Review: Fortune’s Pawn by Rachel Bach

œFortune's Pawn by Rachel BachFormat read: ebook provided by NetGalley
Formats available: ebook, paperback, audiobook
Genre: science fiction romance
Series: Paradox, #1
Length: 341 pages
Publisher: Orbit
Date Released: November 5, 2013
Purchasing Info: Author’s Website, Publisher’s Website, Goodreads, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Book Depository

Devi Morris isn’t your average mercenary. She has plans. Big ones. And a ton of ambition. It’s a combination that’s going to get her killed one day – but not just yet.

That is, until she just gets a job on a tiny trade ship with a nasty reputation for surprises. The Glorious Fool isn’t misnamed: it likes to get into trouble, so much so that one year of security work under its captain is equal to five years everywhere else. With odds like that, Devi knows she’s found the perfect way to get the jump on the next part of her Plan. But the Fool doesn’t give up its secrets without a fight, and one year on this ship might be more than even Devi can handle.

If Sigouney Weaver in Alien met Starbuck in Battlestar Galactica, you’d get Deviana Morris — a hot new mercenary earning her stripes to join an elite fighting force. Until one alien bite throws her whole future into jeopardy.

My Review:

I picked this up because I wanted more SF after the awesome Ancillary Justice, and this was the “if you liked this you’ll like that” recommendation in my kindle app.

For once, Amazon was right.

Fortune’s Pawn is space opera SF with just a touch of romance. But don’t let the romance stop you from picking this one up. The romance may or may not be incidental to the long-term plot, but it isn’t the main thrust of this particular story.

This is Deviana Morris’ story, and Devi is a mercenary with a ton of ambition, as well as an armored suit that she refers to in the third person. Considering how often the Lady Gray saves Devi’s ass, I’d probably think of the suit as a person too.

Devi wants to become a Devastator. Not that she isn’t already frequently devastating, but the Devastators are THE elite mercenary unit from her home system, Paradox. You don’t apply to become a Devastator. If you live long enough as a merc to get a big enough rep, the Devastators find you.

After 9 years of increasing seniority, Devi wants a short cut. That short cut leads through a security gig on a ship named The Glorious Fool. The way that the Fool draws trouble, it’s debatable whether the named fool is the ship, her captain, or Devi for signing on.

Everyone seems to be after the ship. At first, Devi thinks that the captain is just unlucky. But the longer she is aboard, the more she discovers of the secrets that the ship hides, and that the crew is hiding from her.

The universe is way more dangerous than even Devi imagined. Lucky for her, she is damned hard to kill. And even harder to fight around.

Escape Rating A+: Clearly I need to read more SF again, because I’ve been loving every story I get my hands on. Of course, I could just be picking the great ones for a change.

There are secrets in Devi’s universe, huge ones. The Glorious Fool and her crew are obviously not what they seem to be. But it’s more than that. Everyone on the ship is pretending to be much less deadly than they really are, because the universe is much more deadly than almost anyone knows.

The secret at the heart of this dangerous game is more horrifying than Devi imagined. Not just what has happened, but what is being allowed to happen, and to whom and in whose name. If you think River Tam was the scariest space girl you’ve ever met, just wait until you discover Ren.

Devi is a terrific point of view character because she fights everything and everyone to get what she wants, needs, or simply to survive. She never gives up. She knows that as a mercenary her gender can be a liability, so she does everything she can to use every tool she has to do what she feels is necessary. She lets other fighters underestimate her, and then she shoots them. She’s also a gun and armor nut, but then, that’s both a survival skill and the reason she became a merc in the first place.

The blurb says Devi is a combination of Ripley and Starbuck. The person she reminds me most of is Torin Kerr in Tanya Huff’s Valor Series. Not just because Torin is also a female soldier who fights with everything she has, but also because Torin finds herself in a similar situation to Devi. There is something out there that is hidden, and Torin is fighting it while figuring out what it is she is fighting, and while it fights back in ways that she’s never seen before.

honors knight by rachel bachIf you love space opera, get Fortune’s Pawn. I loved this one so much that I couldn’t bear to see it end, and went straight into Honor’s Knight.

***FTC Disclaimer: Most books reviewed on this site have been provided free of charge by the publisher, author or publicist. Some books we have purchased with our own money or borrowed from a public library and will be noted as such. Any links to places to purchase books are provided as a convenience, and do not serve as an endorsement by this blog. All reviews are the true and honest opinion of the blogger reviewing the book. The method of acquiring the book does not have a bearing on the content of the review.

Review: Ancillary Justice by Ann Leckie

ancillary justice by ann leckieFormat read: ebook provided by NetGalley
Formats available: ebook, paperback, audiobook
Genre: science fiction
Series: Imperial Radch, #1
Length: 410 pages
Publisher: Orbit
Date Released: October 1, 2013
Purchasing Info: Author’s Website, Publisher’s Website, Goodreads, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Book Depository

On a remote, icy planet, the soldier known as Breq is drawing closer to completing her quest.

Breq is both more than she seems and less than she was. Years ago, she was the Justice of Toren–a colossal starship with an artificial intelligence linking thousands of corpse soldiers in the service of the Radch, the empire that conquered the galaxy.

An act of treachery has ripped it all away, leaving her with only one fragile human body. And only one purpose–to revenge herself on Anaander Mianaai, many-bodied, near-immortal Lord of the Radch.

My Review:

Part of the fascination with Ancillary Justice is the hidden nature (or natures) of the first-person protagonist.

As the story progresses, we see how Breq got to be who and where she is, and why. But it’s all told from her multiple first-person perspectives, and the past flows into the present.

Time is not the only thing that’s fluid. We don’t discover whether Breq is male or female until the end. And it doesn’t really matter to the story, except that it’s unknown. Breq doesn’t seem to care, and it doesn’t affect how people treat her. She’s too busy worrying about whether or not she is faking being human well enough to give a thought to her gender or lack thereof.

Breq used to be a ship. She also used to be a person. She considers herself the last remaining ancillary of the ship Justice of Toren, and not an individual. Or a citizen. Or a lot of other things.

The fascinating thing about Breq is that the whole rationale behind her journey proves that she is an individual after all. She, and she alone, makes changes in the universe, because she is on a question to avenge a friend.

She just needs to take down an immortal emperor to do so.

The story feels like Breq’s quest for personhood. Somewhat the way that Data always wanted to be more human. The difference is that Breq used to be human, over 2,000 years ago, before she became an ancillary. She doesn’t seem to care who she was before, and she misses having all the other parts of herself that she had when she was Justice of Toren.

She’s on a quest, and that’s the only thing that matters to her. Also saving the galaxy, or at least the imperium.

The story gets bigger and bigger as it goes, even as Breq’s perspective narrows from the all-seeing ship to the one-seeing Breq. The irony is that as Breq comes to accept and even rely on her single-point of view, the multi-bodied emperor is fighting a civil war with herself. Unfortunately, the emperor’s divided mind is housed in multiple bodies, all of which are gathering adherents, and soldiers.

Breq’s quest to get the emperor’s undivided attention is bigger, badder and more convoluted than it seems. But incredibly awesome.

Escape Rating A: Now I understand what all the fuss is about. Ancillary Justice has been nominated for just about every SF award possible this year (it won the Nebula) and it’s definitely justified.

Breq’s story is part of the slow reveal of the plot, the characters, the universe and everything past and present. She always sees herself as an outsider, but she doesn’t always see herself. She’s so used to being one of many that she doesn’t quite accept herself as one of one.

There is a lot of fluidity to the way this story is presented. Not just that Breq doesn’t present herself as gendered, but that she has difficulty determining which gender others belong to. Her own language doesn’t have gendered pronouns, everyone is a citizen, or not. I found that some characters that Breq presents as “she” other characters name as “he”. Breq seems to see everyone as like herself, or thinks that female is the dominant gender, or just can’t see how it matters except as yet another way to make a mistake in address or behavior.

I will also say that reading this book gave me a terrible book hangover. The story wasn’t done, I wasn’t done, and I just couldn’t make myself leave. I ended up finally reading Fortune’s Pawn by Rachel Bach, because I wanted to stay in an SF-nal universe, even if I couldn’t go back to Imperial Radch just yet.

ancillary sword by ann leckieBut I will. The next book in the trilogy, Ancillary Sword, is due this October.

***FTC Disclaimer: Most books reviewed on this site have been provided free of charge by the publisher, author or publicist. Some books we have purchased with our own money or borrowed from a public library and will be noted as such. Any links to places to purchase books are provided as a convenience, and do not serve as an endorsement by this blog. All reviews are the true and honest opinion of the blogger reviewing the book. The method of acquiring the book does not have a bearing on the content of the review.