Lonely Shore, book two in Burke and Jensen’s Chaos Station series of Sci-fi romances is a rip-your-heart-out-and-stomp-on-it kinda book in the best possible way. Picking up around a month after the events of Chaos Station, Lonely Shore is a more emotional, relationship-focused story, although there’s also a strong secondary plotline that keeps things moving.

Note: There are spoilers for the previous book in this review.

In book one, we learned that, during the war with the stin, Zander (Zed) Anatolius had signed up to take part in Project Dreamweaver, a secret, experimental programme run by the military with the aim of creating a group of super soldiers as a last ditch attempt to turn the tide of the war. But the alien toxin injected into his body has already begun to take its toll; Zed is Zoning (an altered state of being in which he’s super strong, super fast, super focused and can even phase shift through people and objects) more and more often, the headaches that affect him afterwards have become seriously debilitating, and he’s losing time, checking out for anywhere from minutes to hours with no memory afterwards of where he is or what he’s done. He knows he doesn’t have long left before his mind is destroyed completely, but he persists in trying to hide how bad things are, even though he knows he’s not fooling anyone.

Ship’s engineer Felix Ingesson is being torn apart watching the man he loves – and who has only just returned to his life after long years apart – deteriorating before his eyes. He’s angry and frustrated and grieving, totally helpless in the face of what’s happening and unable to do anything about it. He knows Zed is trying to protect him by not telling him how bad things are, and on one level, is grateful for that, because if Zed admits it then it’s real, it’s final… and Felix isn’t ready to say goodbye. But it’s impossible to ignore how fast Zed is losing himself to the poison making its way through his system – and how soon Felix is going to lose Zed all over again.

But life isn’t going to give the crew a grace period while they search for a way to help Zed. The Agrius drug cartel, who they’ve run afoul of through no fault of their own, is still hunting them, and things come to a head when the Chaos is fulfilling a contract to deliver cargo to Risus, a small, backwater colony, and the gang uncovers an Agrius plot to ambush and abduct them all. Zed’s programming takes over and he’s unable to prevent himself from Zoning when the cartel members try to stop them getting away. The Chaos crew escapes, but going into the Zone again has accelerated Zed’s mental decline and his mind and body are breaking down faster every day.

Nessa O’Brien, the ship’s doctor, has exhausted every avenue she can think of to help Zed when Qek moots the idea of going to Ashushk Prime to see if their scientists can do anything for him. The human race wasn’t the only one to have experimented with the stin’s ability to Zone and phase-shift; Qek’s research indicates that the ashushk had created a similar programme many years earlier, and that most of its subjects lived long and healthy (and sane) lives. But a visit to her homeworld doesn’t come without risk – they will all be welcome there, but Qek could become trapped and unable to continue the life of travel and discovery she has chosen to lead. Felix, Nessa and Elias are not going to ask Qek to do that for them and for Zed – but to the ashushk, friendship means being prepared to make the ultimate sacrifice. Going home is a risk Qek is prepared to take.

Lonely Shore had me choking back tears more than once. Having watched Zed and Felix reconnect so cautiously and work hard to find their way back to each other after nine years apart in the first book, the fact that they have had just a month together before facing the prospect of parting once again is truly heartbreaking. The authors do an absolutely outstanding job of articulating the devastating effects of Zed’s decline – the frustration, the physical and emotional pain and exhaustion – from both his and Felix’s perspective, and it packs a real punch.

And this story fully cements the Chaos crew as a family, a close-knit group who will do anything for one another. At the beginning of the series, it was clear that Elias, Nessa, Felix and Qex were all pretty tight, and Zed was the outsider they had to come to know and trust. By the beginning of Lonely Shore, Zed is fully one of the crew, and is as important to the others as he is to Felix, and the love and closeness they all share is a wonderful light in the darkness of what Zed and Felix are going through. We get to learn a little more about Felix’s time as a PoW (it’s clear he hasn’t properly dealt with the psycholocial trauma of those years), and about Zed’s relationship with his family, who clearly loves him to bits, but from whom he’s deliberately distanced himself since he volunteered for Dreamweaver, and I really enjoyed the visits to other planets – especially Ashie Prime – and learning a bit more about how this universe functions. I suspect there is more to come on that front given the continued involvement of the Guardians and their as yet unknown aims.

This newly reissued version of the book includes another short story, Reunion, from the Always and Forever collection, in which Felix and Zed meet for the first time since they graduated from the academy. It’s been four years and a lot has changed – they’re not the same people they were back then. Maybe there’s one thing that hasn’t changed… they just have to be brave enough to find out.

Lonely Shore is a terrific follow-up to Chaos Station and earns another well-deserved DIK rating. The writing is excellent, the pacing never flags, the characters are memorable, and the story is emotional and so very satisfying. I loved it and will be jumping into book three, Skip Trace, as soon as I possibly can.