I very much enjoyed the first book in this series so when I was offered a review copy of Counterpart, I jumped at it. Though the beginning is confusing, it is deliberately so, and doesn’t keep you hanging too long after it introduces a host of problems to plague Rhona and Camus.

Again, we have a very personal story wrapped around an epic battle between the remnants of humanity and the misguided machines. It’s not the same story as the first book, though they share central themes, but rather a continuation of the last, desperate attempt to reclaim the Earth for humanity.

Nor does simplicity hold the ground.

Humans have not flipped a switch in human nature to become perfect with such an enemy to fight. Rhona is attempting to convince everyone that united we stand and divided we fall but has mixed results because people don’t want to give up power and each want their agendas addressed first.

Neither is Rhona a paragon of virtue. She makes mistakes, some of which are the kind that made me want to shake some sense into her, but at the same time, I can follow her logic and understand why she says what she does. Not only that, but the consequences and resolutions to her mistakes are both viable and satisfying.

The single first person point of view is a little hard to take when I want to know what’s happening to the other characters I care about, but at the same time, it offers some tension that otherwise the reader wouldn’t feel. Especially with how the book begins, there are some serious crises dangled in front of the reader with questions raised that I was eager to learn the answers for.

Counterpart is another good story with a powerful mix of life and death action, and filled with strong characters I wanted to succeed even when the political and social tangles, not to mention the machine attacks, threatened to destroy them. I continue to enjoy the interpersonal conflicts as Rhona attempts to build her coalition through a variety of tactics, and not all of them diplomatic.

I will give the warning that the book ends on a cliffhanger, but not until after the main threads have resolved in wonderful ways. It left me both satisfied and wishing the third book was already out.

One final note: I really appreciated the development of Samuel’s character, as well as Rhona’s continued struggles with her purpose and her rights as a person to lay claim to her own existence. The series does not ignore either the small moments that make a person or the big questions raised by some of the less orthodox solutions offered.

P.S. As I mentioned above, I received this book from the publisher through NetGalley in return for an honest review.