Review by sol_journal - Teo's Durumi

sol_journal 's review for:

Teo's Durumi by Elaine U. Cho

4.0

adventurous emotional tense medium-paced

Loveable characters: Yes

Diverse cast of characters: Yes

**Thank you Elaine Cho, NetGalley, and Zando Projects for this ARC! All thoughts and opinions are my own.**

Posted to: NetGalley and The StoryGraph

Posted on: 15 August 2025

4.1 (rounded down to 4) out of 5 stars.

(I meant to have this finished sooner and yet here we are- my apologies for the delay)

I don’t know where to begin with this review without just raving about how much I loved this. It was such a perfect continuation to Ocean’s Godori and even has a bit of a mini re-introduction in the beginning if you’re not coming straight into it from the first book. I did really love that much of it considering I didn’t have time to re-read Ocean’s Godori as I’d hoped. So coming from somebody who had a break in between both books, I feel like it was easy enough to jump back in with the way Elaine Cho sets up the beginning before fully diving into Teo’s Durumi!

Once the story really starts, I think it’s a nice dive into the new drama starting. It’s got a bit of a faster pace than the first book considering we’ve hit the meat of the plot here. There’s more pieces moving around and coming into place whereas the first book has more of that introductory pace to allow for readers to get to know the main cast.

Speaking of cast- there’s a lot of people sticking around for the action. We lose some characters from the first book into the second to make room for the new cast of secondary characters coming through (so switching ships essentially- we are now following the Pandia more vs following the Ohneul like we did in book one.) I personally had a love/hate but only because I fell in love with the whole cast and I hate when found family has to split up (but there’s a good ending, I swear!! Also we do get a whole cast for most of the book if I can be honest. Again, I don’t like when found family must split)

There’s not much I can say I disliked about this book. The action was there and tense as ever. I believe the story takes place in a matter of days/weeks though, if I’m understanding that correctly, so I will say that romance plots are pulled along a little too fast for my own personal liking, but I don’t think it took away from the growth we are seeing during moments like these. That was something BIG that had me emotional for most of the book, actually. There’s still the grief and the taut relationships. There’s the mixed morals and the yearning for something that feels like it can’t or shouldn’t be. There’s a lot more healing happening, old wounds reopening as old faces resurface. Overall, I think Teo’s Durumi is a breathlessly intense wrap up for the Alliance series that Elaine Cho has created. It’s wonderfully written, beautifully executed, and I don’t think I can get over it. It feels like a breath of fresh air amongst the few other sci-fi titles I’ve read, and falls in a similar tune to anime Cowboy Bebop and even Star Wars (with the action and politically and morally motivated plot/scenes coming mildly into play more so in the second book but also some in the first). I cannot recommend this series enough and honestly can’t wait for my preorder of it to arrive so I can experience it all over again <3

CONTENT WARNING(S):

Death, death of family, death of parents, murder, murder scene (not too intensely graphic), murder by gutting (mildly detailed), induced comas (by neural damage and a mild spoiler cause), sexual content (no on-page sex, but very intimate scene which is later recounted again), gun use, violence, injury/injury details, broken/fractured bones

Content Warnings