Title: Ascendancy
Author: Karri Thompson
Publisher/Year:  Entangled Publishing 11/30/15
Length:   248 Pages
Series:  Van Winkle Project #2

Overview

I’ve been lied to, deceived, and manipulated-again. You’d think I’d be treated with dignity and respect. I’m the one who’s supposed to save humanity, right? I’m the one with the power to re-populate this dying world. But the clones want to control me, force me to give birth over and over again. And my daughters will face the same fate-unless I change it.

My awakening into this future should have been a chance for a new life, but it just promises a living death. With Michael on my side, though, maybe I can save us. He’s the only person I can trust.

I hear rumors of others… A secret society is growing. Tension is building.

A rebellion is imminent.

My Thoughts

Where we ended book 1 was an intense place – knowing that Cassie and Michael were on the run w/ baby Victoria in the hopes of finding their twins that were taken and creating a version of the Van Winkle Project that they could all get behind.  Things do NOT seem to be going well for them as folks that they felt they could trust are proving otherwise and they have really no idea where they are going and what’s next.

This 2nd installment of the series takes us on quite a roller coaster.  They trusted the leader of one of the regions to lead them to a safe haven in Tasma, not only to be reunited with their twins but to jump start the VW project in a safe way to really help society thrive.  Of course things aren’t always what they seem though, and others who seemed to be on their side are not to be trusted, and what results is a lot of death, chaos and another fight for their lives.

We spend much of this story with Michael and Cassie, trying to find their way to safety, figuring out where their children really are, trying to find out who’s behind a secret society and what it’s truly about.  and of course, just trying to keep life growing since she’s really the only line of life with fertility as an option.

What i love about this series so far though is the way that the character dynamic continues to evolve and play out.  I still don’t know who to trust and our main characters are constantly faced with the question of whether someone’s for them or against them.  There’s the expected teen romantic angst, jealousy and what not, but knowing that Cassie was forced to grow up a lot faster once she was awakened – well she’s dealing with the future of humanity on her shoulders and it’s an interesting place to be.

The key word ‘newlywed’ is their savior most of the time, and it’s kept them alive so far.  At the tail end of this 2nd book, we are reunited with Travel (Victoria’s father) or the close that we ‘think’ is travel – so i think that’s going to be interesting to see if it’s him or not.  We also see that the evil president Harrington is back and perhaps behind everything – so we’ll have to see how that plays out.  We have VW2 in our sights, but no sense of where Victoria is or VW3, so that’s yet another complexity to it all.

I can’t wait to see where book 3 takes us.  Are we going back to the Regions, are we going to Tasma?  will Shen Lung be found?  and what’s the deal with the Society?  is their rebellion reality and what will it mean?  who’s truly behind it and how much information do they have and know?  On that note – Happy monday – and i’m searching out book 3 already!