MY ⭐️ RATING: 3.75/5
Format: Advanced Reader Copy
BOOK DESCRIPTION
After a hijacking attempt damages their decrepit Black Sun 490 freighter, Snake and his boss are desperate for cash. Enter Carla, a gorgeous mercenary bad girl with a job offer that seems too good to be true. Unfortunately for him, while Snake is convinced she’s stringing them along to their deaths, he’s not the one in charge. The job gets dicey in a hurry, and it doesn’t take him long to figure out a fatal blow is coming. He’s just not sure if it will come from the pirates that haunt the nav lanes, knife-wielding goons looking for revenge, Carla herself, or the cheap vodka he drinks to stay sane. If Snake’s going to make it out alive, he’ll need every bit of his quick wit-and an even quicker trigger finger.
MY REVIEW
I received an advanced reader copy, provided by the author for an honest review.
This did not impact my rating in any way.
I don’t read a lot of Sci-fi, but this was a very fun and quick read and will likely open me up to reading that genre a little bit more, especially with the SPSFC-1 going on. Don’t let the title fool you into thinking this is a book about a “damsel in distress,” because it is not! I thought the plot was fantastic. It starts off holding back no punches with the action. The two MC’s, Snake and Boss Man really help the story along with their non stop witty banter back and forth barbs at each other, almost a Starsky and Hutch in space kind of vibe, and the amount of f-bombs makes me feel like Samuel L. Jackson could easily be one of these characters.
“A ship is like a woman–just because you know what all the parts are, doesn’t mean you know how to operate them.”
This had a lot of space (pun intended) to be more than just a 127 page novella sized book, despite its good story, it fell short in a few areas: There were times when the story goes from point A to point C, skipping what could have been integral parts of character and story building opportunities for “part B”. The world building was very limited as well. We really didn’t get to know the surroundings at all, really the only thing that was described in near full detail was the ship, which you will know inside and out by the time you’re done.
“When it rains, it pours, and when it pours it’s a goddamn monsoon.”
Character descriptions were very minimal, and while this doesn’t really hurt the overall story any, this does hurt trying to visualize the MC’s. The only one that really got any sense of description was Carla, and even that was minimal. The last thing is something that is a personal dislike and I did not grade, which was that everyone had names except for one of the MC’s, and that really bothered me that it was just “the boss” or “boss man.” It would’ve been less bothersome had that character said “call me boss man” or something, rather than other characters just referring to him as that title the entire book.
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