Review: The Star Dwellers by David Estes

Posted July 21, 2014 by Lillian in Reviews / 0 Comments

Review: The Star Dwellers by David EstesThe Star Dwellers by David Estes
Series: Dwellers Saga #2
Published by Self Publish on September 30, 2012
Length: 368 pages
Reviewing eBook from Amazon
Rating:

After rescuing her father and younger sister, Adele is forced to leave her family and Tristan behind to find her mother in the cruel and dangerous realm of the star dwellers.

Amidst blossoming feelings for Adele, Tristan must cast his feelings aside and let her find her own way amongst the star dwellers, while he accompanies Adele's father to meet with the leaders of the moon dwellers and decide the fate of the Tri-Realms.

Will Adele be able to rescue her mother and make it back to the Moon Realm before the President and the sun dweller soldiers destroy her family?

Can Tristan convince the moon dweller puppets of the error of their ways?

Was Adele's lost kiss with Tristan her one and only chance at love?

In her world there's only one rule: Someone must die.

OMG!!! Where to even start?!?! I absolutely loved this sequel. ***SPOILER NOTICE*** If you have not read book one The Moon Dwellers you should do so before reading this review!

The Star Dwellers by David Estes picks up right where book one left off. Adele and Tawni are traveling via the tunnels to the Star Realm to find Adele’s mother. Tristan, Roc, Elsey and Ben (Adele’s father) are heading to the Resistance headquarters to try and unite the Moon and Star Realms. Both tasks seem impossible at first, but with guidance and love from their friends Tristan and Adele find their way to their goals.

So I love these characters! Adele is an independent young woman with a fighter’s spirit. In book one she fought to reunite her family and succeeded in finding her little sister Elsey and her father Ben Rose. Now in this sequel she is on a quest to find her mom in the Star Realm. Nothing can stop her — the Sun Dweller armies, a case of the Bat Flu, or the annoying soldiers from the Star Realm. She’s a girl on a mission and she doesn’t stop for anything!!! There’s wonderful character growth for her as the author allows her to explore her feelings about Cole’s death and her killing Rivet in a fit of rage. She’s slightly broken, but comes through stronger.

Then there’s Tristan, the sigh-worthy male lead, the rebellious son of the President, and his mission to unite the realms against his father. Tristan does the most growing in this book I believe. In book one, I saw Tristan as an equivalent to Prince William, other than the fact he doesn’t want to be in this role. He’s charismatic, has a depreciating humor, and is a bit stalkery with his obsession with Adele. However I personally found his infatuation adorable! But back to his character in this sequel. As I already mentioned, Tristan’s character has the most growth this book. His actions in book one were centered towards his own wants and needs. In other words, he had a “me-first” attitude. In this story, Ben begins subtly showing Tristan his attitude, which disgusts Tristan making him all the more endearing. His relationship with Roc is affected in a way that will forever alter their friendship, partially because of Tristan’s new outlook (“you-first”) and because of something revealed later in the plot (sorry no spoilers 😉 ).

And of course who can forget Tawni and Roc or Elsey?! Tawni remains the faithful friend, the voice of reason to Adele’s quick temper, and sweet young woman you first met in book one. However she does have some new scars, especially from the loss of her best friend Cole. Roc is still the funny man of the group with his quick comebacks and easy temper. However he also faces some major heartache this book that effects not just him but Tristan as well. And Elsey, this beautiful little girl with her sweet, mild mannered temper and penchant for fairy tales is a wonderful character who brings an innocence to the the group that would be lacking otherwise.

And finally there are a few new characters that I love. Ram is a resistance fighter and takes a disliking (to put it mildly) to Tristan and Roc. He’s fiercely loyal to the cause and to Ben. Trevor is also a resistance fighter in the Star Realm and Adele doesn’t see things quite eye to eye with him. They are antagonist to each other, making for some tense and often funny scenes.

The plot moves quickly between the alternating POVs of Tristan and Adele and the suspense/action. Most of the book is two separate plots: Tristan trying to bring the realms to a peace agreement and Adele trying to find her mom. But the author brings these two plots crashing together in a way that I didn’t see coming. Also as the synopsis says “In her world there’s only one rule: Someone must die.” Well the author is true to that statement. Have a box of tissues handy! I needed them 😥

I loved this installment (if you can’t tell from my gushing over the characters 😉 ) so much that I’ve bought the rest of the series, including the sister series, and can’t wait to start them! Overall if you enjoyed book one of the series, you will love this one too! If you’ve not read book one yet, I highly suggest you do that first. The author does a mild recap of the important events but not enough to get the full effect and I believe you would be lost trying to read this one. If you like action and suspense, young adult dystopians with a little romance, then I highly recommend you check out this series! It won’t disappoint you.

About David Estes

David Estes was born in El Paso, Texas but moved to Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania when he was very young. David grew up in Pittsburgh and then went to Penn State for college. Eventually he moved to Sydney, Australia where he met his wife. They now live together in their dream location, Hawaii. A reader all his life, he began writing novels for the children's and YA markets in 2010, and started writing full time in June 2012. Now he travels the world writing with his wife, Adele. David's a writer with OCD, a love of dancing and singing (but only when no one is looking or listening), a mad-skilled ping-pong player, and prefers writing at the swimming pool to writing at a table.

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