A- #BookReview: At Star’s End by Anna Hackett

At Star's End (Phoenix Adventures #1) by Anna Hackett
Format: eARC
Source: author
Formats available: paperback, ebook
Genres: action adventure romance, science fiction romance
Series: Phoenix Adventures #1
Pages: 211
Published by Anna Hackett on February 25, 2026
Purchasing Info: Author's Website, Amazon
Goodreads

A dedicated astro-archeologist and a notorious treasure hunter team up to find the galaxy’s most famous treasure.

Previously published - At Star's End has been lightly edited and had a new chapter added.

Dr. Eos Rai has spent a lifetime dedicated to her mother's dream of finding the long-lost Mona Lisa. When Eos uncovers tantalizing evidence of Star's End—the last known location of the masterpiece—she's shocked when her employer, the Galactic Institute of Historic Preservation, refuses to back her expedition.

Left with no choice, she does the unthinkable—joins forces with the most notorious treasure hunter in the galaxy. A man she finds infuriating, annoying, and far too tempting.

Dathan Phoenix can sniff out relics at a stellar mile. With his brothers by his side, he lives for adventure. When the gorgeous Eos Rai comes looking to hire him, he knows she's trouble, but he can’t say no.

Working side-by-side, the hunt pushes both Eos and Dathan to their limits and ignites a scorching desire. She follows the rules, he loves to break them, but they’re going to have to trust each other to not just succeed, but to survive.

My Review:

I originally reviewed At Star’s End OMG TWELVE years ago for the much-lamented Sci-Fi Romance Quarterly. That was a long time ago, especially in internet years, and represents an entire space flotilla of books under the reading bridge.

But it’s a story that has stuck in my memory over all these years. Not necessarily the specific details, but definitely the gist. And for multiple reasons. Which is why I’m celebrating now that the author was able to get her rights to this story back and is finally able to make it available again and to the audience that has grown up with her over the course of this series and the ones that have followed.

At Star’s End represents the first of the author’s novels that I read after being ‘introduced’ to her through her short story “Winter Fusion” in a long-ago holiday-themed SFR collection, A Galactic Holiday. Those stories marked the beginning of what appears to be a lifelong addiction. So I certainly consider it the start of a beautiful reading relationship!

It’s also an exemplar of precisely what I read SFR (that’s science fiction romance) FOR, that it’s a terrific romance with a whole lot of chemistry and usually a fair bit of action and adventure, set in a fully fleshed out science fictional future. Which is something I appreciate even more now that “Romantasy” has become such a huge thing. Because the point of SFR was that the two sides (and often the romantic relationship itself) are EQUAL. That the story is wrapped around a well-earned HEA or HFN AND that the science fictional world-building is fully fleshed out. IMNSHO, romantasy tends to shortchange one side or the other while the best of SFR, which At Star’s End definitely is, does not.

Long may that particular star flag continue to wave, but I digress.

Getting back to At Star’s End, I still reference this story, and the Phoenix Adventures series of which it was the opening salvo, because the setup for this story continues to pop up. Both in the sense that the family at the heart of the author’s later Treasure Hunter Security series of action adventure romances are the literal progenitors of the Phoenix Brothers, and because the setup of an Earth on the brink of disaster shipping its artistic treasures out into the wider galaxy for safekeeping is a story idea gift that still keeps on giving. Molly Tanzer’s upcoming And Side by Side They Wander, which I’ve already reviewed for Library Journal’s April Issue, begins with the same premise while taking it in an entirely different direction.

I’ve used At Star’s End and the Phoenix Adventures as a readalike reference many times over the past dozen years, always with a bit of a caveat that the book might not be readily available. Which means that I was thrilled to have this new edition arrive in my inbox, both so that I could catch up with some old and dear friends AND so that I’d feel less guilty about telling other readers just how thrilled they would be to read it IF they could find it – because now they can.

Escape Rating A-: I gave At Star’s End an A- twelve years ago, and I’d give it the same rating today. (If you want to check out my original review it’s available HERE.)

Over the years of reviewing, I’ve settled on A- as the grade that novella length stories that I love generally receive. I did love At Star’s End, and I loved it again when I reread it this week. The A- is more of a commentary on the length of the story. I love novellas for their shorter length every bit as much as I find myself wishing that the background was a bit more fleshed out than is even possible over the length of a novella. And that was true in At Star’s End.

This story turned out to be a compulsively readable combination of Indiana Jones and Firefly, and it did rely just a bit on those resemblances to carry the reader over the bits of worldbuilding that there just weren’t space for. The Phoenix Adventures series as a whole does fill those bits in as it continues, but they’re not there in this first outing. OTOH, even from this first book I knew I wanted more, and the author certainly delivered and continues to do so.

And, will be delivering new editions of the ENTIRE Phoenix Adventures series with a bit of editing tweaking and new covers over the months to come. An updated edition of the second book, In the Devil’s Nebula, is already slated for March release.

I even have my fingers crossed that there might be new adventures or at least short stories in this series at some point in the future! But in the meantime, I am looking forward to the rest of the Phoenix Adventures over the rest of this year AND the next book in her current SFR series, Hunter Squad, next month.

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