Review: consistent with past stories
Rating: 4 out of 5
Date: 03 1, 2013
Do you know the rule, "you have to kiss a lot of frogs before you find your prince"? Lately I've been thinking that the rule applies to buying self-published e-books too; I feel like I've recently been kissing a lot of e-book frogs. So you can imagine my relief and satisfaction when I found that Buroker's Decrypted is a prince. If you've enjoyed any of her other stories, you'll find this to be of pretty much of the same caliber. I confidently recommend it.This book is about Rias and Tikaya. Rias was formerly an admiral of the Turgonian Empire who was considered a hero and a brilliant naval strategist. Although he still quietly has many "fans" back home in Turgonia and certainly has a fearsome reputation among his enemies, he has been disgraced and stripped of his family name and honours by the emperor after the Turgonian Empire lost the recent war. Turgonia lost the war because Tikaya, an academic philologist of the Kyattese Islands nation, decoded Rias's encrypted wartime messages and helped Rias's enemy to defeat Turgonia's navy. That all occurred before Tikaya and Rias first met.In Lindsay Buroker's first novel in this set, Encrypted, Tikaya and Rias met for the first time. They fought side-by-side to overcome their captors, protected each other while they adventured through hostile environments and pooled their expertise to solve puzzles and mysteries. In this novel, Decrypted, Tikaya has brought Rias home to the Kyatt Islands to meet her family. This time they have to struggle against the Kyattese authority's and Tikaya's family's prejudices against Rias (and prejudice against Turgonians in general). Tikaya delves into her family's attic and mines the Polytechnic library's archives to research a mysterious Turgonian legend. Rias uses his talent for innovative engineering to weave a way through social obstacles and overcome technological limitations to pursue their dream of searching for legendary colonies and ancient shipwrecks.Decrypted's adventure does not cover as much ground as Encrypted. Neither the characters' relationship development nor the central conflict of the story is as large as the preceding novel. Nonetheless, I was impressed that I did feel like I was in a different country, surrounded by a different culture. Despite that difference, the story flowed consistently and logically from the last novel and it was fun and unpredictable.  I am a hard marker: I reserve my 5 stars ratings for books that rock my world a bit (or a lot).  I don't think this story is as much fun as Encrypted but I still really liked it a lot. Getting a 4 star from me is not a luke-warm recommendation.