telerit's review against another edition
adventurous
challenging
emotional
funny
hopeful
inspiring
reflective
tense
fast-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.5
thatzed's review against another edition
adventurous
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
4.0
Content Warnings
Moderate: Rape and Sexual assault
marcelozanca's review against another edition
adventurous
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
3.25
iffer's review against another edition
4.0
I enjoyed this one. It's entertaining, with what seems to be the obligatory pulse-pounding space fight at the end of the book, but this type of thing doesn't get old for me. I enjoyed that the main character is not career fleet and basically ends up dealing with culture shock/difficulty moving up in the ranks and making friends because she is from what is a marginalized culture in this setting.
CW: Child abuse and sexual assault
CW: Child abuse and sexual assault
lushr's review against another edition
4.0
TRIGGER WARNING: sexual assault.
i wish i’d had warning this book would be such a trigger. it’s written so well that things i have never experienced were traumatising me. and the subsequent therapy sessions in the book equally healed me.
a total departure from the Serranos. Lt. Suiza is the young woman whose story we follow and she is utterly charming. this book was extremely enjoyable for the great characters, inventive environment (a massive city sized repair ship). and exciting story. however there are two very violent scenes which not all readers may cope with. i found the book worth reading through despite the violent scenes because the book ends with some very good advice and therapy which is therapeutic to read. but i won’t re read this title. i just hope for more from Lt Esmay Suiza. i really like her. more than any of the previous characters.
i wish i’d had warning this book would be such a trigger. it’s written so well that things i have never experienced were traumatising me. and the subsequent therapy sessions in the book equally healed me.
a total departure from the Serranos. Lt. Suiza is the young woman whose story we follow and she is utterly charming. this book was extremely enjoyable for the great characters, inventive environment (a massive city sized repair ship). and exciting story. however there are two very violent scenes which not all readers may cope with. i found the book worth reading through despite the violent scenes because the book ends with some very good advice and therapy which is therapeutic to read. but i won’t re read this title. i just hope for more from Lt Esmay Suiza. i really like her. more than any of the previous characters.
stephen_means_me's review against another edition
4.0
Beware the Baen book cover! Aside from the main character being a woman, there's not a lot of white-knuckle wiz-bang 'splosions in this military-sf story. In fact, it's almost better described as "military slice-of-life sf," since most of the story is about our protagonist adjusting to life after surviving a mutiny, reassignment to a deep-space repair vessel, and coming to terms from some really harsh childhood trauma. To be sure, there's a space-barbarian threat that takes up a little less than half the book, but the wartime-action scenes are more suggestive rather than explicit in their level of detail. I thought it worked quite well; there's not a lot of genre innovation here, so it's all about how Moon chooses to put the well-known pieces together. (One thing I did note is that, for a book published in 1997, the presence and use of computers is actually pretty well done; which fits, since apparently Moon was a computer specialist in the U.S. Marine Corps.) A particular non-genre bright spot is the no-nonsense "psychotherapy positivity": our protagonist has trauma to work through, and pretty much everyone in Fleet who knows something's up tells her to get help, no shame. It's this sense of follow-through that elevates Esmay Suiza's arc above the more seedy "trauma as ersatz character development" trope.
A solid 4-star recommendation!
A solid 4-star recommendation!
k8brarian's review against another edition
3.0
I enjoy this author and what she's doing in her books, but reading this book was like reading some Tom Clancy -- you're impressed by all the technical bits, and you know it's good, but you find yourself flipping ahead wondering if anything exciting is ever going to happen.
mephistia's review against another edition
5.0
Many years ago, I read The Adventures of Paksenarrion, which I enjoyed so much I named my cat after the heroine. For some reason, I did not search out every other book written by the author, and indeed, over time forgot the author's name until I was recently reminded, and informed she also wrote sci-fi.
This book is nothing like what I expected, and far better than anything I could've hoped for. Apparently it's part of a series (which I realized after finishing it), so it's possible the recent history of events which so influence Esmay Suiza (protagonist) in the first part of the book are covered in depth in one of the earlier books. Here, they are explained, but in terms of dealing with the aftermath: for the first section of the book, I kept wondering if the ebook has somehow been programmed out of order and I'd missed all the action.
But the author believably maneuvers Suiza into the midst of another ship conflict, providing the desired adventure and fast paced plot. It was the aftermath that I thought was possibly the most fulfilling, positive, and surprising ending available. I was genuinely delighted by the last 100 pages or so, and would highly recommend it to any fan of sci-fi
This book is nothing like what I expected, and far better than anything I could've hoped for. Apparently it's part of a series (which I realized after finishing it), so it's possible the recent history of events which so influence Esmay Suiza (protagonist) in the first part of the book are covered in depth in one of the earlier books. Here, they are explained, but in terms of dealing with the aftermath: for the first section of the book, I kept wondering if the ebook has somehow been programmed out of order and I'd missed all the action.
But the author believably maneuvers Suiza into the midst of another ship conflict, providing the desired adventure and fast paced plot. It was the aftermath that I thought was possibly the most fulfilling, positive, and surprising ending available. I was genuinely delighted by the last 100 pages or so, and would highly recommend it to any fan of sci-fi