ربما تحلق الكابتن لانا فايفورلدز مع نفس الطاقم المتنوع من غير الأسوياء، لكن مشاكلها جديدة تماماً.
تعتقد لانا أن عميلها المتطلب والصعب على متن سفينتها الفضائية المحبوبة - جرافيتي روز - هو خلاصة مشاكلها. ولكن كان ذلك حتى اضطرت إلى الخندق الطارئ داخل نظام نجمي يحمل مجموعة كاملة من الأسرار القاتلة.
هناك النوايا القاتلة للحكومة المحلية بنواياها القاتلة مع طبقتها الأرستقراطية التي تملك العبيد لمواجهتها، ناهيك عن المتمردين الذين لا يرحمون الذين يحاولون الإطاحة بالنظام. ثم هناك السفينة الفضائية المجهولة بحجم القمر التي تقفز إلى النظام كل بضعة قرون، إلى جانب فرصة الحصول على ثروات لا توصف. أو فرصة الموت، حسناً، بشكل فظيع جداً.
Stephen Hunt is a British writer living in London. His first fantasy novel, For the Crown and the Dragon, was published in 1994, and introduced a young officer, Taliesin, fighting for the Queen of England in a Napoleonic period alternative reality where the wars of Europe were being fought with sorcery and steampunk weapons (airships, clockwork machine guns, and steam-driven trucks called kettle-blacks). The novel won the 1994 WH Smith Award, and the book reviewer Andrew Darlington used Hunt's novel to coin the phrase Flintlock Fantasy to describe the sub-genre of fantasy set in a Regency or Napoleonic-era period.
This book continues from the Sliding Void trilogy of novellas. Here things aren't going well for Captain Lana Fiveworlds and the crew of the Granny Rose. There's a difficult client on board and the crew need to perform an emergency ditch into a star system. Not just any star system though but one which contains a murderous government and an enormous unknown alien vessel...
The action starts immediately and it carries through right to the end of the book. There's a massive threat, the crew overcome it only to face another massive threat. This happens about five times and it's exhausting.
In terms of plot Hunt does a good job at keeping the tension high, moving on the character's stories, inserting some great sci-fi ideas and remembering to keep a little humour within it. The final third dragged for me though with it taking ages for anything to actually happen and it's this that let the book down a little.
I liked the ending which teased more on the truth behind Lana and Calder with a neat twist. It wasn't at all what I expected and I'm intrigued to where the characters will go from here. I hope it means more Sliding Void books in the future!
Overall, an enjoyable space opera with some great ideas.
The same favorite characters from the earlier books in the sliding void series show up in this book and find themselves in several dire circumstances all at once. This is one of the best science fiction series I've read. I hope another book in this series is in the works.
Liked book 1, definitely liked books 2 and 3, but was disappointed by this one, it felt as if it was struggling, and I found myself skim-reading quite often. I like the characters but if there's a book 5, which seems likely, I might download a sample first.
Action adventure in space - this starts with a jump into the action (I need to go back and read the previous two sections, I think) and barely pauses for breath. An intriguing plot-thread is carried on from previous books - and there is a teaser epilogue which reminds us again why one of the main characters is important. Further clues are dropped about the 'Gravity Rose' and her captain.
This was an 'free' book, read while checking for typo(e)s.
Reread May 11 - 19 2016 prior to paper publication.