Reviews

I’m going to go out on a limb and say Valdes is a gamer and sci-fi geek. There are bits of Mass Effect and Portal here, not to mention the ubiquitous Firefly. Most of it is Firefly with telenovela overtones. (There is a section that is hilariously straight out of a telenovela, except with bird-dino aliens.) It’s all about the shooting-first-asking-questions-later action, with a side helping of interspecies romance.

Although derivative of other franchises, it avoids being a rip-off and ends up being an homage to Space Opera as a whole. The main character, scoundrel Captain Eva Inocente, isn’t a Mary Sue because she’s just bad at... mostly everything. So that’s nice. She’s definitely in the Han Solo/Peter Quill mold rather than Malcolm Reynolds/James T. Kirk type.

There are also psychic cats who show up every now and then.

m_petranoff's review against another edition

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adventurous funny lighthearted mysterious fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Plot
Strong character development? No
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? No

3.5

A fun science fiction romp that doesn't manage to stick the landing, but still not a bad read.

could_be_better's review against another edition

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adventurous funny fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.75

mbmartin42's review

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4.0

•Mass Effect meets Firefly••An own voices space opera•
Hop aboard La Sirena Negra and join the snarky, smart mouthed, trouble making captain Eva Innocente and her motley crew as they cruise the galaxy delivering small cargo for even smaller profits.
But when her sister Mari is kidnapped by The Fridge, a shadowy syndicate, Eva must undergo a series of unpleasant, dangerous missions to pay the ransom.
If she think that’s the worst of it, the ship's hold is full of psychic cats, an amorous fish-faced emperor wants her dead after she rejects his advances, and her sweet engineer is giving her a pesky case of feelings.
To free her sister, Eva will risk everything: her crew, her ship, and the life she's built on the ashes of her past misdeeds. But when the dominoes start to fall and she finds the real threat is greater than she imagined, she must decide whether to play it cool or burn it all down.

lorendia's review against another edition

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slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Plot
Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

2.0

The main character was so unbearable. No actual growth the whole time. And the number of side stories was too much. I should have stopped at page 50. Alas.

rara2018's review against another edition

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2.0

I’d really wanted to go against the Goodreads norm and actually enjoy this book, but I was left tremendously disappointed. Eva was pretty unlikeable most of the time and the romance, which felt like it was supposed to be a selling point, felt so forced and devoid of chemistry. The side characters were all dimensionless and the actual plot went in forty different ways, yet not one was done well. The stakes felt very high but in the most artificial way possible. Sometimes it was fun, which is the only reason I’m even debating reading the next book in the series, but I have no clue what happened.

thewildflames's review against another edition

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adventurous challenging emotional funny hopeful medium-paced

3.5

Really I think I would have enjoyed this more had I understood the Spanish and not had to Google translate a lot of it. Regardless, this was a very good book. The characters were well built and “human” quotations cause not everyone is human lol. My only issue with the writing was that it felt like some things just suddenly happened and I felt like I was missing something. I’m excited to read the next book!

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