Plot:
When eighteen-year-old teleporter Ember Pierce wakes up in a Los Angeles hospital, she remembers only the basics: she’s been trained by the government as a spy, she’s sent on dangerous missions, and her last assignment—the one that landed her in the hospital—was a setup.
Caden Hawthorne has spent the past ten months of his life grieving Ember’s death. So when she shows up in his room like an apparition, he can’t believe his eyes. But this Ember is different. Her hair is longer, her skin is paler, her gaze is haunted. She tells him what he’s already begun to suspect: someone he trusted betrayed her.
Now, uncertain who is friend and who is foe, Ember and Caden face the toughest mission of their lives—to stay together and survive, as they run from danger toward an unknown future.
Review:
The Decaying Empire is the sequel to The Vanishing Girl (you can read my review of that here), and it was everything that I was hoping it would be after I loved the first book so much.
After being set up and seriously injured at the end of the first book, Ember Pierce thought she was a dead woman. Teleporters can’t just poof back to their original location unharmed after being injured on a mission—teleporting with a bad wound usually leads to a teleporter being spliced, or torn apart, while trying to get back. Most can’t survive being spliced, but amazingly Ember does. When she wakes up 10 months after her accident, she is keen on seeking revenge against the program that has taken her life and decided to put it in danger.
Ember, along with her pair Caden, wants to escape the facility that has them “imprisoned”, and along with the help of some outsiders, expose the program that has taken their lives and put them in death’s way on a daily basis. But once the program gets wind of this, they ship Ember and Caden off to their other facility—where they send teleporter couples that want to start a family.
The duo decide to go through with their plans to escape and expose the program, but not without many complications along the way, which tests the strength of their relationship.
This book is written in a way that flows well and at a fast pace, which really allowed me to speed through it as I was reading. I love reading books that don’t feel like a chore to get through, and The Decaying Empire definitely qualifies.
Overall, I give this book 5/5 stars.