Publisher: Bramble Romance

#BookReview: Chaos by Constance Fay

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | book reviews
#BookReview: Chaos by Constance FayChaos (Uncharted Hearts, #3) by Constance Fay
Format: eARC
Source: supplied by publisher via Edelweiss
Formats available: paperback, ebook
Genres: science fiction, science fiction romance, space opera
Series: Uncharted Hearts #3
Pages: 344
Published by Bramble Romance on March 11, 2025
Purchasing Info: Author's Website, Publisher's Website, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Bookshop.org, Better World Books
Goodreads

Lore Olympus meets Winter's Orbit in this pulse-pounding romance between a space mercenary and a super soldier whose mind-control breaks when she touches him.
He's a mind controlled killing machine, until her touch frees him
Engineer Caro Ogunyemi thinks she has everything in control. Sure, she has a dark secret in her past and aim so bad that she can’t shoot the side of a spaceship when she’s right in front of it, but those are minor details in the life of a space mercenary. When Caro embarks on a solo mission infiltrating a prison planet that is run by the deadly Pierce family, she embraces the opportunity to prove she’s a hero.
It's there that Caro meets Leviathan, a super soldier with a chip in his head that turns him into a mindless killer. He’s drop dead gorgeous with an emphasis on drop dead, until she touches him and renders his chip inert. The danger begins when she lets him go.
In the heart of enemy territory, where love is at stake, life is treacherous and time is short, Caro and Leviathan must figure out how to recover his agency, protect her crew from Pierce’s sinister machinations, and stage a prison-break before Leviathan is lost to her―and himself―forever.

My Review:

First of all, consider the title to be a hint. In fact, consider the individual titles of ALL of the books in the Uncharted Hearts series to be ginormous hints. Just as there were so many calamities in Calamity that the ship was ultimately named for the phenomenon, and the operation in Fiasco turned out to be a complete one of those, so too the ‘rescue mission’ that ace tinkerer Caro is bamboozled/emotionally manipulated into results in complete and utter chaos.

Which does not mean that Caro doesn’t, in the end, get the job done. Because she absolutely does. She just doesn’t get that job done in anything like the way she thought she would. Then again, the job isn’t remotely like what she was sold/told it was, either.

She thinks she’s rescuing two of her crewmates from a job gone wrong. And she does in the end. But they might not have even needed rescuing if she hadn’t concocted a truly lame plan to turn herself in to the rich, rapacious megacorp family that she’s been on the run from for years.

They should welcome her back, right? To pick up her old, truly ethically disgusting chip hacking job right where she left off when she ran away when her gorge rose past her naivete. So, Caro is still more than a bit naive. But she’s a whole lot better at hacking than she used to be.

Or she would be if she could get the tools to work for her – which they suddenly aren’t. Which is where the chaos enters into the picture. When she discovers that her old work has been repurposed to hack the mind of a man who looks like all of her hottest dreams in one gorgeous package, the chaos of the whole situation enters her heart as well.

Now she has more people to rescue than she planned on – and some of them aren’t aware enough to be aware that they need rescuing until Caro and her glitchy ability to glitch whatever she touches glitches them – and for once and always in a really, really, really good way.

Which provides a whole ‘nother avenue for that pesky chaos to enter the picture.

In the end, Caro’s success hinges on the one thing she absolutely never would have counted on in a million years. That the result of one of the terrible ethical lapses she fell into when she was young and dumb coming back, not to haunt her but to help her, in the form of her very own Murderbot.

Escape Rating B+: As Caro herself says, very late in the story, “Comparisons are toxic”. Which is something I wish she’d said a whole lot sooner, as it’s a truth that I REALLY needed to keep in mind while reading this third book in the Uncharted Hearts series.

Because, much as Caro herself did, I couldn’t stop comparing Caro to the protagonists of the previous entries in this series, Temper and Cyn. And Caro kept coming up wanting in my mind – just as much as she did in her own.

At the same time, this was a really compelling read, filled with plenty of the titular chaos, a plot that careened from one high-stakes, high-tension crisis to the next, injected with just the right amount of romance and sexytimes to grease the story into a fast and furious adventure.

But, but, but the plot hinged on Caro’s complete and utterly infuriating obliviousness to the macguffin that was literally just under her skin the whole time. That everything is going to hinge on the weird bugs and their even weirder bites that Caro is exposed to in the opening scenes is so screamingly obvious to the reader and this reader at least wanted to scream at Caro in return until she caught on. Which she eventually did but DAMN that took a frustratingly long time.

Once she does figure out what’s going on and starts to USE both the ‘glitch’ and the prodigious brains she always brings to the table the story kicks into high gear. But I did want to grab her and shake her for quite a while.

Moving right along – just as the story eventually did – there is still a LOT to love in Chaos and in the entire Uncharted Hearts series, starting with an utterly chaotic prison break scene that is straight out of the first Guardians of the Galaxy movie – or at least it is if you swap a combination of the Incredible Hulk and the Winter Soldier for Peter Quinn – which might, come to think of it, have been an upgrade to the movie. (Your intergalactic mileage may vary.)

But seriously, the hulk that Caro calls Levi and gives her heart – as well as her very willing body – to is just the kind of scarred and wounded hero that this series redeems every time – even as he reclaims the better parts of himself and redeems the heroine as well.

On the surface – and after that initial bobble of cluelessness – the story in Chaos is a whole lot of science fiction romance adventure and excitement. But there’s more if you think about it for a bit. The ‘verse of the Uncharted Hearts series is often likened to Firefly, and that’s a description that still very much works three books in.

The thing about the comparison to Firefly that’s definitely held up and flown away with in Uncharted Hearts, is that the ‘verse in Firefly is really, really FUBAR’d, and so is the universe of Uncharted Hearts. The individual entries in this series, at least so far, absolutely show the plucky underdogs of the Calamity poking the evil, rapacious, megacorps in the collective eye with a big sharp stick and getting away with it – for now.

But those megacorps are truly evil examples of the old adage about power corrupting and absolute power corrupting absolutely – and they really do rule their ‘verse. I hope that the crew of the Calamity can somehow manage to acquire a big enough ‘stick’ to poke them all where it will really, really hurt – no matter how unlikely that seems in anything like our reality.

I certainly intend to follow any continuing adventures of Temper and company – and this book absolutely does read as though there will BE more – to find out!

Grade A #AudioBookReview: Tea You at the Altar by Rebecca Thorne

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | A Reviews> audio reviews> audiobooks> book reviews
Grade A #AudioBookReview: Tea You at the Altar by Rebecca ThorneTea You at the Altar (Tomes & Tea #3) by Rebecca Thorne
Narrator: Jessica Threet
Format: audiobook, eARC
Source: supplied by publisher via Edelweiss, supplied by publisher via Libro.fm
Formats available: paperback, ebook, audiobook
Genres: cozy fantasy, epic fantasy, fantasy romance
Series: Tomes and Tea #3
Pages: 336
Length: 11 hours and 41 minutes
Published by Bramble Romance, Macmillan Audio on March 4, 2025
Purchasing Info: Author's Website, Publisher's Website, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Bookshop.org, Better World Books
Goodreads

The Princess Bride meets Travis Baldree in Tea You at the Altar, the third cosy fantasy in Rebecca Thorne's bestselling Tomes & Tea series. Our sapphic adventurers must navigate the ultimate maelstrom – their own wedding!
Kianthe and Reyna are ready to finally walk down the aisle, and in just seven days their wedding of a wifetime will become a reality. There's still so much to do but, like all best-laid plans, everything seems to be going awry.
Their baby dragons are causing mayhem in the town of Tawney, and Kianthe’s uptight parents have invited themselves to the wedding. Yet, worst of all, Reyna has become embroiled in a secret plot to overthrow Queen Tilaine. The world seems against them – and how are they going to live long enough to say ‘I do’?

My Review:

The Tomes & Tea Quartet has turned out to be an epitome of cozy fantasy romance – something I don’t think anyone expected when Can’t Spell Treason Without Tea came out pretty much directly in the wake of Travis Baldree’s Legends & Lattes and we were all very much there for it because there wasn’t anything else like either of them at the time.

Of course, there is now because they’re both oh-so-good and they have very much of the same feels and yet they’re not nearly as much like each other as appeared at first blush. And all the blushes thereafter.

The thing about cozy fantasy is that, while bad things do happen to good people, the bad things aren’t necessarily all that bad – and they tend to get resolved in peaceful – or at least bloodless – ways.

But Tomes & Tea has hewed a bit closer to its fantasy roots in that there really is true evil afoot in the person of capricious, rapacious Queen Tilaine, and the solution to the Queendom’s – and the whole world’s tyrant queen problem is going to involve some political shenanigans, some dangerous skullduggery, and a certain amount of outright treason.

In other words, this is the story where Kianthe and Reyna stage a coup against the very queen that Reyna once swore fealty to as a Queensguard. The thing about staging a coup is that both successful and failed versions of that act generally end up bloody. The only question is which side the blood belongs to, with the answer generally being both – and LOTS of it.

But this coup is all wrapped up in lace and chiffon, as the overthrow is intended to occur in the literal middle of Reyna and Kianthe’s wedding. But that’s only if they manage to get all their ducks and pirates in a row, wrangle the townspeople of Tawney AND Kianthe’s estranged parents, keep last-minute suitors for both brides at bay and, last but absolutely not least, find a second-choice candidate for Queen to stand against Tilaine – because their first and otherwise only contender just said “not just no but hells no” and has managed to make it stick in spite of all the pressure to change her mind.

Escape Rating A: I was intending to savor this a bit. After all, it’s the next-to-the-last entry in the Tomes & Tea series, and I’m not going to be ready for it to end, even at the end of the next book. Probably no one else will be, either.

But I was listening to this in audio, the narrator Jessica Threet was doing a lovely job, the story was proceeding at a lively but not breakneck pace – it’s not that kind of story – and I realized that the cozy pace was beautifully concealing an ever ratcheting amount of underlying tension and I just couldn’t wait any longer and read the last third in a rush because it was just time for the other boot to fall, for Queen Tilaine to crash the party, and for someone’s world AND worldview to come crashing down.

Hopefully Tilaine’s, but I’d reached the point where I HAD to know, my patience was out, and another hour was going to see me through to the end if I was willing to stay up for it.

Which, of course, I was. And I did. And OMG the damn thing ends on a huge and downright shocking and even painful cliffhanger and the final book in the quartet, Alchemy and a Cup of Tea, won’t be published until August 12 but I already have an eARC and I doubt I’ll be able to wait that long to find out what happens next. And finally.

Kianthe and Reyna have earned their happy ever after, they deserve it, they’re entitled to it, and I can’t wait to see it happen. And I probably won’t. Wait that is. (Wherever the line was when they were passing out patience, I didn’t start out with nearly enough to stand in it and wait to get more.)

If you LOVE cozy fantasy, you’re going to leave Tea You at the Altar already itching for the finale and looking for something to tide you over in the meantime. Alchemy and a Cup of Tea isn’t coming until August. The next Legends & Lattes book, Brigands & Breadknives, isn’t coming  until NOVEMBER, so that won’t help with the tiding over unless you need to get caught up and/or want to indulge in a reread while you wait.

If you haven’t had a chance to blush over Kimberly Lemming’s Mead Mishaps series, (That Time I Got Drunk and Saved a Demon, That Time I Got Drunk and Yeeted a Love Potion at a Werewolf, and That Time I Got Drunk and Saved a Human (yes, there’s a theme here!)), that series has a very similar vibe to both Legends & Lattes AND Tomes & Tea, (including the pirates!) and is just plain cozy – and even sexier – fantasy romance fun and should keep the vibe going long enough to get to Alchemy and a Cup of Tea – along with plenty of cups of tea, of course!

A+ #BookReview: Swordheart by T. Kingfisher

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | A+ Reviews> book reviews
A+ #BookReview: Swordheart by T. KingfisherSwordheart by T. Kingfisher
Format: eARC
Source: supplied by publisher via Edelweiss
Formats available: hardcover, paperback, ebook, audiobook
Genres: epic fantasy, fantasy, fantasy romance, romantasy
Series: World of the White Rat #3
Pages: 448
Published by Bramble Romance on November 27, 2018
Purchasing Info: Author's Website, Publisher's Website, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Bookshop.org, Better World Books
Goodreads

The delightful charm of The Princess Bride meets the delicious bodyguard romance of From Blood and Ashin this cozy fantasy romance from New York Times bestselling author T. Kingfisher

Halla has unexpectedly inherited the estate of a wealthy uncle. Unfortunately, she is also saddled with money-hungry relatives full of devious plans for how to wrest the inheritance away from her.

While locked in her bedroom, Halla inspects the ancient sword that's been collecting dust on the wall since before she moved in. Out of desperation, she unsheathes it―and suddenly a man appears. His name is Sarkis, he tells her, and he is an immortal warrior trapped in a prison of enchanted steel.

My Review:

Swordheart begins the way that a LOT of T. Kingfisher’s fantasies seem to begin, with a woman coming to the unwelcome realization that the only way she’s going to get out of the trouble she has found herself in through absolutely no fault of her own is to put on her ‘big girl panties’ and deal with it.

And that she doesn’t have nearly as much time as she’d like to locate those panties – because she hasn’t seen them in ages. If ever. Or in Halla’s case, whether she has ever owned a pair in her whole, entire life.

What she does have is a really big problem. Lucky for her, she has an equally big sword to cut through that problem. And thereby, as the saying goes, hangs a tale. And, quite probably and totally deservedly, more than a few miscreants along the way.

This shouldn’t be the beginning of an adventure story, but it is. Not because Halla sees herself as having EVER been built for adventures, but because that’s what happens to mousey women with overbearing relatives who have just come into possession of sizable estates due to the largesse of dead relatives who believe they are doing a ‘good thing’. And they are, or they would be, if the world were a bit more fair or if the rest of their remaining family were a bit less grasping.

But that’s NEVER the case, is it?

Halla has been keeping house for her great-uncle-by-marriage for over a decade. The man was a querulous old bastard, but he took her in when his nephew, her husband, died young and left her penniless. He gave Halla purpose, food and board and lodging, and in return she kept his house until he died and he left her his ENTIRE estate. Not that she hadn’t earned it, not that she didn’t deserve it, but her greedy, grasping, overbearing aunt-by-marriage and said aunt’s utterly obedient and utterly-under-his-mother’s- thumb son (with clammy hands) had plans for the old man’s property that can still be brought within their grasping grasp by marrying Halla to her cousin. Not that she’ll survive long after that.

Which is where the sword comes in. A sword that Halla intends to plunge through her own heart – if she can just figure out how to make THAT work. But first she has to draw the sword.

And then she has to figure out what to do with the MAN who appears in her room in a flash of light to Halla’s complete and utter embarrassment – and his. Because she’s half naked to get her clothing out of the way of the plunge and his heart has just started beating – for her.

Escape Rating A+: Swordheart was just so damn much fun. I want to cackle in glee at the very thought of this story. In fact, I still am. This turned out to be one of those books that I read in a day and didn’t even care that I was shedding used tissues by the score because I had a cold. I didn’t even care about the cold. I was just gone and really happy to be so.

Halla reminds me so, so much of some of the author’s other protagonists, especially Hester Chatham from A Sorceress Comes to Call. Who, in turn, seemed like the sister from another mister to Miss Percy from Quenby Olson’s, Miss Percy’s Pocket Guide to the Care and Feeding of British Dragons, meaning that if you liked any one of these three you’re going to love the others just as much.

I’ve also read several other books about swords either with a person inside or swords with minds of their own. The first I remember is the sword Need from the Vows and Honor trilogy in Mercedes’ Lackey’s long-running Valdemar series. So the idea isn’t new, exactly, but it’s certainly used to marvelous effect in Swordheart.

Also, Swordheart itself isn’t exactly new. If it sounds familiar, that’s because the book was originally published in 2018 with a considerably more understated cover. Putting it in front of readers again with THIS gorgeous cover is fan-damn-tastic.

Because the book is just so good and so much fun. I adored Halla – not so much at the beginning when she seems to be a bit of a doormat – but once she takes her life into her own hands – AT LAST – she’s terrific. Because she’s scared and has doubts and admits that she doesn’t know what she’s doing and is WAY outside her comfort zone but moves forward anyway.

Halla should be the patron saint of ‘fake it ‘til she makes it’ in the World of the White Rat.

While the adventure that Halla and Sarkis – the man trapped in the sword – find themselves undertaking is terrific, it’s the romance that makes this book sing. Not just because it’s understated – although it is – and not even because this book stands firmly on both its literary feet in that the fantasy would hold up without the romance and the romance would hold up without the fantasy. It’s that the romance feels oh-so-real and doesn’t shy away from the problems inherent in their relationship.

AND of course because it’s a romance between people who have years and mileage and baggage and fall in love not in spite of all of that but because of all that. They are the right people for each other NOW, where they might not have been at any previous time in either of their lives.

That this is now grouped into a whole entire series that begins with the Clocktaur War series in Clockwork Boys, pulls in this lovely story of Swordheart and moves right along into the marvelous Saint of Steel series (Paladin’s Grace, etc.) just makes the depths of the worldbuilding so much richer and deeper. I loved that we got yet another terrific character from the Temple of the White Rat in this one, and that it’s the LAWYER of all people who ends up saving the day for everyone.

(I have to confess that I sincerely hope that one of these days the author gets around to telling Bishop Beartongue’s story. Because she’s fascinating and OMG that has to be a doozy.)

In short, although I seldom am, I loved Swordheart and my only regret is that I didn’t read it sooner. Out of the corner of my eye I can see Clockwork Boys rapidly ascending the virtually towering TBR pile to tide me over while I wait for What Stalks the Deep, the next book in the author’s Sworn Soldier series, to come out in the fall.

A+ #BookReview: Fiasco by Constance Fay

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | A+ Reviews> book reviews
A+ #BookReview: Fiasco by Constance FayFiasco (Uncharted Hearts, #2) by Constance Fay
Format: eARC
Source: supplied by publisher via Edelweiss
Formats available: paperback, ebook, audiobook
Genres: science fiction, science fiction romance, space opera
Series: Uncharted Hearts #2
Pages: 352
Published by Bramble Romance on June 4, 2024
Purchasing Info: Author's Website, Publisher's Website, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Bookshop.org, Better World Books
Goodreads

Equal parts steamy interstellar romance and sci-fi adventure, Constance Fay's FIASCO is a perfect wild romp amidst the stars.
Cynbelline Khaw is a woman of many names. She’s Generosity, a cultist who never quite fit in. She’s Bella, the daughter who failed to save her cousin’s life. And then there’s Cyn, the notorious bounty hunter who spaced a ship of slavers.
She’s exhausted, lonely, and on her very last legs―but then a new client offers her a job she can’t refuse: a bounty on the kidnapper who killed her cousin. All Cyn has to do is partner with the crew of the Calamity, a scouting vessel she encountered when she was living under a previous alias. One tiny little issue, she’s been given an additional deliver the oh-so-compelling medic, Micah Arora, to the treacherous Pierce Family or all her identities will be revealed, putting her estranged family in danger.
Hunting a kidnapper doesn’t usually mean accidentally taking your sexy new target to dinner at your parent’s house, a local mystic predicting you’ll have an increasingly large number of children, or being accompanied by a small flying lizard with a penchant for eating metal, but, as they field investigative hurdles both dangerous and preposterous, Cyn and Micah grow ever closer. When a violent confrontation reveals that everything Cyn thought about her past is wrong, she realizes that she has the power to change her future. The first part of that is making sure that Micah Arora is around to be a part of it.

My Review:

Bounty hunter Cynbelline Khaw has traveled aboard the Calamity before – back when it was the Quest and she was masquerading as the poor, brainwashed cultist Generosity as part of her bounty to rescue one of the real brainwashed cultists in the first book in the Uncharted Hearts series, Calamity.

A job that the crew of the Calamity kept getting in the way of – because they believed Cyn’s persona was the real thing.

A belief that Cyn now has to test from the other side, as her current bounty requires her to join the crew of the Calamity in her bounty hunter persona in order to rescue the abducted daughter of one of her ‘verse’s most powerful families from the kidnapper who broke her own.

Making this mission oh-so-personal for Cyn. But it’s also personal for at least one member of the Calamity’s crew, Arcadio Escajeda. He’s the captain’s partner (their story is told in the first book in the Uncharted Hearts series, Calamity) AND, more importantly for this particular mission, the victim is his niece.

But it turns out to be even more personal for Calamity’s medic, Micah Arora. He may not know the victim or the Abyssal Abductor who has taken her, but he certainly does know Cyn. And knows exactly who she is – and who she was the last time she was aboard.

Which means that he doesn’t trust her a bit this time around. And he shouldn’t. Because while she may be publicly chasing the bounty of the Abyssal Abductor, she’s also chasing the bounty on him – whether he deserves it or not.

Because her pursuit of the Abyssal Abductor has already cost her family enough, especially on top of the lost ransom they paid for the cousin they weren’t able to save. That her current pursuit has put her family in the crosshairs of the powerful mercantile family that owns the entire planet her family lives on and everything and everyone on it means that she can’t afford to do anything that risks their lives.

At least not anything more than she’s already done – even if it risks the heart she swears she no longer has.

Escape Rating A+: They still have me at Serenity. Seriously, the resemblance to Firefly, particularly the way this ‘verse is set up, is very apparent, very much fine, and still very, very shiny.

Now that we’re two books in, however, the resemblance to Nina Croft’s Dark Desires series is a whole lot stronger, as both series are science fiction romances (or space romances as that’s a term I’m seeing more frequently) where there’s a ship of misfits, a ragtag crew of antiheroes who each find their HEA with the most unlikely people in even more unlikely places, in a ‘verse where much too much is controlled by merchant empire families who have strangleholds on entirely too many critical planets and resources.

What makes this particular entry in the Uncharted Hearts series so damn good no matter what it might remind me of is the heel turn of this particular plot. Cyn is chasing the Abyssal Abductor, because said Abductor abducted her cousin early in their crime spree, didn’t receive the ransom because of seriously extenuating circumstances, and then killed young Aymbe because that’s the MO. If they receive the ransom the abductee goes free. If they don’t, the family gets coordinates to a deep ocean abyssal dump site.

Cyn has privately pursued the Abyssal Abductor ever since, and has cut off her family, in more ways than one, in order to continue that pursuit. It’s only as the crew of the Calamity closes in on the Abductor’s latest victim that Cyn learns about all the cracks in all of her deeply held beliefs about her cousin, her childhood, her family, and pretty much everything else she thought she knew.

Ultimately, this is a story about the truth setting one free – only to be caught up in a huge lie that makes one even freer. Not to mention more available for the romance that one tried to pretend one didn’t need or want or even have time for.

This is a story where I got into it for the plot I thought I was going to get – and found myself more deeply captivated by the one I actually got. I particularly felt for Cyn and her desperate need to get away from her family’s expectations and disappointment in her for not meeting them – even as I cheered for the way that they (mostly) rose to the terrible parts of this occasion and equation right along with her.

I’ve just learned that the title of the third book in the Uncharted Hearts series will be Chaos, coming out in February, 2025. As much as I’m wondering what could possibly make the third story any more chaotic than books 1 and 2, I can’t wait to see how the crew of the Calamity manages to get themselves out of it!

Review: Calamity by Constance Fay

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | A+ Reviews> book reviews
Review: Calamity by Constance FayCalamity (Uncharted Hearts, #1) by Constance Fay
Format: eARC
Source: supplied by publisher via NetGalley
Formats available: paperback, ebook, audiobook
Genres: science fiction, science fiction romance, space opera
Series: Uncharted Hearts #1
Pages: 320
Published by Bramble Romance on November 14, 2023
Purchasing Info: Author's Website, Publisher's Website, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Bookshop.org, Better World Books
Goodreads

Bramble's inaugural debut is equal parts steamy interstellar romance and sci-fi adventure, perfect for fans of Firefly and Ilona Andrews.
She’s got a ramshackle spaceship, a misfit crew, and a big problem with its sexy newest member…
Temperance Reed, banished from the wealthy and dangerous Fifteen Families, just wants to keep her crew together after their feckless captain ran off with the intern. But she’s drowning in debt and revolutionary new engine technology is about to make her beloved ship obsolete.
Enter Arcadio Escajeda. Second child of the terrifying Escajeda Family, he’s the thorn in Temper’s side as they’re sent off on a scouting mission on the backwater desert planet of Herschel 2. They throw sparks every time they meet but Temper’s suspicions of his ulterior motives only serve to fuel the flames between them.
Despite volcanic eruptions, secret cultists, and deadly galactic fighters, the greatest threat on this mission may be to Temper’s heart.

My Review:

They had me at Firefly. Seriously. I’m still a sucker for another trip on anything like the Serenity, and Calamity, both the ship and the person she’s named for, certainly flies a very similar trajectory out in the black.

But Temperance Reed, infamous as just ‘Temper’ for damn good reasons, isn’t really all that much like Mal Reynolds. Mal seems to have started life close to the bottom in his ‘verse, while Temperance Reed, once upon a time, was at the top of hers.

However, being a soldier imploded his life, being the younger sister of an entitled asshole blew up hers, and they both end up in the same place, as captains of scrappy, ramshackle ships they can barely manage to keep flying, with misfit crews, taking jobs they know they shouldn’t take but can’t afford to turn down, making the best of the bad hand that life has dealt them.

Once upon a time, Temper Reed was the child of one of the ‘Ten’, one of the mega-rich, mega-corp, mercantile families that control their galaxy. But the problem with Temper wasn’t so much her temper as it was her older brother’s. He was the heir, she was the spare, but she was their parents’ favorite.

So once they were gone, his insecurities and megalomania combined to take her family’s development in a direction she knew her parents would never have condoned. Instead of continuing to create cutting-edge tech utilizing AI and language processing, her brother Frederick turned them into a ruthless slice and dice operation that just killed off competition – literally – and then swooped in to buy out the remainders.

They stopped creating. And Temper stopped believing, to the point where she rebelled and he officially disowned and banished her to the unregulated black. There’s more to that story, and it’s all awful. Awfully well told and revealed, but still awful.

Temper and her crew are on borrowed time, and the ship is in hock up to Temper’s eyebrows. So when one of the really big conglomerate families offers them a job with premium pay, Temper knows she has to take it, even though she also knows that they’re concealing a whole lot of the details about what’s really going on,  AND that she and her crew are expendable in the first place and they don’t plan to pay them even if they survive.

What she doesn’t expect is a corporate minder in the much too handsome and appealing person of one of the family’s younger sons, Arcadio Escajeda. She’s sure she can ignore her hormones in favor of the common sense that’s telling her that family scions in good standing absolutely do not take up with banished and reviled traitors to their own families.

While Temper may be swimming up the River DeNial, wherever that might be located in her ‘verse, it’s not Arcadio’s perfectly sculpted hotness that throws her good sense over its shoulder and takes it along for the ride – it’s his willingness to truly BE a part of her crew no matter how boring or dangerous the duty might be. Along with just how damn good he is at helping her save them all.

Temper, apparently, is a sucker for competence. While Arcadio turns out to be a sucker for Calamity.

Escape Rating A+: Damn this is fun. Or should I say shiny. Fun, absolutely, utterly fun. I had a terrific time reading this. It’s a wild thrill ride of a science fiction adventure with a (dare I say it?) core of molten lava in multiple senses of all those words.

But a big chunk of the reason I loved it was because of just how well it fits into the science fiction romance tradition – which has never gotten near as much love as it deserves. So I have hopes that Tor Books’ creation of the Bramble imprint, specifically for the purpose of publishing science fiction romance, will do a lot to turn that tide.

The thing about SFR as a genre is that it has to sit on the fence between SF and romance and not get too many splinters up its ass from either side – unless it turns out that the romantic partners are into that sort of thing. Which means that the worldbuilding and plotting has to tell a credible SF story while putting a romance with at least a HFN (that’s Happy For Now), at its heart.

It’s not that it hasn’t been done, because it most definitely has. While Firefly hinted at it – frequently and often – that wasn’t the heart of that story. And the blurb’s mention of Ilona Andrews isn’t quite right as most of her work has been urban fantasy. Compelling with wonderful storytelling and world creation, but not SFR except for her short but marvelous Kinsmen series.

Instead, the comparisons are to Rachel Bach’s Paradox series, Valerie Valdes’ more recent Chilling Effect series, K.B. Wagers’ Indranan War, and even going back to Nina Croft’s Dark Desires series and further back to Lois McMaster Bujold’s long-running Vorkosigan Saga.

I can’t leave that list without mentioning the marvelous – and marvelously prolific – Anna Hackett, who has created some truly terrific universes, terribly rapacious villains, and steam-up-the spaceship windows SFR series for anyone who loves a rollicking good SF adventure with a steamy heart. (If you like the sound of Calamity, or if you loved any of the above mentioned, check out Hackett’s Eon Warriors series and its sequels for some excellent SFR!)

Between its background of mercantile, family-run empires, unhinged heirs and abusive siblings, battered smugglers and their ships along with its story of a star-crossed romance with a change, Calamity is a worthwhile successor to any and all of the above. And if Tor Books’ creation of Bramble makes readers re-evaluate just how great a taste it can be to add a bit of romance to their SF, that’s all to the good.

Because Calamity manages to straddle that fence very, very well. The world is solidly built, the heroes are just the right level of ragtag, Temper is most definitely interestingly flawed but still striving, and the mission is exciting and FUBAR’d at the same time – just as it should be.

The romance between Temper and Arcadio has the deliciousness of being oh-so-right, oh-so-wrong and oh-so-big-a-mistake wrapped up in a dangerous package that hits all the right places, with all the intrusive wink-wink, nod-nod poking from the crew needed to make it both sweet and spectacle at the same time. While the save-the-mission-and-maybe-die-trying ending was just the kind of wild ride that SF readers love.

Which I most certainly did.

Calamity is both the author’s debut novel AND the book that marks the kickoff for Bramble, and it’s a grand book to carry both of those banners. I can’t wait to see what else they have in store for SFR lovers in the months to come. And Temper will be back next June in Fiasco, which, if Calamity is anything to go by, will probably be filled with oodles of fiascos for Temper and her crew while delivering another kickass science fiction adventure wrapped around a fantastic romance!