Charlie Windar and Nona Hall are back in Brenda Cooper's Spear of Light, the sequel to last year's Edge of Dark. Charlie, a conservationist ranger, and Nona, who hails from space station Diamond Deep, must protect the last human-owned "wild" planet, Lym, from the brewing battle between humans and the menacing machine-based life forms known as the Next.
The anti-Next terrorists, the Shining Revolution, are recklessly committed to destroying the Next wherever they are. Nayli and Vadim, lovers and co-leaders of the violent group, plan to attack the Next presence on Lym with a group of planet-based co-conspirators.
Nona returns to Lym as an ambassador from the space-faring humans of her station, while Charlie must negotiate the distrust of the people on Lym, who blame him for the Next taking up residence on their planet, rather than the machines' superior technology and utter focus on their mysterious goals.
Meanwhile, Yi, one of the Next created from a human being (called a soulbot), feels an allegiance to his former species. In search of the Next's origins, he leads a team of both machines and humans into long-forgotten caves and facilities far beneath the surface of Lym. There they find some answers, but mostly more questions.
Spear of Light continues the story of Lym and the Next, revealing (and teasing) just enough to keep readers engaged in plot, characters and larger themes of what it means to be a person, regardless of the path of creation. --Rob LeFebvre, freelance writer and editor