User Profile

Rowan is forced to give up her cherished identity as a steerswoman and take on a new one in order to survive. The story is as much about her struggle with identity as it is battling her physical foes.

Kirstein has done a masterful job of world building, characterization, and plot. The world unfolds like an old map, covered with interesting places you might like to visit. Her ensemble cast - Bel the Outskirter, William the Would-be Mage, and Rowan Steerswoman - sparkle and dance across the pages pulling me along the story's twisted path.

I ripped through this book in a couple of days and now face a quandry. Do I follow the steerswoman's path to book 2 or keep working through the big pile of samples I have waiting?

Decisions, decisions. One thing I do know. Rowan is one of those characters who will haunt me for awhile.

Highly recommended.

A fascinating tale of psychic aliens, stranded settlers, and colonizing insects.

The setting is the main attraction here, the characters supporting the introduction of this world where none of the natives speak because they don't need to. Through a series of steps and missteps, the survey crew sent to Chara have to survive first contact with not one, but two, alien races. It turns out to be more difficult than anyone might have imagined.

Recommended.

I love me some SFR. It makes me happy to seeing people of different perspectives find themselves in each other.

Jade's abduction set up this delightfully tense interspecies romp. Her determination to get home set her up for an existential clash. But can she find a reason to stay?

Theo's "ugly" scars and repeated traumas made him the perfect foil.

It was pretty clear how this story would go but watching them turn themselves inside out, each working against their own interests until they just had to accept their new reality.

Two people dying of thirst. Much teasing. A great deal of posturing. A bit of heat hinting of more. Toes might have curled but the story wrapped up nicely with a cute nudge for the next hunky alien to take the stage in book 2.

Oh, and evil was - if not vanquished - at least given a good black eye.

Highly Recommended.

Let me get the downside out of the way first.

This is a collection of novellas. Novellas are on my list of "Least Favorite Forms." It's a personal foible. They're too short for me to find engaging. By the time I get into them, they're over. This collection gets around that by giving me a little more time in the world, but they're still on the LFF list.

With that in mind, believe me when I say "Holy Moly, these are great stories!"

Javier Aritza is one of those characters that can get under your skin and set up shop in your head. Every time you turn around a new facet of his past, a new layer of personality reveals itself. He's an archetype action-hero who'd rather drink his tea and feed his chickens than engage in derring-do but - sadly (albeit predictably) - needs must. Javier's sarcastic, sometimes caustic, wit sees him through after he and his beloved ship are captured by pirates. Quick on his feet, slow to anger, deadly when provoked - he's James Bond and MacGuyver in space.

The four novellas - four chapters in Javier's life among the pirates - feed nicely into each other. Episodic in nature, each slowly uncovers new aspects of his pirate captors including the enigmatic Captain Solokov and his Amazonian dragoon, Sykora.

In spite of my predisposition to dislike novellas, these characters drew me and and refused to let me go.

Highly Recommended

This book is way outside my usually reading zone. First contact, alien invasion. Not my cuppa.

In spite of that, the story drew me in. Vers and her father Matteo kept me turning pages. The world building seemed authentic. The basic conceit surrounding microplastics, panspermia, and the origins of life in out solar system made for some uncomfortably realistic reading.

Like, is this really fiction? Some pieces of it felt way too much like thinly veiled science that couldn't find its way to publication.

I can't say as I cared for the images scattered through the story. I found them distracting, off-putting. They bounced me out of the story every time one of them appeared on the page. Eventually I learned to ignore them - as if they were Really Big scene break markers - and was able to read around them.

Recommended.

The story offers a unique perspective on interstellar travel and what it means to be human.

This was way more fun than I expected.

I'm a sucker for a good space opera with good guys and bad guys and a bit of ambiguity about who is which. Olson didn't let me down on this one. She's crafted a tightly knit heist story with some terrific characters and an intriguing universe for them to play in. From the enigmatic ring-leader Masha Volkova collecting the mis-fit toys who'd become her team to the manic-pixie pilot performing feats of derring-do behind the controls of anything she cared to fly to the taciturn boom-boom expert who could kill you with a flick of her fingers to Tae the techno-wizard and Lev the information acquisition and retrieval specialist, they all bring their own stories to the mix.

Olson's tightly written roller-coaster took me along for the ride and had me laughing as I went. And it's only book one!!

Highly recommended.

I can hardly wait to get back into this universe and find out what the team gets up to next.