Jenn Burke and Kelly Jensen’s five-book Chaos Station sci-fi romance series was originally published between 2015 and 2016. The series has been on my TBR ever since Maria Rose gave book one a DIK review back in 2015, and as the authors have now republished the series with some spiffy new covers and new material added, I decided it was time to bump the books up to the top of the TBR and get reading. And now I’m kicking myself for having left it so long, because Chaos Station is a fantastic read – a superb series opener with excellent worldbuilding and characterisation, a fast-moving, intriguing plot, and an angsty, deeply emotional, second-chance romance between two men who more or less grew up together and were separated when they went away to war. It’s a same-couple series in which the relationship arc spans all five novels, and although the principal plotline in this book is resolved, it’s clear there are more questions to be answered in future instalments.

Elias Idowu, captain and part-owner of the Chaos, a small cargo ship, is meeting with a prospective client who is looking for passage to Chloris Station and then for help in tracking down someone when they get there. Suspicious, Elias insists on knowing the identity of his quarry; when the man confesses he’s looking for Emma Katze, a former soldier who is wanted for the murder of an entire security squad, Elias is ready to walk. Then the man – who gives his name as ‘Loop’ – offers him a small fortune for the trip, and Elias is unable to look such a gift horse in the mouth. He takes the job and returns to the ship with his new client – who freezes at the sight of Elias’ business partner, Felix Ingesson, insisting that Felix is dead and that whoever this man is must be an imposter. Seemingly out of control, Loop lunges for Felix, but Elias knocks him out before he can do any damage. While the man is out cold, Felix quietly tries to process his feelings at the sudden reapearance in his life of Zander – aka Zed – Anatolius, military hero, son of one of the wealthiest families in the galaxy, and the best friend and – briefly – lover Felix hasn’t seen for over eight years.

When the dust settles and Zander and Felix are finally able to talk, they’re wary and mistrustful, circling round each other like wounded animals. They’ve been through hell and have come out the other side irrevocably changed, and neither is ready to trust or lower their defences. After receiving the news, five years earlier, that Felix had been killed in action, a devastated Zander forced aside his grief and heartbreak, threw himself into the fighting, and signed up for a secret experimental program that necessitated cutting off everyone and everything in his life. He made huge sacrifices in terms of his relationships and his personal well-being in order to help win the war, but now it’s over, he and the others like him have been cut loose by the military, who seems to expect them to just disappear and die quietly. Zander is drifting aimlessly, trying to find ways to dull the pain of the emptiness inside him while he waits for insanity to claim him.

Felix is the kind of guy who loves to make and fix stuff (hence his nickname, ‘Fixer’), and he served as an engineer during the war. Captured and tortured by the enemy, he emerged from his time as a prisoner of war with scars both inside and out, a permanently damaged hand, and PTSD. Discharged from the AEF (Allied Earth Forces) four years before, all he wants now is a quiet life aboard the Chaos with his chosen family, and Zander’s reappearance threatens the equanimity he’s managed to claw back for himself.

Both men are damaged and hurting, but they can’t forget what they’d once been to each other or ignore the sense of not being alone any more that accompanies the reality of the other’s presence. The authors do a great job of slowly revealing some of their backstory and of showing that, even though they’ve both tried hard to bury their feelings for each other, their deeply intense connection has never gone away. They don’t have a lot of time to step back and work out where they stand with each other, but as the story progresses and their reconnection solidifies, it becomes clear that they at least want to try to make things work between them, even though neither of them is in a position to make any concrete promises.

Chaos Station is set in a distant future in which the human race has only recently emerged from a terrible war with an alien race called the stin, a war which ended due to the intervention of an even more powerful entity known as the Guardians. Even though the galaxy is slowly rebuilding, a strong sense of unease permeates the story; the war may be over, but the Guardians’ purpose is unknown and the stin – a race that thrives on conflict – are still a threat. The story is a terrific blend of romance, action, and adventure that gives equal focus to the plot and the love story as the crew of the Chaos find themselves facing off against a powerful drug cartel while planning a rescue mission.

The secondary cast is small but well-drawn. Elias is like a big brother to Felix and his priority is the safety and well-being of his small crew; we get a few chapters/sections from his PoV throughout the story, which adds necessary perspective. Nessa, his love interest, is no nonsense and fiercely protective, and the crew is completed by blue-skinned Qek, one of the ashushk, a technologically advanced race that also suffered greatly at the hands of the stin. The ashushk are genderless, but Qek chooses to identify as female in order to live more easily among humans, and she’s the ship’s pilot. I really liked her friendship with Felix; friendship among the ashushk is deeply felt and very important to them, so for her to offer it to a human is something special.

These new reissues of the Chaos Station books include the short stories that were originally published in the collection Always and Forever. Each of the five books now includes one of these stories and here, it’s Graduation, which follows younger Zander and Felix on the night of their graduation from the academy as they wrestle with their looming separation – and with how to tell their best friend how you really feel about them.

With great worldbuilding, a tense, exciting storyline, complex, engaging characters and a sexy and emotionally satisfying second-chance romance, Chaos Station gets a well-deserved DIK from me as well. I’m hooked – I can’t wait to jump into book two, Lonely Shore, and then to inhale the rest of the series!