The second volume of Hines’ Janitors of the Post-Apocalypse series is just as fun and engaging as the first. Mops and her motley crew have been on the run from the Alliance aboard the Pufferfish for four months when their contact in Command sends them to a mysterious rendezvous who, in turn, provides information that leads them back to the one place they don’t want to go: Earth.
What they find on Earth isn’t really going to be a surprise to anyone with any experience in the genre (heck, or even in storytelling as a whole). Well, the first thing they find, at least; the second is more of a surprise. Wolf gets some decent characterisation here, as a secondary PoV character, and learns that war isn’t as much fun as she thought. Especially when others are looking to her for leadership in Mops’ absence.
It’s all change by the end of the book, and I really have no idea where Hines is going to go from here. He seems to have set up a bit of a Kobayashi Maru for himself in the war between the Alliance and the Prodryans. I look forward to seeing where he takes Mops and her crew and how their actions change the balance of power in the galaxy.
