A review by trike
Chilling Effect, by Valerie Valdes
3.0
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.
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.