On Impact: A Review
Recently I had the opportunity to read an ARC (advance reader’s copy) of On Impact, book 2 of the Reliance Sinclair space opera series, by Heather Texle. As is the ongoing gimmick in SPSFCASS, I read and reviewed the first book in the series On Impulse, for the SPSFC back in ’23, and so I was sent the next one to check out. Yay!
I enjoyed the first book in this series and was happy to come back to the team and the premise that had been set up there. I wanted to know what our heroes Reliance, Walnut, Felix and the rest (okay, Wright is fine too) had been up to, what was next for them in their struggle against the techno-corporate war machine, and maybe settle some old scores along the way.
– Edpool, during the previous bookIko is a real cunt and if he doesn’t get his just desserts at the end I’m giving this book three stars … I know he was a plot device but he was a very irritating plot device, and I wanted him to face creative mob-honour justice for his crime of being a useless piece of shit.
I definitely did go in this time thinking I’d give the book three stars if Iko wasn’t kicked really hard in the balls, and this had become something of a running joke and I am a sucker for a well-drawn-out running joke. But anyway. That was my stance and I’m sticking to it.
In the previous installment of the series, Reliance Sinclair went up against a mad scientist and the sinister forces behind the mad scientist and ended up with a chip inserted in her, and a cute fuzzy hamster as a companion (which is better than getting a chip as a companion and … well). She also teamed up with Wright and the unit that were tracking her for the crime she didn’t commit, and – well I’ll try not to spoil this story or the previous one, but the Big Bad kind of got away with it (because sometimes blowing the lid off things just gets you scalded) and the mad scientist had a mad acolyte who wound up in a sci-fi bughouse. Cue the main driving points of this story, specifically:
Mad acolyte returns!Brain chip causing health problems!Forbidden weapons escalation!Quid pro quo, Clarice Reliance!This story at once continues the setup of the first book, raises the stakes, and puts our protagonists into a new case together. There’s some friction, not only with Reliance and the fallout from her adventures in the previous story, but with the little complication of her brain chip causing neurological problems that hamper her ability to do her job, and ultimately drive her to make some pretty dangerous choices.
Were they they right choices? I’ll let you be the judge of that. But as is so often the case, with haunted pasts and dangerous choices come secrets, and it is the secrets – particularly between Reliance and Wright – that cause the real issues.
This is all handled nicely against a backdrop of an action/intrigue story that clips along nice and fast and has plenty of exciting little action pieces and some great character interactions. The team has to find some gnarly augmented bad guys, prevent a war from breaking out that will kill millions and make a ton of money for the corporate military industrial complex, and live to fight another day. Preferably while making sure Walnut has plenty of carrots and Felix doesn’t have to sic the cleaning robots on anyone for their own good.
I really enjoyed the story – none of it got in the way of itself, which is impressive when you’re spinning a set of trope-plates including a Stakes Could Not Be Higher, a Haunted Past, a couple of Keeping Secrets For Noble Reasons Kind Of, and a Chain ‘O Command Romance for good measure. I made most of those up but you know what I mean. Any one of these plot points had the potential to derail the whole story and make it drag, but they didn’t. They all worked together nicely. Which is more than I can say for Reliance and her pals, a lot of the time. But you know. They’ll get it. Maybe she can attach her blaster to her wrist with a loop of wool like a kid with mittens. That’ll solve, like, 90% of her problems right there!
There were a few other little things I noticed in the first book, such as the moderate but slightly heavy-handed ageism and the focus on wardrobe and appearance changes, that were toned right down in this part. It wasn’t like they needed to be fixed – indeed, I appreciated these things as statements in the first book – but they did not need to be repeated and their dialling-back left room for other themes and storytelling tricks to be fleshed out more. Reliance’s dilemma concerning the chip, of course, first and foremost – and most likely further facets of that will be explored as we continue.
And I for one can’t wait!
Sex-o-meter
So what do we have on the ol’ sex-o-meter? Well, Reliance female gazes the shit out of Wright, so there’s that. For the most part they keep it in their pants and focus on the mission, though. I noted in the previous book that Reliance and Wright had a real will-they-won’t-they thing going on that would probably continue, and I was … Wright about that. Now the sex-o-meter is just mad about that pun, and is giving On Impact a single raised middle finger out of a bionically-enhanced seven-armed person giving the finger seven times. I think it secretly liked the pun.
Gore-o-meter
As in the last book, we have a bit of cyber-gore and body-modification, and a few killings, but all in all it’s not a particularly gory one. Two flesh-gobbets out of a possible five once again for this installment.
WTF-o-meter
On Impact is another very solid conspiracy / adventure / manhunt procedural with some intrigue and a couple of puzzles, but not much deep crazy WTF. The only truly un-answerable question in the book was whether you’d rather have a robot cat AI avatar, or a chip-enhanced super guinea pig as a pet. And that remains an open question, because both Felix and ol’ potato butt had some wonderful moments in this story. I am also uncertain what the “impact” was that the title refers to in its ongoing theme, but I don’t know if I’d call it “WTF”. The WTF-o-meter gives this a Nyif Nyif out of a possible Boo.
My Final Verdict
This was another great adventure in the Reliance Sinclair series. Lots of fun and easy to read, with a good clear plot and plenty of action and enjoyable characters and dialogue to keep it rolling along. I cared about what happened to all of them. Especially Iko. Four stars! Read into that what you will.
I’m defaulting to the problematically gendered but theoretically gender-neutral “bad guys” here because “baddies” has also shifted in meaning and is also now weirdly gendered and I don’t want to give you the wrong idea, we’re talking about villains of various genders here and one of them has even bigger pecs than Wright although they’re really more off-putting than comforting and I would hesitate to acknowledge that this makes him what I’d call a baddie, but I digress. Disgracefully.
