Collision The Battle for Darracia by Michael Phillip Cash

The Darracia saga continues with all the key players spread out and searching for answers throughout the solar system.  Prince V-sair struggles to hold his fractured kingdom together without help fromhis family.  He stepbrother Zayden is on a vengeful hunt for his evil uncle Staf Nuen.  Tulani navigates her two worlds trying to bring them together.  Staf Nuen, the orchestrator of the original coup, is making unholy alliances with nefarious new allies.  Like the comet zipping across the horizon, all the different factions are heading a collision course that will test both their faith and power.(taken from the back of the book)

Collision picks up right where Schism left off.  As you can read above, everyone is scattered and looking for answers to pull everything back together.  However, the first half of this book is mostly character study.  Each character is picked apart and we can see not only what they're up to, but what's going through their brain.  Cash has a knack for setting up neat little pins in the first half of the book.  The second half of the book is knocking them down swiftly and violently so that they go flying across your mind.

Though I enjoyed the first book, I think I enjoyed this one even more.  You must read Schism before picking this up or you'll be completely lost.  There are so many characters that have so many different stations.  Not only that, this is fantasy.  We have different races with different backgrounds.  In order to understand the political ramifications going on in Collision, you need to know some of the key information from the first book.

Now, the reason I enjoyed this one more, is that it seems to delve deeper into the world and its inhabitants.  We were able to see a little behind the facade of each character and race before, but now we really get to delve into them.  Not only that, our world expands even further.  Cash has done a magnificent job of creating Darracia and the universe surrounding it.  Collision really hammers home what a real place it is.  I'm thankful, however, that I don't live there!  Too much political unrest for me!

You'll find compelling and strong characters in this series.  Strangely enough, I don't like the hero but I find I've grown rather fond of the villain.