Caszandra by Andrea K Höst

Caszandra is the final volume in Andrea K Höst's Touchstone trilogy. This review contains minor spoilers for the previous books (mostly just the relationship kind). If you haven't yet, I suggest reading my reviews for the earlier books — Stray and Lab Rat One — before reading the rest of this review (and ideally, reading the first two books themselves too). The series is about Cass, a Sydney girl, who accidentally falls through a tear in reality onto another planet, meets psychic space ninjas, and discovers that she has some powers of her own.

Caszandra picks up where Lab Rat One left off. Which is good because there was a bit of a relationshippy cliffhanger at the end of the previous book. Cass's relationship with Ruuel (now called Kaoren, his first name) progresses quite quickly in terms of seriousness, which made me a bit wary at first, but which turned out for the best in terms of story telling, I've decided. Another related aspect, which I don't want to be explicit about because spoilers, also made me a little uncomfortable, but ultimately I think that was more due to my own dissimilarity to Cass as a person than anything else.

Caszandra continues the overarching plot well established in the earlier books: learning about Cass's power, fighting monsters and trying to learn about Muina's past. Muina being the planet Cass was first transported to and which had remained inaccessible to the alien people for a thousand years until she came along. This book ups the danger levels and the stakes. The Setari (psychic space ninjas) and Cass were always trying to protect people but in the lead up to the conclusion, the urgency for definitive world-saving becomes extreme. And, unsurprisingly, Cass continues to almost die in new and exciting ways.

The climax might have lost a smidge of tension due to the diary nature of the narrative — we knew Cass survived because she told us about it all being over before regaling us with the tale. However it was still all very dramatic and didn't loose any world-saving oomph. The end was satisfying in tying everything up nicely and I think other fans of the series will approve. (And for readers that want more, there's always the Gratuitous Epilogue, which I admit to skimming and reading the last chapter of.)

I don't recommend reading Caszandra without reading Stray and Lab Rat One fist. However, I can't imagine why readers who enjoyed the first two wouldn't go on to the final volume. I enjoyed this series a lot and I will definitely be reading more of Höst's books in the future.

4.5 / 5 stars

First published: 2011, self-published
Series: Touchstone, book 3 of three
Format read: ebook on my iThings
Source: Purchased from Smashwords
Challenges: Australian Women Writers Challenge, Australian Science Fiction Reading Challenge