Sky’s End is the first book in the Cassiel Winters series and takes you on a ride that includes, intergalactic warfare, good looking aliens, and a bit of mystery. Overall I found the story to be quite engaging and pretty action packed. Cassiel Winters is a cadet with the ESE (Earth Space Exploration) and needs to pass her H2H test in order to continue in her studies. She joined mostly because of her brother Daz. He is considered one of the best pilots ESE has and although he is supposedly on a secret mission, Cassiel is worried something has happened because he has stopped responding to her missives. Cassiel also has a little bit of a secret as she just happens to have an ability that she refers to as deja-vu. There is more going on here than Cassiel just trying to find her brother. When her test ends disastrously, ESE proposes a way for Cassiel to stay in ESE as well as potentially help figure out what is going on with Daz. Her mission is to infiltrate a Thell ‘eon ship and find out everything she can about a supposed weapon called a Sift. Also, Thell ‘eon’s are a race of aliens that just happen to be pretty intimidating for a number of reasons…including the fact that they just happened to kill the spies that were sent to their planet.At times I found myself cheering Cassiel on and there were other times where I was thoroughly annoyed with her. She is smart and loyal and really wants to protect the people who are important to her. This includes not only Daz but King and eventually, Or’ic. Does she always make the right choice? Definitely not but she has good intentions so I give her credit there. She struggles with who she is and what her role is in the whole scope of things. I don’t want to give anything away so I won’t get into the details but it is clear Cassiel has a very different future in the works than she was originally thinking. The Thell ‘eon horde is an interesting dynamic. Where things may make perfect sense to them, that isn’t always the case for someone not familiar. Additionally, we see them all making some adjustments to help Cassiel fit in. I had a bit of a love/hate relationship with these guys…mostly because of the way they treated Cassiel at times. I liked seeing the change in Or’ic just after the Candidacy and definitely appreciate what he did at the end of the book for Cassiel. I will be interested to see what happens next for the horde as well as between Cassiel and Or’ic considering how the rest of the story progressed.There were a few editing issues and to be honest I didn’t care for the trademarking and how much content was italicized or in parenthesis but overall it didn’t hurt the story. I just found them slightly annoying. I would have also liked to know more about why the races didn't get along - it felt like it was just assumed that because they were all different and they had their own agendas that they were all warring with each other. The end definitely opens up the story to address the many questions I have left and I will for sure check out the next book to see what happens. I’m curious to see what is next for Cassiel, King, Daz, and Or’ic as well as the Aeons and the Ires - this one didn’t end on a cliffhanger which always makes me happy. If you enjoy a story from the science fiction genre you may enjoy this book. At 400+ pages it may seem long but it moves quickly and is definitely an interesting take on Earth’s future with the alien world.
