Caro Ogunyemi, the often-overlooked engineer on the spaceship Calamity, knows that any job offered by her former captain is bound to be bad news. But when he asks her to find Victor and Victory, missing twin mercenaries whom she’s come to see as friends, Caro can’t say no. Especially after she learns that their mission involved infiltrating the very project she tried to sabotage years before: brain-implant chips that strip people of their autonomy and personality to create sleeper super soldiers. If Caro can break into a prison, extract Levi, an improbably handsome and incredibly dangerous test subject, and save the twins, she just might be able to forgive herself and feel like she deserves her place aboard Calamity.
Chaos, the third book in Constance Fay’s Uncharted Hearts series, is part romance, part Shawshank Redemption. Caro narrates her tale with self-effacing humor and sarcasm that belie her own deep insecurities. Plagued by questions of her own inadequacy—as a lover, as a member of her crew and as a reformed almost-evil scientist—she repeatedly puts herself in danger that threatens to sabotage any chance of finding happiness. Her path to redemption is also her path to love. While the meet-cute is anything but ordinary (he’s a mindless shell, she’s pretending to be an evil scientist), Levi and Caro’s story is one of redemption. They force each other to see themselves as others see them: Caro is a brilliant engineer who has more than made up for her missteps, and Levi’s humanity isn’t determined by what others have done to him.
Fans of the found family that was built aboard Calamity in Fay’s previous books may be a little disappointed that the rest of the crew have relatively little screen time. However, all signs within Chaos point to an explosive conclusion yet to come for the crew of Calamity and fans of Fay’s series.
