Skyship Academy: Crimson Rising by Nick James

This book is the sequel to Skyship Academy: The Pearl Wars, and I gave it a rating of four out of five. Jesse and Cassius are brothers, but their parents are not from Earth. Green balls, pearls, have been falling to Earth for many years, and they are full of energy. They're being used to power cities and spaceships, but the first book in the series revealed that there are living things waiting to be released from within the pearls. Using the pearls for energy kills the life forms, but Jesse's special talent is to release them. In this book, Jesse finds a red pearl and discovers he cannot control it. He finds out that his former planet was going through a civil war, and the red pearl is an advance scout sent to prepare Earth for an invasion. This creature represents the invaders while the green pearls were sent here to help prepare a defense. Jesse and Cassius are caught in the middle of the conflict between the humans living above the planet, the humans living on the planet, and now the alien forces preparing to attack. They need help, but is there anyone, or anything, on Earth that can stop the destruction of our planet?

The beginning of the book seemed to rehash many of the events of the previous book. A new character, Theo, and the red pearl introduced new problems into the plot. The conflicts aren't really resolved in this plot, so you should be prepared to read the next book in the series. The narrator's voice in this book was a little unusual,. It switched between Cassius and Jesse's first-person points of view, and then it went to a third person point of view. I don't recall another book I've read that is told in this way. Can you?