me and I've had a yen to read her books for quite some time now. This author is renowned for her space opera type stories with more than just a touch of romance. Crisis at Validor works very well as a standalone book but it's clearly a world that the author has visited before with it's mixture of humans and unusual aliens of which the Ptorix are just one of the several encountered in this story. Inter species tensions abound clearly but it's the underhand politics that dominate this storyline and with so much deception and underhand wrong doings going on it's a wonder that there's any time for romance at all but the author refuses to overlook the obvious!
Ok what did I think? I liked all the complicated sci fi with it's dazzling technology and the descriptions of the aliens are so evocative and if honest I thought the tentacles were just a bit yucky! We have a brave hero in Brett who arrives just in time to save the girl ( now that's what a hero should do!) but the heroine Tarlyn seemed to be blinkered! I'm sorry but some things are just too obvious and hello family being murdered here so maybe show a bit more emotion! Sorry rant over and really it's not an awful book it's just that I think I expected more from the heroine .
This author is without doubt talented and very good at what she does and I'm sure her fans will be over the moon to read this addition to her library. Great world building with cultural tensions and political agendas causing so much trouble. It's sad but true that greed seems to always rear it's ugly head but at least in this story the good guys come out on top. I will read more from the author and if you enjoy a bit of classic space opera ( think Star Trek) then why not give it a go. As I write this the first in the series The Iron Admiral is free!
I was gifted a copy if this in exchange for an honest review

[Jo · Rating 5 out of 5]

I read the first book in the Iron Admiral series and really liked it but for some reason never continued the seres. Crisis at Validor is a spin off from that series. It has great world building and backstory. I did not ever feel lost as the story progressed. While it is book #4 it does a very good job of standing alone. I loved the main characters and the side ones were also great. One of the aliens was a big surprise and I wonder if we will see her again.

[Ruth Turner · Rating 5 out of 5]

Political Upheaval SF

I greatly enjoyed this novel. Captain Butcher and Lady Tarlyn are enjoyable to read. They are similar yet different from each other. Plus there are space aliens, conspiracies, and villains galore. I highly recommend this book.

[Amanda LaBrooy · Rating 5 out of 5]

Excellent! Highly recommended if you like space opera with action and adventure.

[Justine Manzano · Rating 3 out of 5]

I'm usually not that big science fiction in books. I enjoy it much more in television. Still, this book wasn't bad for the space opera genre. The dispute felt real, and the politics of the world were easily understood and well built. I liked that the enemy race wasn't humanoid, and I enjoyed the fact that I could jump in on the fourth book in the story and not get lost. The lead characters, Tarlyn and Butcher, were interesting enough, and I was genuinely concerned about the outcome of their stories.

The downside of this book was that the story didn't grab me the way a story should. I found myself putting the book down and not really feeling too compelled to read. There was a lot of telling in this book, and it wouldn't let me connect to the characters the way I really wanted to. Another issue I had was the way Tarlyn was just sort of shuttled around and told what to do, and just never really took any initiative. That alone wouldn't have bugged me. She was raised as a woman of the court, never having to be an individual. But coupled with the fact that every man either viewed women as little more than attractive, or continuously referred to the annoyingness of women, the inability to understand women, and how they couldn't trust women, it started to feel like the characters were pretty misogynistic. It took away from my read of the story.

All in all, this wasn't a bad read, but it didn't keep me at the edge of my seat.

[Carolyn F.]

Part of anthology The Ptorix Empire Omnibus