A review by nghia
A Red Peace by Spencer Ellsworth
3.0
This is a competent and entertaining space fantasy novella in the vein of Star Wars. It's brevity (barely over 200 pages) harks back to the pulps and serials of yesteryear (like Buck Rogers) that the space fantasy genre was built on. That alone is a welcome change from the usual 500-600-and-more page monsters that have come to dominate the SF/F genre. I mean, I love The Expanse but of the 3 books I've read in it so far, the shortest is 539 pages.
This doesn't really do anything super-groundbreaking. An orphan with a secret lineage who turns out to be The Chosen One of Destiny and have special powers. Rogues with hearts of gold. An evil empire with a clone army they are on the run from. Etc etc. Like I said, it is very much Star Warsy. Not a ripoff but certainly many parallels. Not that that's entirely a bad thing; sometimes novelty is overrated and we just want a fun comfort read that hits all the familiar notes. And this does that.
It packs a lot into its 200 pages. An cage death match, a space fight, a gunfight, escapes, and more. One reason for its brevity is that it confines itself to just two POVs: Jaqi and Araskar. Jaqi is the one on the run the Araskar is the Evil Empire soldier tasked with tracking her down -- but he's beginning to have doubts, he never signed up for an Evil empire and his character is the real highlight of the series.
“It doesn’t do much good to get scared out here, I think. Everything is scary. You have to get used to it.”
This doesn't really do anything super-groundbreaking. An orphan with a secret lineage who turns out to be The Chosen One of Destiny and have special powers. Rogues with hearts of gold. An evil empire with a clone army they are on the run from. Etc etc. Like I said, it is very much Star Warsy. Not a ripoff but certainly many parallels. Not that that's entirely a bad thing; sometimes novelty is overrated and we just want a fun comfort read that hits all the familiar notes. And this does that.
“I—I died.”
“Not enough blood and honor,” I say, and it’s hard to talk around that big thing in my throat. “Had to bring you back.”
It packs a lot into its 200 pages. An cage death match, a space fight, a gunfight, escapes, and more. One reason for its brevity is that it confines itself to just two POVs: Jaqi and Araskar. Jaqi is the one on the run the Araskar is the Evil Empire soldier tasked with tracking her down -- but he's beginning to have doubts, he never signed up for an Evil empire and his character is the real highlight of the series.