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Navigating Expectations
Broken Alliance follows the Venture’s crew as they uncover a conspiracy tied to black-market thetic technology, corporate power grabs, and the lingering ghost of Sovereign. How did your goals for this book differ from the first installment?
While Tracer was about introducing the crew and establishing the stakes of their world, Broken Alliance shifts the focus to the ‘aftermath.’ I wanted to explore the consequences of their initial decisions—not just for the Venture crew, but for the Settled Systems at large. In many ways, this second book was easier to write because the characters’ voices were already established; however, the challenge lay in ensuring their growth felt organic. My goal was to navigate the expectations set in Book 1, sometimes fulfilling them and other times intentionally subverting them.
Characters are often forced to make imperfect choices. Are you more interested in right answers or honest ones?
Most of us go into heroic stories expecting the characters to make the ‘right’ choice. It’s an expectation built by the books and movies we’ve grown up with. To me, that’s why literature is so vital—it teaches us what it means to be human on this tiny planet. Even when authors ‘flip the script,’ we still have that core desire to see good triumph over evil. I try to lean into honest answers wherever possible, but leading my heroes toward a morally right conclusion is ultimately how I share my own values through my work.
What makes chosen family such a powerful counterweight to failing institutions?
We’ve all been told that you can’t choose your family—that ‘blood is thicker than water.’ Personally, I believe that’s a falsehood. There is no greater bond than one forged in a close-knit circle of friends who have proven, time and again, that they have your best interests at heart. These are not always the people who share our blood, but they are often the ones who have bled with us. We can no more choose our relatives than we can choose the systemic world we were born into, but we can choose who to accept as our true family—just as we can choose to speak up against tyranny and corruption.
The ending offers a pause rather than closure. What threads from Broken Alliance are you most excited to explore next?
My goal was to provide a sense of closure for this specific arc while hinting at the larger story still to come. Each character has changed so much, but for me, the most exciting part is knowing they have much further to go. We’ve only scratched the surface of the Tracer universe in these first two books. I’m looking forward to expanding the scope of the series and perhaps even stepping outside the current saga to explore these characters from new perspectives.
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The crew of The Venture—Andre, Bex, Bishop, and Caleb—are now Alliance Tracers, tasked with hunting down those who seek to capitalize in the wake of Sovereign’s defeat. But loyalty is a fragile thing in a universe still reeling from the brink of destruction. Meanwhile, General Katherine Mallory navigates a treacherous new battlefield, facing enemies as formidable in the Council Chambers as any on the front lines. And deep within Trelin Base, Commander Bryton guards the galaxy’s most dangerous secret: Sovereign, whose unnatural power remains an ominous threat.
Old wounds fester and new forces rise, all vying to unlock Sovereign’s power. As the fragile peace threatens to unravel, these heroes must choose where their allegiances lie. Will the Alliance endure this new era, or is it doomed to collapse and shatter into a Broken Alliance?
Broken Alliance
Broken Alliance is a character-driven science fiction adventure that picks up right where Tracer leaves off. We follow Bex, Andre, Kat, and the rest of the Venture’s crew as they uncover a conspiracy tied to black-market thetic technology, corporate power grabs, and the lingering ghost of Sovereign. The stakes scale from street-level desperation to full political upheaval, with personal loyalty binding the whole thing together. By the time the dust settles, alliances shift, institutions crack, and the characters have to decide who they want to be in the systems they’ve helped reshape.
Author David Graham writes with a steady rhythm: some moments hit hard and fast, like the firefight in the Paramor or Bex racing across rooftops; others stretch out with quieter emotional beats, especially in the aftermath scenes near the end of the story. What I appreciated most is how the book doesn’t rush the characters’ inner shifts. Bex’s relationship with identity and agency, Andre’s weariness and stubborn hope, Kat’s complicated sense of duty, these all felt grounded. Even when the plot leaned into big sci-fi spectacle, the emotional center stayed human.
The author also makes some interesting choices about power structures and responsibility. The political hearings, the scramble over the Trelin Base project, and the moral ambiguity of the Alliance add a sharper edge to the adventure (the council scenes show this well). Sometimes the villains are overt, like Davenport, but more often the danger feels systemic, which makes the world feel authentic and messy. I liked that the story refuses a clean resolution. Even the epilogue acknowledges the work still ahead while nudging us toward future threads in the Settled Systems.
By the time I turned the last page, I felt satisfied but also curious. The ending gives the characters a breather, a moment of found-family warmth, and a hint that their fight isn’t done. It’s a good tone to leave on: hopeful but honest. If you enjoy sci-fi that balances action with character, especially stories about crews who choose each other again and again even when the galaxy keeps breaking around them, this one will land well. Fans of The Expanse, Mass Effect, or any tight-knit-crew narrative will feel right at home.
Pages: 418 | ASIN : B0DYVSVTML
