A richly imagined and immersive starship tale.
A starship’s crew responds to a curious distress signal coming from unknown space in this third installment of an SF series.
Lt. Naiche Decker of the Lovelace is used to serving on the same starship as her father, but now her boyfriend, Lt. Cmdr. Talako Jacoway, is aboard as well. There are plenty of upsides to having Tal around, but it’s also led Decker to think seriously about the sort of future she wants after her service in the Uniterrae Defense Corps ends. Before she has time to come to any decisions, the Lovelace receives a very peculiar distress call from the generational starship Valiant. What’s so strange? The entire crew of the Valiant is known to have perished in an accident 200 years earlier, for one. For another, the technology transmitting the call is far beyond anything humans are aware of. For a third, the call doesn’t appear to have been meant for human ears. “Well, that does pose a question, Captain,” voices one of the ship’s officers. “Do we make the prudent move of heading directly home…or go chasing after this…ghost?” Wary of a trap but excited by the opportunity to make contact with a new alien species, the captain and crew of the Lovelace proceed to the source of the transmission. They head to the previously unknown moon of Tolu, where they find, among other things, the survivors and descendants of the Valiant crew—very out of touch with the situation in the rest of the galaxy—and a species of ship-sized, acid-spewing birds. The stranded humans share the moon with several groups of unfriendly aliens, but the real mystery is the so-called Lignatians: an advanced species that has provided the survivors of the Valiant with its technology. The fate of those survivors—and now the Lovelace crew—may rest in Lignatian hands.
Watson’s prose is filled with vivid worldbuilding details while still managing to feel urgent and punchy: “Decker nearly started to laugh, on the edge of hysteria, when at that moment, Lindstrom attempted to hail them. She ignored her comm-link and put a protective hand on Con’s unconscious body. Naiche used her most menacing tone to warn, ‘I am taking my friend to our ship. If you try to stop me—I will kill you all. I swear I will.’ ” Though the book is preceded by two others, the story is self-contained enough for those new to the series to hit the ground running. Decker is a matter-of-fact protagonist: an adrenaline junky, she’s easily bored, quick to jump into action, and loyal to her friends. The crew of the Lovelace is large and filled with colorful, complementary personalities, including a dog, Corpsman Kayatennae, whose barks sometimes scare away alien beasts. The tale is thoroughly in the tradition of Star Trek, both in its tone and its value, and fans of that franchise will enjoy Watson’s Roddenberrian world. Despite the premise, the novel never gets too dark or too mysterious—to the disappointment, perhaps, of some readers—but the plot is propulsive and well paced. The result is pure space opera, nothing more or less.
A richly imagined and immersive starship tale.Pub Date: March 16, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-941072-89-9
Page Count: 236
Publisher: D. X. Varos, Ltd.
Review Posted Online: April 16, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2021
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
A sexy series shakes things up in its eighth installment.
A human woman who feels like an outsider finds love with an exiled alien.
Maddie and her sister, Lila, were kidnapped from Earth and crash-landed on an ice planet. Lila is deaf, and Maddie has spent most of her life in the role of Lila’s protector. But now Lila is happily mated with a baby on the way, and Maddie is struggling to forge her own identity separate from her sister. Maddie is the last unmated human woman on the ice planet. She’s convinced it’s because she’s temperamental and difficult, and she feels a lot of self-loathing about her body, which she thinks is “fat” compared to the other women. Bored and lonely, Maddie decides to teach herself to hunt. Impressed by her strength and determination, Hassen, one of the clan’s hunters, offers to teach her hunting and trapping skills. She’s curious about Hassen, who is alone, having lost his entire family when a sickness swept through his clan. In Barbarian’s Touch (2024), the previous book in the series, Hassen kidnapped Lila, hoping to find a mate. As punishment, he has been outcast, but he continues to hunt on behalf of the clan, hoping to show that he’s worthy of being readmitted. He regrets that his loneliness and longing for a family prompted him to take such a rash action. Maddie is intrigued by Hassen, recognizing a fellow outcast when she sees one. She offers a friends-with-benefits arrangement, and the two enter into a passionate affair. Hassen hopes Maddie will eventually consider him as a permanent mate. Dixon shows how her characters’ arcs mirror each other, with both longing for acceptance and belonging. Maddie realizes her strengths add value to the tribe, while Hassen longs to be forgiven for his selfish kidnapping. There is very little conflict between the two, as the difficulties of actual survival on an ice planet trump minor emotional conflicts. When a huge earthquake throws the entire society into crisis, Maddie and Hassen prove their worth by going to extraordinary lengths to save the others.
A sexy series shakes things up in its eighth installment.Pub Date: May 28, 2024
ISBN: 9780593639481
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Berkley
Review Posted Online: March 23, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2024
Cerebral SF, tackling both humanitywide problems and the smaller but ever present conflicts closer to home.
A ship that left Earth 10 years ago, a crew trained to complete a single mission, and one saboteur hidden among them.
Asuka Hoshino-Silva is one of 80 people bound for a far-off planet with the hope of starting a new civilization. After a rigorous training and selection process that began when the crew members were 12 years old, their spaceship finally launched, and they have spent the last 10 years in stasis. Upon awakening, they have found new troubles looming back home and old conflicts surfacing among themselves. For Asuka, this means she isn’t reading her mother’s letters from Earth and isn’t talking to her one-time best friend on the ship. Her problems get worse when Asuka finds herself at the center of an attack meant to sabotage the mission. With every crew member under suspicion, can Asuka uncover the truth, or will old alliances and rivalries tear the crew apart? The present narrative unfolds between flashbacks depicting Asuka’s early hardships due to climate change, tension with her Latine father and Japanese mother, and conflicted feelings about representing Japan on the mission, adding depth to the plot and creating a strong, character-driven, and accessible tale. There are no cis men among the crew members, all of whom are expected to be inseminated and produce offspring as part of the mission. They've been recruited from many nations, producing a refreshingly diverse cast that also realistically reflects real-world issues and conflicts. Can something new be built, or is the crew doomed to repeat the mistakes of the past?
Cerebral SF, tackling both humanitywide problems and the smaller but ever present conflicts closer to home.Pub Date: July 18, 2023
ISBN: 9781250875334
Page Count: 416
Publisher: Flatiron Books
Review Posted Online: May 9, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2023
BOOK REVIEW
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