Breath and Starshine by Kami King Larsen is a book set in a far post-apocalyptic world where a much reduced population mostly struggles to get by. Holding society together are a series of settlements which seemed to be held together by the Medicus Corpus - a quasi-government which the reader is not sure is a benevolent association or medical dictatorship.

Aurelia is a medical practitioner assigned to a hub settlement out in the desert. For all the stripping away of many modern conveniences - reliable electricity and easy travel, for starters - there's still a fair amount of technological advancement in the medical field. However, Aurelia struggles with the ethics of using a gift of healing outside what is proscribed by the Medicus Corpus.

Add to this that in their settlement, strange attacks targeting young women are starting to happen, most of which are fatal, and have all the marks of suffocation - in the middle of the desert. Despite precautions, Aurelia seems to be the perfect target for the next attack...

I liked this book quite a bit. There's quite a lot that is original, and it's obvious that the author has experience with both the medical aspects and the American southwest. I liked that there were kind of "cute" details - Aurelia, for one, deals with a pair of seemingly ill-fitting glasses from time to time, and is described as being incredibly short for an adult woman, which does sometimes literally change her viewpoint.

I didn't really care for the way the chapters switched narrators; it reminded me too much of a Baby-Sitters' Club Super-Special. However, with those, it was pretty much assumed that the reader knew the characters, coming into a book that is the second in a series, it wasn't immediately clear who the characters were. (The Ebook version that I received also didn't seem to have a table of contents or chapter dividers, so flipping back to different characters' chapters was more difficult than it should have been.)

All in all, I'd recommend, and I may have to see about getting the first book to see how the story started. Mind you, this book is written with threads which, I assume, are meant to set up future books in the series. This isn't a bad thing, but it just means that not every situation finds its resolution here.

Disclosure: I received a Early Review Ebook from the author in hopes of a review. I am very, very late to reading the book, but life sometimes makes it difficult to get things done in the time we think they ought to get done! ( )

a delightful sci fi fantasy read. thoroughly enjoyable. thanks for the chance to read it, library thing ( )

This book is a great combo of mystery, science fiction, and medical drama with a little romance (no spice, only some kissing and one fade-to-black scene) mixed in.
This is the second book in a series, and although I was able to enjoy it as a stand alone, I would have welcomed a bit more background as to how the present world came about.
After along and arduous journey through the desert, Aurelia and her best friend, Roe, and his brother, Hale, have finally arrived at the place called Devil’s Meadows. They have been assigned to practice medicine here for the rest of their lives, but where medicine fails is where Aurelia’s special gifts come in. On the way to their destination, Aurelia discovered she has the power of “wonder-working” where she can treat ailments oftentimes more effectively than modern medicine. The only problem is, in the dystopian future they live, this practice has been outlawed. Balancing a need to help with a fear of breaking the law of the land, Aurelia finds herself in a moral quandary. But when women around the settlement are found mysteriously murdered, she’ll soon find that her abilities have made her a target for entirely different reasons.
The writing is stellar and the plot tight and well thought out. It has action, suspense and drama, all wrapped together in a future-fiction mystery. ( )

This is the second book in the Medicus Corpus series, and I was able to quickly get into the lives of the characters. The writing is tight and keeps you interested from start to finish with enough intrigue and a fantastic plot that you will not want to put down the book. The world that author Kami King Larsen created is a fun read and is one that I hope continues on from here. Grab the first one, and this one as well, and have a great weekend read. ( )

2.5 stars

I received this book for free, this does not affect my opinion of the book or the content of my review

Breath and Starshine is second in the Medicus Corpus series and while I saw some mentioning you could start the series here, it was better to read book one first. I'm here to say it is better, BETTER to start with book one and not two like I did. This one seems to pick up right after the first ended and I was totally lost and struggled to connect with the characters and world; y'all, I was downright wishing for an info-dump. Told in three alternating povs from characters Aurelia, Roe, and Hale, it probably took until around forty percent before I felt like I could understand some whos, whys, whats, and hows and then try and get into the story.

Medicus Corpus was my new family. Devil's Meadows my new home.

This seems to be set in a post-apocalyptic world with the settlement of Devil's Meadows being somewhere around the Hoover Dam (I'm guessing that was the big dam they visited in the story). I feel like it was the current contemporary world when wars started and then a veering into fiction when the author writes that The Grand Divagation happened. The Divagation was when some form of leaders got together and decided to shut-off modern conveniences (electricity, travel, plumbing, wifi (HORRORS), etc.) and cut-off, stop distribution of medicines. After the chaos and numerous deaths this causes, a new group of leaders create the Medicus Corpus, an institution that seems to run how hospitals, medicine, and healthcare are run and provided. This story is pretty focused on the hospital and healthcare aspect of this world and we don't get much outside of it as our three pov characters all work in the hospital. Maybe more of background world setting was giving in the first but after I got to the halfway point I thought I had enough to have a good enough understanding of the setting I was in.

This had a YA feel to it, unless I missed it, our main characters ages were never given. Book one obviously had them going through an adventure that started with Aurelia and Roe, paired to work together by the Medicus Corpus and became bestfriends, and then brought in Roe's brother Hale, who has a very barely there romance with Aurelia in this one, and other side characters like Holdan, who has a mysterious magical(?) healing gift like Aurelia that he has been helping her learn to control but must be kept secret because the Medicus Corpus would jail(?) them for it, and a married couple who seem to be protectors/guards for the hospital workers, Geneva and Asher. Their friend and relationship dynamics are already set in this one and I missed some of that development.

I would call this mostly a slice of life story as it seems done with the first book's adventure, they start on a new one with mysterious deaths of young women are happening in their settlement and a new character, Campbell, comes into the picture alluding that he is from a not well known other settlement and is on the trail of an almost, energy vampire illness struck person, an illness that befalls men at random from where he comes from. There's a lot of following our characters to the hospital and back, with Aurelia getting attacked and then having to be protected, and an ending bait set-up that ended that storyline pretty abruptly.

That was the first night I slept on the ground outside Aurelia's door.

I did have problems at times trying to distinguish the different voices of our povs and for Hale supposed to be a big part of Aurelia's life, he was very absent. The end did give a scene where, I guess, they decide they're dating and have a couple kisses that leads to a firmly shut-door scene. The magic aspect of Aurelia's “wonder-working” is the obvious thread that will keep going (the ending definitely alludes to at least a book three) and while I can see the path of keeping it going through the serious, I would have liked more of it worked into the world-building, again, could have been developed more in the first.

This did read quick but not having read the first in the series had me lost for most of the first half and the second half fell a little short in the plot momentum, somewhat stagnated and time jumping abrupt at that same time and fell a lot short in the romance aspect. This did read quick and if looking for a post apocalyptic slice of life this is the adventure they have to get through in this book, some medical jargon, and with a YA tone, this maybe is one of the few out there to fit that particular bill. ( )