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Shieldrunner Pirates #1
Barbary Station (1)
Two engineers hijack a spaceship to join some space pirates—only to discover the pirates are hiding from a malevolent AI. Now they have to outwit the AI if they want to join the pirate crew—and survive long enough to enjoy it.
Adda and Iridian are newly minted engineers, but aren’t able to find any work in a solar system ruined by economic collapse after an interplanetary war. Desperate for employment, they hijack a colony ship and plan to join a famed pirate crew living in luxury at Barbary Station, an abandoned shipbreaking station in deep space.
But when they arrive there, nothing is as expected. The pirates aren’t living in luxury—they’re hiding in a makeshift base welded onto the station’s exterior hull. The artificial intelligence controlling the station’s security system has gone mad, trying to kill all station residents and shooting down any ship that attempts to leave—so there’s no way out.
Adda and Iridian have one chance to earn a place on the pirate destroy the artificial intelligence. The last engineer who went up against the AI met an untimely end, and the pirates are taking bets on how the newcomers will die. But Adda and Iridian plan to beat the odds.
There’s a glorious future in piracy…if only they can survive long enough.
Adda and Iridian are newly minted engineers, but aren’t able to find any work in a solar system ruined by economic collapse after an interplanetary war. Desperate for employment, they hijack a colony ship and plan to join a famed pirate crew living in luxury at Barbary Station, an abandoned shipbreaking station in deep space.
But when they arrive there, nothing is as expected. The pirates aren’t living in luxury—they’re hiding in a makeshift base welded onto the station’s exterior hull. The artificial intelligence controlling the station’s security system has gone mad, trying to kill all station residents and shooting down any ship that attempts to leave—so there’s no way out.
Adda and Iridian have one chance to earn a place on the pirate destroy the artificial intelligence. The last engineer who went up against the AI met an untimely end, and the pirates are taking bets on how the newcomers will die. But Adda and Iridian plan to beat the odds.
There’s a glorious future in piracy…if only they can survive long enough.
448 pages, Hardcover
First published October 31, 2017
About the author
R.E. Stearns
5 books88 followersR. E. Stearns is the author of the Shieldrunner Pirates trilogy. When not writing or working, she reads, plays PC games, and references internet memes in meatspace. She lives in Denver, Colorado, USA.
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December 14, 2019DNF at 35%
With a strong start featuring lesbian space pirates, I thought this was going to be a fun ride. But unfortunately, after they got to the station, I started losing interest. There are so many side characters and I care about none of them. The writing is dry and the plot feels unfocused. There is a lot of description of tech, which left me feeling untethered from the story. After reading some more reviews, I don’t think this will improve for me. Such a shame.
With a strong start featuring lesbian space pirates, I thought this was going to be a fun ride. But unfortunately, after they got to the station, I started losing interest. There are so many side characters and I care about none of them. The writing is dry and the plot feels unfocused. There is a lot of description of tech, which left me feeling untethered from the story. After reading some more reviews, I don’t think this will improve for me. Such a shame.
April 2, 2018
Barbary Station was one of those weird books where the blurb was just so awesome that I had super high expectations for the book despite the fact that I'd seen zero hype for it anywhere!
The story had the potential to be absolutely fantastic. Adda and Iridian, engineers, hijack a spaceship and rush join some space pirates at the pirate haven of Barbary Station. It seemed a great plan at the time as the pirates were rumoured to be living the life of luxury at their captured station and both Adda and Iridian are running from debts but it does not go as smoothly as they might hope. As soon as they arrive at Barbary Station they learn that the pirates are struggling to survive as the stations AI has turned on them!
Space pirates and murderous AI's should have made this story a sure-fire winner but for some reason I just never connected with R. E. Stearns writing so I could not get sucked into the story. It was a real pity as the premise of the story was great and the world building was even pretty good. This felt like a viable sci-fi world. I even liked the fact that Adda and Iridian were lovers who had a relatively drama free relationship.
I should have loved this one but sadly I never gelled with the writing and ended up a bit bored with the happenings. I could have read on as this was nothing overly wrong with the story but I decided to DNF around the 60% mark as I found I was avoiding the book when I put it down so decided it was time to move on to something better!
All in all I'm a bit disappointed I failed to connect with this one as I had high expectations and I do feel like the building blocks for a great story were in place.
Rating: 2.5 stars.
Audio Note: Mia Barron was a little monotone in her delivery but I think she was passable enough as a narrator.
The story had the potential to be absolutely fantastic. Adda and Iridian, engineers, hijack a spaceship and rush join some space pirates at the pirate haven of Barbary Station. It seemed a great plan at the time as the pirates were rumoured to be living the life of luxury at their captured station and both Adda and Iridian are running from debts but it does not go as smoothly as they might hope. As soon as they arrive at Barbary Station they learn that the pirates are struggling to survive as the stations AI has turned on them!
Space pirates and murderous AI's should have made this story a sure-fire winner but for some reason I just never connected with R. E. Stearns writing so I could not get sucked into the story. It was a real pity as the premise of the story was great and the world building was even pretty good. This felt like a viable sci-fi world. I even liked the fact that Adda and Iridian were lovers who had a relatively drama free relationship.
I should have loved this one but sadly I never gelled with the writing and ended up a bit bored with the happenings. I could have read on as this was nothing overly wrong with the story but I decided to DNF around the 60% mark as I found I was avoiding the book when I put it down so decided it was time to move on to something better!
All in all I'm a bit disappointed I failed to connect with this one as I had high expectations and I do feel like the building blocks for a great story were in place.
Rating: 2.5 stars.
Audio Note: Mia Barron was a little monotone in her delivery but I think she was passable enough as a narrator.
December 4, 2017
Barbary Station, the debut novel from R.E. Stearns, is the story of Adda and Iridian – two deeply in love engineers who desperately want to become space pirates (!?!) – who hatch a plan to join an infamous crew that recently hijacked the titular space station. Once they arrive at their destination they discover that the station’s AI actually returned the favor and hijacked the pirates, and the couple’s hopes for gainful employment (and staying alive) rest on their ability to wrest control of the station back from their captor. Adda and Iridian could have easily been voted “least likely to want to become space pirates” by their high school classmates; one of the strengths of Stearns’ worldbuilding is that their prospects in this hyper-capitalist dystopian future are so bleak that it is convincingly their most attractive option. Stearns definitely has a talent for disseminating the nuts and bolts of tech-savvy hard sci-fi, and Addy and Iridian’s relationship is sweet and affecting. The book often feels like it was written for and by a gaming enthusiast, which gives it a kind of “nerd chic” sheen, but also, unfortunately, gives the story a chunky, attention deficit feel. The plot unfolds at a distracting, scattershot pace and at times struggles to stay focused. The novel is interesting enough to make me want to see more from this author, but not enough to get a higher recommendation.
December 28, 2016
Adda and Iridian are a couple who have decided that the only way that they can be together in a severely depressed post-war Solar System is to join a group of space pirates. Adda is a gifted software engineer/hacker and Iridian is an ex-soldier who has trained as a mechanical engineer. Together they hatch a scheme to hijack a colony ship and get the spoils to Barbary Station, where Captain Sloane and her pirate crew (including Adda's brother) are based. Only when they get there the situation at the station is not as advertised, with the whole thing being under interdiction by a mad security AI and the small and varied populations of humans live under constant threat.
This book was highly recommended by both Liz Bourke and Ann Leckie which made it even more disappointing for me as these are people whose tastes I usually trust. Lesbian space pirates in a solar system space setting with a mad artificial intelligence should be everything I'd ever want in a book, but I bounced off this hard with only the high recommendations stopping me from DNF at several points. (Thought process: Liz loved this, it must get better in the remaining70% 50% 30% 10%!? ... it's not going to get better is it).
So let's get into it. On a subjective note, I bounced off the writing style hard. I found it choppy, overly detailed in some places and incredibly blank in others. While the second half is action-packed, the first is a yawn-fest only rarely punctuated by random and unheralded action.
I personally found the way this book deals with exposition to be a major flaw. There's a modern fashion in fiction that says exposition is bad, which can be a huge problem for speculative fiction. This is typically handled in one of two ways, either by ignoring the fashion and bringing on exposition where needed, or by being clever about it and introducing exposition early in the book through dialogue and interaction with the world, often by starting the story with a bang.
This book chooses a third and frustrating path: ignore exposition almost completely. We don't need to know why Iridian has a high-tech shield, or what makes the shield high-tech or what makes it a valid choice for the sort of soldier she was. We don't even need descriptive text about it! Similarly, it's just a given that all AIs are either zombies or awake and that awakened AIs are inimical. Everyone knows that! We certainly don't need to know why someone just doesn't lob large-mass objects at the pirate base that everyone knows is there and that is such a hazard to space travel.
tl;dr version of the exposition rant: Fantastic world. Crappy communication of world-building.
Characterization is another area with some unrealized potential. While Iridian is engaging, she borders on being a Mary Sue. Adda is incredibly wooden, written to be a drugged-out ditherer and prone to analysis paralysis. The relationship between the two is sweet though, but if you think about it for even two minutes, it makes no sense whatsoever. The only other character that gets time in this book is Adda's brother Pel who is mostly blind, but manages to get around a ship infested by killer robots incredibly well (there's a spoilery reason for that, but even that's a problem - someone should have noticed).
Which brings me to my final gripe: so much of the action, plot and characterization makes no sense at all. Not the actions of the AI (low on drones, unable to produce more, so sends them in small groups against the pirates consistently at just-as-much-as-they-can-handle amounts). Not the insanity of the doctors: there are four of them and while they've been through a trauma, why are they all so weird? Not the way that the pirates actually pirate stuff (AegisSKADA won't let them leave the base!) Not the three ships around the station: the pirates' stories about pilots without a common language, or why the pirates tell that story, or why anyone would believe it. Not the character progression: for all the bulk of the book, so many characters move from A to C in their personal stories without passing through B making that progress feel unearned.
And just so much is taken for granted, when any logical person would ask why is that so, and then when a stupid explanation is given, challenge them on it. Of course though, we can't get actual answers for two reasons:
a) That would be exposition. Exposition bad.
b) The whole damn thing would be a novella.
The potential is there; this is an ambitious novel. It's an attempt to build a believable future history with interesting technology and inhabitants and a really interesting locale for all the action. It just fails in almost every category.
This book was highly recommended by both Liz Bourke and Ann Leckie which made it even more disappointing for me as these are people whose tastes I usually trust. Lesbian space pirates in a solar system space setting with a mad artificial intelligence should be everything I'd ever want in a book, but I bounced off this hard with only the high recommendations stopping me from DNF at several points. (Thought process: Liz loved this, it must get better in the remaining
So let's get into it. On a subjective note, I bounced off the writing style hard. I found it choppy, overly detailed in some places and incredibly blank in others. While the second half is action-packed, the first is a yawn-fest only rarely punctuated by random and unheralded action.
I personally found the way this book deals with exposition to be a major flaw. There's a modern fashion in fiction that says exposition is bad, which can be a huge problem for speculative fiction. This is typically handled in one of two ways, either by ignoring the fashion and bringing on exposition where needed, or by being clever about it and introducing exposition early in the book through dialogue and interaction with the world, often by starting the story with a bang.
This book chooses a third and frustrating path: ignore exposition almost completely. We don't need to know why Iridian has a high-tech shield, or what makes the shield high-tech or what makes it a valid choice for the sort of soldier she was. We don't even need descriptive text about it! Similarly, it's just a given that all AIs are either zombies or awake and that awakened AIs are inimical. Everyone knows that! We certainly don't need to know why someone just doesn't lob large-mass objects at the pirate base that everyone knows is there and that is such a hazard to space travel.
tl;dr version of the exposition rant: Fantastic world. Crappy communication of world-building.
Characterization is another area with some unrealized potential. While Iridian is engaging, she borders on being a Mary Sue. Adda is incredibly wooden, written to be a drugged-out ditherer and prone to analysis paralysis. The relationship between the two is sweet though, but if you think about it for even two minutes, it makes no sense whatsoever. The only other character that gets time in this book is Adda's brother Pel who is mostly blind, but manages to get around a ship infested by killer robots incredibly well (there's a spoilery reason for that, but even that's a problem - someone should have noticed).
Which brings me to my final gripe: so much of the action, plot and characterization makes no sense at all. Not the actions of the AI (low on drones, unable to produce more, so sends them in small groups against the pirates consistently at just-as-much-as-they-can-handle amounts). Not the insanity of the doctors: there are four of them and while they've been through a trauma, why are they all so weird? Not the way that the pirates actually pirate stuff (AegisSKADA won't let them leave the base!) Not the three ships around the station: the pirates' stories about pilots without a common language, or why the pirates tell that story, or why anyone would believe it. Not the character progression: for all the bulk of the book, so many characters move from A to C in their personal stories without passing through B making that progress feel unearned.
And just so much is taken for granted, when any logical person would ask why is that so, and then when a stupid explanation is given, challenge them on it. Of course though, we can't get actual answers for two reasons:
a) That would be exposition. Exposition bad.
b) The whole damn thing would be a novella.
The potential is there; this is an ambitious novel. It's an attempt to build a believable future history with interesting technology and inhabitants and a really interesting locale for all the action. It just fails in almost every category.
March 11, 2018
This is a story about two women in love who decide to become space pirates, and then discover they have to take control of a scary AI to achieve their piracy dreams. In other words, I should have adored this. I should have eaten it up with a spoon.
I did not.
The thing is, there is a good book hiding in here, but it needed to be found, and it wasn’t. The book that actually exists is a mess. There’s a huge cast of characters, most of whom are barely introduced (and if they are introduced, there’s a good chance they’re about to die), let alone described. That is, except for one character (Vick), who is introduced four times in successive chapters, each time in exactly the same words. And, worse, because the cast is so unwieldy and Stearns struggles so much with making each of the characters real, she often goes for the cheap shot instead of the well-constructed emotional note. This means, for example, that she introduces a kid just so she can kill her off for the emotional impact. (Multiple child deaths in this one, by the way.) She only gives most characters meaningful dialogue in the pages before they die. It comes off as trite and cheap, and it makes it hard to care about any of them.
There’s also a ton of continuity errors, including a point where a blind character reads text off a screen (and I don’t really want to get into the Tragedy of Disability narrative that plays out with this character, except to say that as a disabled reader I was not a fan of it). The characters seem to forget crucial, basic pieces of information — like, a supposedly intelligent group of people fighting an unknown infectious agent just ... forgets to contact their doctor allies. For chapters. Because plot reasons, I guess? And there are minor problems, too. There’s chunks of repeated text and sentences that are confusing because they’re missing words. Midway through, I actually checked to see if this was a self-pubbed novel, since those sometimes don’t get edited very well. (It’s actually published by Saga Press, an imprint of Simon & Schuster. Clearly I need to stop thinking traditional publishing = any promise of quality editing.)
Or, to summarize this book by milestones: at 15%, I text my friend who was thinking of reading it that she should not do that thing. At 22%, I started texting her angry updates about the book. At 44%, I started making frustrated editorial comments in my ebook. By 60%, this was a straight-up grudgeread.
And this is all so sad, because I wanted to love this book. And I think I could have loved this book. It just ... needed a lot of help that it didn’t get. I might read future novels by this author, but wow, I don’t recommend anyone read this one.
I did not.
The thing is, there is a good book hiding in here, but it needed to be found, and it wasn’t. The book that actually exists is a mess. There’s a huge cast of characters, most of whom are barely introduced (and if they are introduced, there’s a good chance they’re about to die), let alone described. That is, except for one character (Vick), who is introduced four times in successive chapters, each time in exactly the same words. And, worse, because the cast is so unwieldy and Stearns struggles so much with making each of the characters real, she often goes for the cheap shot instead of the well-constructed emotional note. This means, for example, that she introduces a kid just so she can kill her off for the emotional impact. (Multiple child deaths in this one, by the way.) She only gives most characters meaningful dialogue in the pages before they die. It comes off as trite and cheap, and it makes it hard to care about any of them.
There’s also a ton of continuity errors, including a point where a blind character reads text off a screen (and I don’t really want to get into the Tragedy of Disability narrative that plays out with this character, except to say that as a disabled reader I was not a fan of it). The characters seem to forget crucial, basic pieces of information — like, a supposedly intelligent group of people fighting an unknown infectious agent just ... forgets to contact their doctor allies. For chapters. Because plot reasons, I guess? And there are minor problems, too. There’s chunks of repeated text and sentences that are confusing because they’re missing words. Midway through, I actually checked to see if this was a self-pubbed novel, since those sometimes don’t get edited very well. (It’s actually published by Saga Press, an imprint of Simon & Schuster. Clearly I need to stop thinking traditional publishing = any promise of quality editing.)
Or, to summarize this book by milestones: at 15%, I text my friend who was thinking of reading it that she should not do that thing. At 22%, I started texting her angry updates about the book. At 44%, I started making frustrated editorial comments in my ebook. By 60%, this was a straight-up grudgeread.
And this is all so sad, because I wanted to love this book. And I think I could have loved this book. It just ... needed a lot of help that it didn’t get. I might read future novels by this author, but wow, I don’t recommend anyone read this one.
December 30, 2017
Despite the interesting concepts: piracy as a way to pay off student debts and to stay with one's significant other, killer AI terrorizing people on a space station, a committed and loving relationship between the main characters Adda and Iridian, different sides of a conflict having to work together to survive, good diversity in the characters, different kinds of AIs, I found this book was a slooooooow read. The author's style actually was a detriment to me enjoying this book. I find the text did not flow, and I was frequently rereading paragraphs to understand what was going on. I wanted so much to love this story, but I kept finding myself taking frequent breaks from this book, and only persevered as I don't generally like dropping books mid-read.
August 22, 2018
DNF at 30%
2.5 stars*.
Barbary Station has one of the best premises ever:
🛰️ Pirates! Even better, two pirates in space who are women and also engineers (women in science!)
🛰️ and love each other (established f/f couple!). One of them is black and butch, the other is chubby
🛰️ they became pirates because of student loans.
🛰️ and they have to fight an evil AI!
And yet, I couldn't finish this book. The writing is dry and I struggled to focus on it. I found myself rereading paragraphs many times because I just couldn't care about the details of the political stuff or the side characters.
Since I've mentioned the side characters: once Adda and Iridian got on Barbary Station, we're introduced to more than ten side characters, and I started confusing them almost immediately. Was I supposed to care about the ones who died? How could I, if I knew nothing about them but their name? Writers: killing off for shock value isn't a good or original idea, especially when it's obvious that they were introduced just for that.
Adda and Iridian themselves weren't that interesting as characters. It's not that they were terribly written - they were just a bit flat - it's that the writing was so dry and dull that they sounded exactly alike, which is one of the worst things that can happen to a book told in first person PoV + dual perspective.
Some of the pirates hate each other because of a war between different places in the Solar System that ended a few years before the events of this book. Or so we're told through graceless infodumps I skimmed. I think I was supposed to care about that too, but there are no stakes. The war has already ended and seems to have nothing to do with the actual enemy - the AI - so...?
There were two things I actually liked about this book apart from the premise:
🛰️ Adda and Iridian as a couple - women who love each other and support each other with no miscommunication involved are some of my favorite things to read about. Yes, the relationship having no conflict also meant it had no tension, but that wasn't what made this book boring.
🛰️ The hacking scenes, if they can be called that. There's a lot of interesting technology in this book, and it's sad that I hated the writing so much, because hallucinatory hacking involving insects is a very cool idea and I wanted more.
I don't like writing negative reviews of f/f books, especially if they're genre fiction and not standalones, but I just couldn't get into this.
*2.5 stars because I still liked it more than some of the books I DNFed recently which I rated 2 stars. This looks like a high rating for a DNF but I don't care, this wasn't bad, just boring and unremarkable and okay (which a book with this premise shouldn't be). I know I would rate this book 2.5 stars if I finished it, and I don't want to waste my time on finishing a book that is going to be just okay.
2.5 stars*.
Barbary Station has one of the best premises ever:
🛰️ Pirates! Even better, two pirates in space who are women and also engineers (women in science!)
🛰️ and love each other (established f/f couple!). One of them is black and butch, the other is chubby
🛰️ they became pirates because of student loans.
🛰️ and they have to fight an evil AI!
And yet, I couldn't finish this book. The writing is dry and I struggled to focus on it. I found myself rereading paragraphs many times because I just couldn't care about the details of the political stuff or the side characters.
Since I've mentioned the side characters: once Adda and Iridian got on Barbary Station, we're introduced to more than ten side characters, and I started confusing them almost immediately. Was I supposed to care about the ones who died? How could I, if I knew nothing about them but their name? Writers: killing off for shock value isn't a good or original idea, especially when it's obvious that they were introduced just for that.
Adda and Iridian themselves weren't that interesting as characters. It's not that they were terribly written - they were just a bit flat - it's that the writing was so dry and dull that they sounded exactly alike, which is one of the worst things that can happen to a book told in first person PoV + dual perspective.
Some of the pirates hate each other because of a war between different places in the Solar System that ended a few years before the events of this book. Or so we're told through graceless infodumps I skimmed. I think I was supposed to care about that too, but there are no stakes. The war has already ended and seems to have nothing to do with the actual enemy - the AI - so...?
There were two things I actually liked about this book apart from the premise:
🛰️ Adda and Iridian as a couple - women who love each other and support each other with no miscommunication involved are some of my favorite things to read about. Yes, the relationship having no conflict also meant it had no tension, but that wasn't what made this book boring.
🛰️ The hacking scenes, if they can be called that. There's a lot of interesting technology in this book, and it's sad that I hated the writing so much, because hallucinatory hacking involving insects is a very cool idea and I wanted more.
I don't like writing negative reviews of f/f books, especially if they're genre fiction and not standalones, but I just couldn't get into this.
*2.5 stars because I still liked it more than some of the books I DNFed recently which I rated 2 stars. This looks like a high rating for a DNF but I don't care, this wasn't bad, just boring and unremarkable and okay (which a book with this premise shouldn't be). I know I would rate this book 2.5 stars if I finished it, and I don't want to waste my time on finishing a book that is going to be just okay.
September 18, 2018
This pisses me off. I was convinced that lesbian space pirates was going to be amazing. This was not. Could not give a single fuck for any of the characters. Felt like there was zero chemistry between Adda and Iridian. HATED the world building and AegiSKADA being "awakened" or not BULLSHIT. The writing was dry as balls and at no point did I actually feel like any of the main characters were in any danger even though people were dying left and right. SO FUCKING DISAPPOINTED.
November 9, 2017
Since there were so few reviews out I was a bit anxious about this book, but I’d also been excited about it ever since it was announced last December and it sounded so promising (come on, who wouldn’t be very hyped for a book pitched as “lesbians of colour space pirate vs rogue AI”??) that I thought I should give it a chance and I preordred a copy a few days before it came out. I kind of bought this book on a whim and I’m very glad I wasn’t disappointed and had such a nice time reading. While it’s not joining my all time favourites, I’m happy to have it on my shelf and will surely read it again one day.
Barbary Station is a book about the science and tech (mechanical, software…) aspect but it isn’t hard SF either. The main characters are engineers and will have to figure out a way to take an Artificial Intelligence out or understand why it is behaving the way it does.
The story felt like one of these stories set in a space station where one character has to go exploring and repairing while the other has to keep close to the computer or manuals. It also felt like a video games, having to make choices and going from point A to point B without dying. There were one or two times when I became a little bit bored and was expecting more to happen, but it was only in passing and there still was always something happening closely after I started feeling that way.
I also felt at first that it wasn’t made clear soon enough on the chapters who was talking between Adda or Iridian and I found myself a bit lost as to who was who on the chapters but I quickly grew to recognize them by voice and caracterization. They are very different individuals and it became clear soon enough that the chapters needn’t be named after them and it would have been a shame to get rid of these clever chapter names!
I loved that Barbary Station has a f/f couple as main characters, especially an already established couple when the book starts so there was no romance plot or slow burn or anything. While I don’t love that much to read about love story, I do like to read about a couple who stick together no matter what, sneak kisses every now and then. Plus they seem to be a couple made of an introvert and an extrovert looking out for each others, caring and always ready to do whatever the could to protect each others. I loved how they were so aware of the preferences, fears and anxieties of the other, ready to say or do what the other needed. I found this very nice and felt my heart warm for them. I loved that they are that couple that won’t hesitate to sacrifice themselves or others to protect their loved one.
There’s also the relationship between Adda and her brother and the fact that this novel had a complicated sibling relationship AND an established romantic couple made it all the more special to me.
“Love you, babe, but I have to concentrate on something other than what a fuking dangerous idea that is.”
I liked how inclusive the story felt, but there still was something that bothered me.
Iridian constantly has to fight her binary views on gender and tries to show respect to people that are not on the gender binary. So she is aware of her flawed vision and tries to work on herself BUT while she asks for pronouns she still slips sometimes and has to slap herself mentally when she ends up calling the captain “sir” (here’s a random example: “The captain broke into raucous laughter, which the back of her mind still tried to catergorize as masculine or feminine. Gods, that was rude of her”.)
While it is addressed that she shouldn’t do that, I wish the author hadn’t made her continue to call the captain “sir” for such a long time in the novel. It’s understandable that Iridian has this instinctive reaction from her background in the army but still.
I feel like bringing the matter of gender to the front line was done in this slightly hurtful way and could have been done better, not as micro agressions, even if they’re challenged every time.
I loved how the book addresses the fact that english isn’t the only language in space, that some slang has developped and how translation devices exist but aren’t perfect either. There’s also a neopronoun used at one point when someone talked about his parters : “Well, girlfriends, zefriends, boyfriends[…]”
Like I say just above, the book tries to be inclusive and doesn’t show a strictly white and heterosexual vision of space, which is nice.
The book as an object is very beautiful: I love the chapter design, the font style used by Saga Press is one of my favourites and floppy paperbacks are my prefered kind of physical books to read so I’m glad I took the chance on paying a bit more for a physical copy and didn’t buy an ebook instead 🙂
My conclusion would be that this is a very nice addition to the space opera novels and that while I had expected to love this more – the curse of high expectations! – I wasn’t let down or disappointed either! I would definitely recommend to anyone intrigued by the initial pitch.
Content warnings: eye injury, sudden deaths, death of infant, misgendering (challenged)
Review first posted on my blog!
Barbary Station is a book about the science and tech (mechanical, software…) aspect but it isn’t hard SF either. The main characters are engineers and will have to figure out a way to take an Artificial Intelligence out or understand why it is behaving the way it does.
The story felt like one of these stories set in a space station where one character has to go exploring and repairing while the other has to keep close to the computer or manuals. It also felt like a video games, having to make choices and going from point A to point B without dying. There were one or two times when I became a little bit bored and was expecting more to happen, but it was only in passing and there still was always something happening closely after I started feeling that way.
I also felt at first that it wasn’t made clear soon enough on the chapters who was talking between Adda or Iridian and I found myself a bit lost as to who was who on the chapters but I quickly grew to recognize them by voice and caracterization. They are very different individuals and it became clear soon enough that the chapters needn’t be named after them and it would have been a shame to get rid of these clever chapter names!
I loved that Barbary Station has a f/f couple as main characters, especially an already established couple when the book starts so there was no romance plot or slow burn or anything. While I don’t love that much to read about love story, I do like to read about a couple who stick together no matter what, sneak kisses every now and then. Plus they seem to be a couple made of an introvert and an extrovert looking out for each others, caring and always ready to do whatever the could to protect each others. I loved how they were so aware of the preferences, fears and anxieties of the other, ready to say or do what the other needed. I found this very nice and felt my heart warm for them. I loved that they are that couple that won’t hesitate to sacrifice themselves or others to protect their loved one.
There’s also the relationship between Adda and her brother and the fact that this novel had a complicated sibling relationship AND an established romantic couple made it all the more special to me.
“Love you, babe, but I have to concentrate on something other than what a fuking dangerous idea that is.”
I liked how inclusive the story felt, but there still was something that bothered me.
Iridian constantly has to fight her binary views on gender and tries to show respect to people that are not on the gender binary. So she is aware of her flawed vision and tries to work on herself BUT while she asks for pronouns she still slips sometimes and has to slap herself mentally when she ends up calling the captain “sir” (here’s a random example: “The captain broke into raucous laughter, which the back of her mind still tried to catergorize as masculine or feminine. Gods, that was rude of her”.)
While it is addressed that she shouldn’t do that, I wish the author hadn’t made her continue to call the captain “sir” for such a long time in the novel. It’s understandable that Iridian has this instinctive reaction from her background in the army but still.
I feel like bringing the matter of gender to the front line was done in this slightly hurtful way and could have been done better, not as micro agressions, even if they’re challenged every time.
I loved how the book addresses the fact that english isn’t the only language in space, that some slang has developped and how translation devices exist but aren’t perfect either. There’s also a neopronoun used at one point when someone talked about his parters : “Well, girlfriends, zefriends, boyfriends[…]”
Like I say just above, the book tries to be inclusive and doesn’t show a strictly white and heterosexual vision of space, which is nice.
The book as an object is very beautiful: I love the chapter design, the font style used by Saga Press is one of my favourites and floppy paperbacks are my prefered kind of physical books to read so I’m glad I took the chance on paying a bit more for a physical copy and didn’t buy an ebook instead 🙂
My conclusion would be that this is a very nice addition to the space opera novels and that while I had expected to love this more – the curse of high expectations! – I wasn’t let down or disappointed either! I would definitely recommend to anyone intrigued by the initial pitch.
Content warnings: eye injury, sudden deaths, death of infant, misgendering (challenged)
Review first posted on my blog!
July 27, 2019
on the one hand: LESBIAN ❤ SPACE ❤ PIRATES ❤
on the other hand: ???????????????????????????
Normally I would think the fact that I had only the barest grasp of what was going for most of this novel would be a personal shortcoming on my part, but it seems like a lot of other readers had the same problem. However I will be the first to admit that I often have trouble understanding what is happening in sci-fi books, and while listening to them on audio makes it possible for me to actually read them and not give up it also means that I will occasionally zone out and miss important information. In this case I do not think that was really the problem, but more that the author gave way too much information on some things and not nearly enough on others.
The very bare-bones version of this plot is that this couple is trying to get a place on a pirate crew who is based on this station [and that one woman's brother is already a part of], but when they get there they discover that a hostile A.I. is controlling the station and won't let anyone leave. There are ...I don't know ...maybe about 5 different groups of people living on this station? I was never really clear on the specifics. But they are all living in different areas and cannot communicate with each other easily because reasons, and the main characters basically spend the whole book running around the ship trying to stop the A.I.
I think having so many groups of people on the ship was a mistake because it was just too much information being dumped on the reader from all angles and I personally couldn't keep up with it. I would have been much happier with just a small group of pirates and maybe one other group that they would run into on their journey. With less time spent on introducing new characters and trying to make me understand the relationships between them book could have focused on what I considered the high points: the unique way that Adda interacts with technology systems [kind of a mind palace type idea] and Iridian doing her whole space mercenary gig fighting her way through hostile territory.
I think there was a lot of potential here and I did like Adda and Iridian as main characters, but I'm hoping the next book will have a much more streamlined plot overall. There's definitely a good story at the heart of this if you can look past all the somewhat confusing details.
on the other hand: ???????????????????????????
Normally I would think the fact that I had only the barest grasp of what was going for most of this novel would be a personal shortcoming on my part, but it seems like a lot of other readers had the same problem. However I will be the first to admit that I often have trouble understanding what is happening in sci-fi books, and while listening to them on audio makes it possible for me to actually read them and not give up it also means that I will occasionally zone out and miss important information. In this case I do not think that was really the problem, but more that the author gave way too much information on some things and not nearly enough on others.
The very bare-bones version of this plot is that this couple is trying to get a place on a pirate crew who is based on this station [and that one woman's brother is already a part of], but when they get there they discover that a hostile A.I. is controlling the station and won't let anyone leave. There are ...I don't know ...maybe about 5 different groups of people living on this station? I was never really clear on the specifics. But they are all living in different areas and cannot communicate with each other easily because reasons, and the main characters basically spend the whole book running around the ship trying to stop the A.I.
I think having so many groups of people on the ship was a mistake because it was just too much information being dumped on the reader from all angles and I personally couldn't keep up with it. I would have been much happier with just a small group of pirates and maybe one other group that they would run into on their journey. With less time spent on introducing new characters and trying to make me understand the relationships between them book could have focused on what I considered the high points: the unique way that Adda interacts with technology systems [kind of a mind palace type idea] and Iridian doing her whole space mercenary gig fighting her way through hostile territory.
I think there was a lot of potential here and I did like Adda and Iridian as main characters, but I'm hoping the next book will have a much more streamlined plot overall. There's definitely a good story at the heart of this if you can look past all the somewhat confusing details.
December 23, 2019
I QUIT.
Strong premise but I found this dry. My mother makes well done steak that’s less dry than this book.
Okay, yes, lesbian space pirates is amazing, but why oh why did this author make them boring? Why? Why why why? One of these girls literally can PLUG HERSELF INTO A COMPUTER AND THIS BOOK IS BORING.
Why? Because the story can get really technical so my eyes just started glazing over. On top of that Adda (the computer) often isolated herself so she can plug herself in - while also on drugs. This means that much of the space station plot/drama comes from Iridian’s perspective. I don’t care about the daily tasks of cleaning this, repairing that, eating here, talking to this person... it made it boring.
It took till about halfway for them to make minor headway against the controlling AI. Which by the way? What’s the AI’s motivation? Pirates took over? It lacks finesse in some ways and I’m not convinced. It’s cool that it makes a bunch of robots though. Murderous robots are very cool.
All that said, if you want to do a character study do a character study. But trim it down. I think I would have loved this if it was about 250-300 pages. Would have cut down on some of the dry and technical aspects while making it more action and plot based.
Sorry for all the dry bits... let me just leave you with the word moist.
Strong premise but I found this dry. My mother makes well done steak that’s less dry than this book.
Okay, yes, lesbian space pirates is amazing, but why oh why did this author make them boring? Why? Why why why? One of these girls literally can PLUG HERSELF INTO A COMPUTER AND THIS BOOK IS BORING.
Why? Because the story can get really technical so my eyes just started glazing over. On top of that Adda (the computer) often isolated herself so she can plug herself in - while also on drugs. This means that much of the space station plot/drama comes from Iridian’s perspective. I don’t care about the daily tasks of cleaning this, repairing that, eating here, talking to this person... it made it boring.
It took till about halfway for them to make minor headway against the controlling AI. Which by the way? What’s the AI’s motivation? Pirates took over? It lacks finesse in some ways and I’m not convinced. It’s cool that it makes a bunch of robots though. Murderous robots are very cool.
All that said, if you want to do a character study do a character study. But trim it down. I think I would have loved this if it was about 250-300 pages. Would have cut down on some of the dry and technical aspects while making it more action and plot based.
Sorry for all the dry bits... let me just leave you with the word moist.
May 27, 2018
I don't understand how this book is achieving the ratings that it is. It's horribly written.
An overabundance of detail accompanies every action and line of dialog. It's an assault of minutiae that serves more to confuse than explain. Show, don't tell. This book is all tell.
The viewpoint changes randomly from paragraph to paragraph, disorienting the reading and making it impossible to follow from whose eyes the story is being told.
Some examples:
I read this four times, and still couldn't parse it.
Again, parsing failure. To her amazement.. on her unspoken order.. for him to notice. Who is "him?" It could only be referring to Reis. But it follows to explain that only she could see the intermediary; thus, Reis could not, and could not be aware of any similarity. So who is "him?"
Why is this middle sentence italicized? Generally, this implies an inner monologue, but why would Adda say this particular sentence--to herself? to the AI?--in the midst of this exposition?
After Reis snarls, the context clearly shifts to Adda. So I interpreted the dialog which follows as Adda. But it's not, is it? It's still Reis. The shift of focus from Reis-to-Adda-to-Reis-to-Iridian mid-paragraph perfectly exemplifies the lack of continuity that is rife throughout the narration.
Don't worry about spoilers from the above. I pulled all of these examples from the first 6 pages of the first chapter.
This is a horribly written book. I wasted my money on this, thanks to the baffling recommendations that populate the reviews for this amateur garble.
DNF
An overabundance of detail accompanies every action and line of dialog. It's an assault of minutiae that serves more to confuse than explain. Show, don't tell. This book is all tell.
The viewpoint changes randomly from paragraph to paragraph, disorienting the reading and making it impossible to follow from whose eyes the story is being told.
Some examples:
"Twisting the cable's probe in the jack adapted the implant net over her frontal lobe to the translator her implant installed on his comp."
I read this four times, and still couldn't parse it.
"A hallucinographic intermediary stuttered into exisence between her and Reis in a rough-featured gray shadow. Its edges swam with a sparking unreality. To her amusement, its rolling shuffle toward the door on her unpoken order had enough of Reis's bowlegged walk for him to notice the similarirty. Fortunately, only she could see the intermediary."
Again, parsing failure. To her amazement.. on her unspoken order.. for him to notice. Who is "him?" It could only be referring to Reis. But it follows to explain that only she could see the intermediary; thus, Reis could not, and could not be aware of any similarity. So who is "him?"
"Adda had planned for resistance from the shipboard AI, but this was lethargy. The intelligence wasn't even designed for direct connection. Transorbital Voyages couldn't be bothered, or were too paranoid, to give employees direct access to the system."
Why is this middle sentence italicized? Generally, this implies an inner monologue, but why would Adda say this particular sentence--to herself? to the AI?--in the midst of this exposition?
"'Break room,' Reis snarled. Adda suppressed a sigh. With both of them this edgy, Adda was going to have to be the calm one. 'One of the guys I know can get in.' He tapped the back of his comp glove. Like Iridian, he hadn't set up subvocalization shortcuts."
After Reis snarls, the context clearly shifts to Adda. So I interpreted the dialog which follows as Adda. But it's not, is it? It's still Reis. The shift of focus from Reis-to-Adda-to-Reis-to-Iridian mid-paragraph perfectly exemplifies the lack of continuity that is rife throughout the narration.
Don't worry about spoilers from the above. I pulled all of these examples from the first 6 pages of the first chapter.
This is a horribly written book. I wasted my money on this, thanks to the baffling recommendations that populate the reviews for this amateur garble.
DNF
Did Not Finish
January 18, 2018DNF at page 189
I'm never quite sure what to say when I DNF a book.
I tried, guys. This was one of my anticipated releases of 2017. I sat on the waitlist for over a month after my library system bought a copy, even as the first (disappointed) reviews started coming in.
I should have known. As it turns out, there's a reason this is getting mixed reviews. It's just not that good. Great concepts, but ideas alone do not a good book make. The first 30 pages or so are excellent, but it trends downhill from there.
The protags are ok, but behaviourally inconsistent at best and stereotypical at worst. The various characters around them are interchangable cardboard cutouts. Several of these secondaries die or are maimed--whatever emotional response I was supposed to get, it didn't happen.
There's a somewhat unique/retro method of interfacing with AI here (I was vaguely reminded of Gibson's Neuromancer, but only in conceptual terms.) Sadly, it suffers from the same lack of exposition as everything else.
Yes, I said "lack of exposition." There comes a point in speculative fiction where you really do have to shed some light on what's happening, otherwise your audience can't connect.
Given another draft, this might have been pretty good. As it is, I'm shelving it.
I'm never quite sure what to say when I DNF a book.
I tried, guys. This was one of my anticipated releases of 2017. I sat on the waitlist for over a month after my library system bought a copy, even as the first (disappointed) reviews started coming in.
I should have known. As it turns out, there's a reason this is getting mixed reviews. It's just not that good. Great concepts, but ideas alone do not a good book make. The first 30 pages or so are excellent, but it trends downhill from there.
The protags are ok, but behaviourally inconsistent at best and stereotypical at worst. The various characters around them are interchangable cardboard cutouts. Several of these secondaries die or are maimed--whatever emotional response I was supposed to get, it didn't happen.
There's a somewhat unique/retro method of interfacing with AI here (I was vaguely reminded of Gibson's Neuromancer, but only in conceptual terms.) Sadly, it suffers from the same lack of exposition as everything else.
Yes, I said "lack of exposition." There comes a point in speculative fiction where you really do have to shed some light on what's happening, otherwise your audience can't connect.
Given another draft, this might have been pretty good. As it is, I'm shelving it.
November 14, 2017
This review and others posted over at
my blog.
Lesbian space pirates versus a murderous AI? Sign me the hell up! The result left me feeling conflicted, however. Buckle up!
We’re immediately thrust into the story and Adda and Iridian’s dreams for their future, all of which intrigued me. The action throughout the book is kept at a fairly steady pace – Adda’s introverted and tech-minded observations are offset by Iridian’s near constant action scenes. Once the couple is aboard the ship, there’s a lot going on. The pirates are living in the walls in order to stay alive, a bunch of refugees who left their planet after a war are living inside parameters set by the AI and there’s a handful of doctors the ship seems to want to protect.
For the most part, I found it easy to imagine what was happening, but when it came to the general layout of the station, most notably any scenes taking place on its surface, I was utterly lost. I would have loved a map (or maps!) of the ship to get a better handle on where everyone was traveling to and from. In those cases, I just imagined an amalgamation of various space stations I’ve seen in movies, but it took me out of the story to have to do so.
I loved the unsettling tone set early on by the AI – I’m a sucker for “evil AI” plots, the creepier the better! Nothing quite so frightening as imagining floating through the deadly darkness of space inside of a machine hell-bent on killing you. (Note: It wasn’t until photographing the book that I noticed the A and I in the title were highlighted – clever!) The AI in this book, known as AegiSKADA, considers the pirates to be the biggest threat and is constantly sending drones to kill them if they leave their hideout and eventually its tactics evolve to more sinister means. AegiSKADA does still want to keep the station intact however and must do its best not to do too much damage when exterminating the pests (hence why it doesn’t just bomb an entire portion of the ship). Iridian and Adda’s presence only upsets it further.
I found the rest of the cast to be less interesting than the AI, with the exception of Iridian. She and Adda are ridiculously opposite. Iridian is a tall, dark-skinned, bald, well-muscled, boisterous, ex-soldier with a really cool, high-tech battleshield. Adda is a short, light-skinned, red and purple haired, self-consciously curvaceous, socially awkward, techie with what’s essentially a hardware jack in her nostril. I couldn’t understand why they were together – they clearly cared about each other (or Adda attempted to worry about Iridian when she wasn’t in a drug-induced tech trance) but I could never get a sense of what brought them together, or kept them together. They felt more like friends than lovers, and while this doesn’t largely affect the story, their relationship felt out of place.
Iridian has enough personality for two main characters and I friggen loved her. She’s strong, smart and won’t take any shit, unless of course she has to, for the betterment of her and Adda’s future. She knows when to stand down and when to kick ass. In contrast, Adda seemed put upon any time she had to interact with a human other than Iridian (or sometimes even Iridian) and spent much of her time in a drugged state to achieve a deeper connection with AegiSKADA. She’s a sort of hacker (the book describes her skill far better than I could), but in order to get into the ship’s systems she has to take a drug and then plug into the system so she can manipulate it in her workspace (I’ll come back to that.) Adda just fell flat for me.
Adda’s brother, Pel, has a few interesting scenes, but was mostly the clichéd troublemaker. The crew was too large to get to know. There were some diverse relationships among the members and the Captain’s gender is never declared (the Captain also had some fabulous sounding outfits), but I couldn’t bring myself to care what happened to any of them.
So, Adda’s workspace: her specialty in systems engineering has led her to get implants that allow her to literally connect herself to a machine’s systems. In order to concentrate she takes drugs and enters a strange state of mind where the information she is looking for becomes a surreal, interactive experience. For example, during one session the information was presented in the form of moths and other bugs, pinned to the wall as though preserved by an entomologist. Clouds of undead bugs would then flicker and move about the room and at one point something bloody hit a window? It was like reading a strange dream (or nightmare, in my book.) I loved this mix of human and computer and I’ve never read anything quite like it.
What lost me much of time, however, was all the technical talk. I’m assuming Stearns knows what she’s talking about, because it’s all Greek to me. Sometimes I can gloss over these details and just accept that stuff is happening because people know way more about science and technology than I do. Other times I get caught up and confused, struggling to make sense of the words on the page. This was one of those times. This certainly won’t be an issue for everyone though.
In the end, this was a middle of the road read for me. I expected to be blown away, but the tech-talk made it a dense, slow read and the characters were lackluster. Iridian is awesome though and AegiSKADA was as creeptastic as I could have hoped for, so it balanced out. If you like a lot of science and technology in your sci-f and you love AI-driven plots, certainly check this out.
I received this book for free from Geek Girl Authority in exchange for my honest review.
Lesbian space pirates versus a murderous AI? Sign me the hell up! The result left me feeling conflicted, however. Buckle up!
We’re immediately thrust into the story and Adda and Iridian’s dreams for their future, all of which intrigued me. The action throughout the book is kept at a fairly steady pace – Adda’s introverted and tech-minded observations are offset by Iridian’s near constant action scenes. Once the couple is aboard the ship, there’s a lot going on. The pirates are living in the walls in order to stay alive, a bunch of refugees who left their planet after a war are living inside parameters set by the AI and there’s a handful of doctors the ship seems to want to protect.
For the most part, I found it easy to imagine what was happening, but when it came to the general layout of the station, most notably any scenes taking place on its surface, I was utterly lost. I would have loved a map (or maps!) of the ship to get a better handle on where everyone was traveling to and from. In those cases, I just imagined an amalgamation of various space stations I’ve seen in movies, but it took me out of the story to have to do so.
I loved the unsettling tone set early on by the AI – I’m a sucker for “evil AI” plots, the creepier the better! Nothing quite so frightening as imagining floating through the deadly darkness of space inside of a machine hell-bent on killing you. (Note: It wasn’t until photographing the book that I noticed the A and I in the title were highlighted – clever!) The AI in this book, known as AegiSKADA, considers the pirates to be the biggest threat and is constantly sending drones to kill them if they leave their hideout and eventually its tactics evolve to more sinister means. AegiSKADA does still want to keep the station intact however and must do its best not to do too much damage when exterminating the pests (hence why it doesn’t just bomb an entire portion of the ship). Iridian and Adda’s presence only upsets it further.
I found the rest of the cast to be less interesting than the AI, with the exception of Iridian. She and Adda are ridiculously opposite. Iridian is a tall, dark-skinned, bald, well-muscled, boisterous, ex-soldier with a really cool, high-tech battleshield. Adda is a short, light-skinned, red and purple haired, self-consciously curvaceous, socially awkward, techie with what’s essentially a hardware jack in her nostril. I couldn’t understand why they were together – they clearly cared about each other (or Adda attempted to worry about Iridian when she wasn’t in a drug-induced tech trance) but I could never get a sense of what brought them together, or kept them together. They felt more like friends than lovers, and while this doesn’t largely affect the story, their relationship felt out of place.
Iridian has enough personality for two main characters and I friggen loved her. She’s strong, smart and won’t take any shit, unless of course she has to, for the betterment of her and Adda’s future. She knows when to stand down and when to kick ass. In contrast, Adda seemed put upon any time she had to interact with a human other than Iridian (or sometimes even Iridian) and spent much of her time in a drugged state to achieve a deeper connection with AegiSKADA. She’s a sort of hacker (the book describes her skill far better than I could), but in order to get into the ship’s systems she has to take a drug and then plug into the system so she can manipulate it in her workspace (I’ll come back to that.) Adda just fell flat for me.
Adda’s brother, Pel, has a few interesting scenes, but was mostly the clichéd troublemaker. The crew was too large to get to know. There were some diverse relationships among the members and the Captain’s gender is never declared (the Captain also had some fabulous sounding outfits), but I couldn’t bring myself to care what happened to any of them.
So, Adda’s workspace: her specialty in systems engineering has led her to get implants that allow her to literally connect herself to a machine’s systems. In order to concentrate she takes drugs and enters a strange state of mind where the information she is looking for becomes a surreal, interactive experience. For example, during one session the information was presented in the form of moths and other bugs, pinned to the wall as though preserved by an entomologist. Clouds of undead bugs would then flicker and move about the room and at one point something bloody hit a window? It was like reading a strange dream (or nightmare, in my book.) I loved this mix of human and computer and I’ve never read anything quite like it.
What lost me much of time, however, was all the technical talk. I’m assuming Stearns knows what she’s talking about, because it’s all Greek to me. Sometimes I can gloss over these details and just accept that stuff is happening because people know way more about science and technology than I do. Other times I get caught up and confused, struggling to make sense of the words on the page. This was one of those times. This certainly won’t be an issue for everyone though.
In the end, this was a middle of the road read for me. I expected to be blown away, but the tech-talk made it a dense, slow read and the characters were lackluster. Iridian is awesome though and AegiSKADA was as creeptastic as I could have hoped for, so it balanced out. If you like a lot of science and technology in your sci-f and you love AI-driven plots, certainly check this out.
I received this book for free from Geek Girl Authority in exchange for my honest review.
March 8, 2018
Many of my friends need only hear the words "lesbian space pirate engineers battle rogue AI" to know that Barbary Station by R.E. Stearns is just what they're looking for. It's not a falling-in-love romance: the POV characters happen to be an established f/f couple who decide becoming space pirates is the only way to deal with their student loans. Like you do.
The plot is lively and indeed gripping (though as usual I could really use a map), but I also started to detect a theme, which can be summarized as "Some are born neurodivergent, some achieve neurodivergence, some have neurodivergence thrust upon them." Adda, the computer engineer of our couple, seems to have been born neurodivergent: she acts like someone on the autism spectrum, though her personality is never medicalized, it's just the way she is. Her partner Iridian at first seems "normal", until you realize that she's a war veteran with some kind of PTSD.
Everyone they meet on the eponymous station has been dealing with many traumatic events for at least a year -- not to mention that a number are also vets like Iridian, whose trauma is of longer standing. There is no "normal", there are only people coping (or not coping) with great stress, which doesn't leave any human brain in a "normal" state. Altogether very good, and I look forward to the next one.
The plot is lively and indeed gripping (though as usual I could really use a map), but I also started to detect a theme, which can be summarized as "Some are born neurodivergent, some achieve neurodivergence, some have neurodivergence thrust upon them." Adda, the computer engineer of our couple, seems to have been born neurodivergent: she acts like someone on the autism spectrum, though her personality is never medicalized, it's just the way she is. Her partner Iridian at first seems "normal", until you realize that she's a war veteran with some kind of PTSD.
Everyone they meet on the eponymous station has been dealing with many traumatic events for at least a year -- not to mention that a number are also vets like Iridian, whose trauma is of longer standing. There is no "normal", there are only people coping (or not coping) with great stress, which doesn't leave any human brain in a "normal" state. Altogether very good, and I look forward to the next one.
July 19, 2017
This sounded right up my alley--space pirates vs. a killer AI? Yes, please! Only...this particular book about space pirates vs. a killer AI? Not so much.
I just couldn't get attached to anything, at all. The characters and their history and why they're even together at all? Nope, none of that really made sense to me. The technical details? Uh...that didn't really make sense to me either--it just seemed like a bunch of space/computery words with no actual context or descriptions of what was being done, or why, or how. The plot? Honestly...kind of boring. I just couldn't stay focused. I kept pushing myself through it hoping I'd eventually get to the fun part, but it never happened. There's no emotion, no humor, no character development...
I didn't hate it, but I definitely didn't actually like it either. No book two for me, unless something changes drastically with the writing between now and then. But can someone please write a different book about space pirates vs. a killer AI for me? I still need one!
I just couldn't get attached to anything, at all. The characters and their history and why they're even together at all? Nope, none of that really made sense to me. The technical details? Uh...that didn't really make sense to me either--it just seemed like a bunch of space/computery words with no actual context or descriptions of what was being done, or why, or how. The plot? Honestly...kind of boring. I just couldn't stay focused. I kept pushing myself through it hoping I'd eventually get to the fun part, but it never happened. There's no emotion, no humor, no character development...
I didn't hate it, but I definitely didn't actually like it either. No book two for me, unless something changes drastically with the writing between now and then. But can someone please write a different book about space pirates vs. a killer AI for me? I still need one!
October 29, 2017
This is sadly my first DNF here on Goodreads.
I tried. The concept was interesting but the blend of Golden Agey attempts of writing, tech description, and poor dialogue made this such a sad, lackluster read. I would read pages and still have no real idea on what was going on. Maybe I'm not in the mood for sci-fi but this didn't float my boat in any way.
I tried. The concept was interesting but the blend of Golden Agey attempts of writing, tech description, and poor dialogue made this such a sad, lackluster read. I would read pages and still have no real idea on what was going on. Maybe I'm not in the mood for sci-fi but this didn't float my boat in any way.
September 29, 2021
DNF at 53%; frankly I just could not connect with these characters and even though the stakes were super high there wasn’t enough of a question of if they were gunna succeed or not. not for me but maybe you’ll enjoy it!!!
February 23, 2020
3.5 stars. This is definitely a time where I wish gr had more stars, because this is right between 3 and four stars, for me. It was literally what I had been asking for: gay lady space pirates, but there was something missing. I was looking for something more campy and fun, and this was just not. It felt like our protags just didn't have any mini wins to keep me going, and there just wasn't enough interaction between Adda and Iridian- I felt like we only got sparing dialogue between them and never any proof that their protectiveness of each other was warranted. However, I did like the concept of the book, but definitely not enough for four stars.
The book was too long for the story, and it was wasn't a story you could engross yourself in. Adda was a neat character (hello, bad-at-remembering-people's-names rep), but her perspective was boring, hard to understand, and not engaging. I was always getting pulled out of the narrative because being inside the mind of a drugged software engineer trying to visualize an AI in a different way each time was so confusing. On top of that, the author just had a style of writing that made certain actions unclear or ambiguous that made me have to read paragraphs several times to try to get it.
Iridian was obviously my fave, but I think a lot of her personality was wrapped up in being the outgoing, social one, and we don't really get to see many scenes of her befriending the other pirates. Occasionally, from Adda's perspective (as she emerges from her drug induced delusions) we see Iridian having fun with the crew or whatever. It just left me wanting more of that story.
The book was too long for the story, and it was wasn't a story you could engross yourself in. Adda was a neat character (hello, bad-at-remembering-people's-names rep), but her perspective was boring, hard to understand, and not engaging. I was always getting pulled out of the narrative because being inside the mind of a drugged software engineer trying to visualize an AI in a different way each time was so confusing. On top of that, the author just had a style of writing that made certain actions unclear or ambiguous that made me have to read paragraphs several times to try to get it.
Iridian was obviously my fave, but I think a lot of her personality was wrapped up in being the outgoing, social one, and we don't really get to see many scenes of her befriending the other pirates. Occasionally, from Adda's perspective (as she emerges from her drug induced delusions) we see Iridian having fun with the crew or whatever. It just left me wanting more of that story.
November 22, 2017
This is really 3.5 stars, rounded up. There's a lot to like about this novel, which is, after all, about a couple of lesbian pirate wannabes and the deadly tasks they must undertake to become pirates.
Unfortunately, the good is bogged down by too many characters who are barely more than sketches, and a story about AI which never goes deep into the fascinating aspects that are glimpsed.
Adda and Iridian, our two leads, are terrific characters, smart and brave and loving. That makes up some for the rest of the cast being... there, mostly. Some are nice, some are assholes, none is fleshed out in a way that worked, for me.
I'm glad I read Barbary Station, and I think I'll read the next book in the series, but I didn't love it.
Unfortunately, the good is bogged down by too many characters who are barely more than sketches, and a story about AI which never goes deep into the fascinating aspects that are glimpsed.
Adda and Iridian, our two leads, are terrific characters, smart and brave and loving. That makes up some for the rest of the cast being... there, mostly. Some are nice, some are assholes, none is fleshed out in a way that worked, for me.
I'm glad I read Barbary Station, and I think I'll read the next book in the series, but I didn't love it.
Read
February 21, 2018Dnf..stopped at 12%. The writing isnt flowing and is overly descriptive and in some points unnecessary. Also found it was lacking an sense of characterisation which is a big influencer on whether I enjoy a read. It may appeal to some, just not ready to read 400pages or so, when there are so many other novels to read.
May 7, 2020
Not as lighthearted, pop-corn sci-fi as I was hoping, but still a damn good story, although there are a couple places I might have gotten bogged down if I wasn't a captive audience (listening to an audiobook as I work).
Everything I'd expect from a story described to me as "Gay space pirates vs killer AI."
Everything I'd expect from a story described to me as "Gay space pirates vs killer AI."
March 28, 2019
Ugh, there was nothing actually wrong with this book, and a lot I found really cool, and, c'mon, it's about queer space pirates! So why did I feel so bored and reluctant to pick it up every time I needed a book to read? I don't understand. It should have been at least fine, but it just didn't click with me or excite me.
July 27, 2019
I don't know, this was fine I guess. I wanted to like it more than I did, because I like pirates, and I like space adventures, and being stuck on a space station run by an AI that wants to kill you sounds great!
But I found the action hard to follow - there's a lot of build up, and then something important happens in half a sentence. The narration jumps around a lot, and I didn't always find different characters differentiated enough to keep track of who was who. I guess this book wanted me to read it more closely, but the plot and prose was too pedestrian for me to want to take my time with it. I read this for action and adventure, and I want books with lesbian space pirates to carry me along, not demand anything from me.
I wouldn't necessarily dissuade anyone from reading this book. If you think the premise sounds good, I'd say pick it up. But I can't go anymore than three stars, and my recommendation is more lukewarm than glowing.
But I found the action hard to follow - there's a lot of build up, and then something important happens in half a sentence. The narration jumps around a lot, and I didn't always find different characters differentiated enough to keep track of who was who. I guess this book wanted me to read it more closely, but the plot and prose was too pedestrian for me to want to take my time with it. I read this for action and adventure, and I want books with lesbian space pirates to carry me along, not demand anything from me.
I wouldn't necessarily dissuade anyone from reading this book. If you think the premise sounds good, I'd say pick it up. But I can't go anymore than three stars, and my recommendation is more lukewarm than glowing.
February 7, 2021
Barbary Station is the debut novel from R.E. Stearns. It is the first book in the "Shieldrunner Pirates" series. I thought this was going to be a great read. The blurb on the back of the book was just so awesome that I had high expectations for the book despite the fact that I had never seen anything about it anywhere else before. The book had a fairly good start as the main characters, Adda and Iridian, proceed to high-jack a colony ship. Unfortunately, after they got to the Barbary Station with the high-jacked ship, I started losing interest. There are so many side characters that I found that I could not care about any of them. The writing is dry and the plot feels unfocused. There is a lot of description of tech, which was confusing and somewhat contradictory. Also, the ending was pretty weak. All in all, I am disappointed I failed to connect with this one as I usually enjoy this type of science fiction novel.
February 18, 2018
I think that 3 stars is a gift to a writer who had a good premise and interesting situations but lacked skill to fully realize her ideas. I love space opera and wanted to like this book. Unfortunately the characters lack development, the plot has holes, and the grammar is sometimes awful--I read a prepub copy, so hope at least the grammar was fixed. I blame the flaws of this book on the editor--I would hope that publishers want to prepare promising new writers better than this. I will look for Stearns' next effort, but am disappointed that a book this amateurish showed up on Locus Recommended Reading List this year
March 2, 2018
This book has a great concept and a lot of potential for an interesting world. Unfortunately, the execution just wasn't there. The character's actions were at times nonsensical or otherwise very vague. It's hard for me to pinpoint exactly where I lost interest, but I think it was somewhere around the middle of the book. I finished the book anyway, because I wanted to see it through, but the story only became more muddled towards the end.
Did Not Finish
March 21, 2018I really wanted to enjoy this. The premise sounded good, the beginning was good, and I was exited to see where it was going. It just sort of stagnated for me once the characters reached Barbary station. It seemed as though a lot was going on but I didn't understand why I should care. The characters didn't feel very fleshed out despite the fast paced plot. I would read something else by the author but this just wasn't for me.
January 29, 2020
Barbary Station is a collection of categorical highs and lows that evens out to something maddeningly average.
The Highs
- Things started out really quite good, following Iridian's, Adda's, and Reis' daring plan to hijack an entire starship and use it as cred to join a band of pirates, because despite their schooling and expertise, it's legitimately their best shot at a secure financial future. It sets the stage of the world/solar system they live in, and acts as a scathing meta-narrative critique of the student loan crisis in the U.S.
- Adda's virtual workspaces are unfailingly inventive and engaging (and it's not entirely an exaggeration to say that the first sequence of these kept me from putting the book down early). Coding by way of manipulating subconscious imagery in a state of altered consciousness is a wild and fun approach to the subject, and it really spices up the narrative.
- The conflict and interactions with the AIs felt like it really tried to portray the way an inhuman intelligence would act. I love when sci-fi explores that kind of territory.
The Lows
- The pacing left a lot to be desired. After a breakneck opening, it's not surprising that things slowed down, but there are lengthy sections where not much seems to happen. These are punctuated by abrupt sequences of action, before slowing to a crawl again, until we were running out of pages and things needed to get resolved.
- The characters. The slow parts mentioned above wouldn't have been so bad, if there was a strong cast to shore things up. Sadly, this is hampered by two factors: First, the cast is huge, leaving the reader only marginally familiar with a lot of them, and thus uncaring when some of them die. No lie, there are so many one-off crewmembers, that when one chapter began with "So-and-so is dead," I had to wrack my brain, trying to recall just who they were. Second, the characters we do get acquainted with aren't terribly endearing. Maybe it's just me, but I felt a lot of them--including our main protagonists--felt somehow hollow, like actors reading lines, and not real people.
- And even that wouldn't have been as egregious, if the general writing had been better. As it stands, you could make a drinking game out of how many times Stearns uses the phrases "the cold and the dark," or "pseudo-organic tanks," but the second half of the book would pickle your liver. The kicker is, even after all the repetition, I still don't know exactly what function "pseudo-organic tanks" are supposed to provide. And that's emblematic of a lot of background elements in this book, ranging from technology, to religion(s), to parts of the history.
Like I said, it's frustrating; there are aspects I genuinely enjoy here, but each one is undercut by an equivalent downside, in some kind of literary Zen balance. Not the worst bit of sci-fi I've read, but damn, I wish it were better.
The Highs
- Things started out really quite good, following Iridian's, Adda's, and Reis' daring plan to hijack an entire starship and use it as cred to join a band of pirates, because despite their schooling and expertise, it's legitimately their best shot at a secure financial future. It sets the stage of the world/solar system they live in, and acts as a scathing meta-narrative critique of the student loan crisis in the U.S.
- Adda's virtual workspaces are unfailingly inventive and engaging (and it's not entirely an exaggeration to say that the first sequence of these kept me from putting the book down early). Coding by way of manipulating subconscious imagery in a state of altered consciousness is a wild and fun approach to the subject, and it really spices up the narrative.
- The conflict and interactions with the AIs felt like it really tried to portray the way an inhuman intelligence would act. I love when sci-fi explores that kind of territory.
The Lows
- The pacing left a lot to be desired. After a breakneck opening, it's not surprising that things slowed down, but there are lengthy sections where not much seems to happen. These are punctuated by abrupt sequences of action, before slowing to a crawl again, until we were running out of pages and things needed to get resolved.
- The characters. The slow parts mentioned above wouldn't have been so bad, if there was a strong cast to shore things up. Sadly, this is hampered by two factors: First, the cast is huge, leaving the reader only marginally familiar with a lot of them, and thus uncaring when some of them die. No lie, there are so many one-off crewmembers, that when one chapter began with "So-and-so is dead," I had to wrack my brain, trying to recall just who they were. Second, the characters we do get acquainted with aren't terribly endearing. Maybe it's just me, but I felt a lot of them--including our main protagonists--felt somehow hollow, like actors reading lines, and not real people.
- And even that wouldn't have been as egregious, if the general writing had been better. As it stands, you could make a drinking game out of how many times Stearns uses the phrases "the cold and the dark," or "pseudo-organic tanks," but the second half of the book would pickle your liver. The kicker is, even after all the repetition, I still don't know exactly what function "pseudo-organic tanks" are supposed to provide. And that's emblematic of a lot of background elements in this book, ranging from technology, to religion(s), to parts of the history.
Like I said, it's frustrating; there are aspects I genuinely enjoy here, but each one is undercut by an equivalent downside, in some kind of literary Zen balance. Not the worst bit of sci-fi I've read, but damn, I wish it were better.
February 8, 2026
Barbary Station is a frustrating read.
I spent a long time looking for a space pirates book for a reading challenge—of the options I considered, I found the premise of Barbary Station really intriguing. Engineer lesbians fighting alongside pirates to take down a killer AI? That sounds awesome!
Unfortunately, what sounded like an amazing premise ended up being incredibly boring.
The biggest issue in this book is that the whole book is just dull. The characters are dull, the drama is dull, and the way technology is depicted is dull. I’ll start with the technology because it was easily my least favorite part of the book: nothing about it ever made sense or was interesting enough to be worth the time spent on it. For the most part, the book’s chapters switched between the two main characters: Iridian, an ex-soldier, who spends most of her time trying to help the pirate crew fix various problems around their base, and Adda, who spends most of her time alone trying to learn about the AI through a hallucinogenic interface. Iridian’s chapters were at least passable, but every Adda chapter was just boring. She’s reclusive and mostly interacts with the technology, but the technology never gelled into anything that made sense. She rarely has any information, and what she does have is described so poorly that I couldn’t begin to understand what the information meant. I had hoped that her chapters would be more of a mystery; her puzzling out the AI behavior to figure out its protocols and how to interact with it. Instead, it’s mostly her knowing nothing, focusing on minutiae of systems that were never described well enough for there to be minutiae worth focusing on, and occasionally having breakthroughs that don’t actually seem to be related to the information she just got and are largely justified by her subconscious brain putting something together (and therefor being entirely off-screen and uninteresting to the reader). As such, Adda’s chapters were about as exciting as reading a car manual. They were impossible to follow, poorly described, and entirely uninteresting.
The characters were also just not interesting. The book is 437 pages long and I could hardly begin to describe either main character or why they like each other, much less much interesting about any side character. Adda is reclusive and doesn’t like people, Iridian is social and cares about protecting people….and that’s about it. Their relationship doesn’t go much deeper than memes about friendships between introverts and the one extrovert they like. There are some cute moments, but even the cute moments fall flat because there’s nothing interesting backing them up. The side characters are just the same; I couldn’t tell you any personality traits for anyone else past whether or not they like Iridian and Adda. Pel, Adda’s brother, is the only exception, and he’s about as deep as a kiddie pool: he cares for Adda, is generally likable and good natured, and is a player. It was nice because at least he’s personable, but he also kind of just floated on the edge of scenes to occasionally smile at Adda and call her “Sissey” (which made me cringe every single time).
Furthermore, the drama and writing is just dull. A lot of big things happen with so little fanfare that I almost missed them; they’d either appear out of nowhere and have no impact, they’d be resolved in a sentence or two with no fanfare, or the threat would just kind of…fade away into the background, forever forgotten. The emotions of the characters are never at the forefront, so the impacts of big events are rarely felt. Even when the other is in intense danger, Adda and Iridian never feel particularly worried or panicked. For a huge chunk of the book, Iridian is facing almost certain death, and yet Adda mostly just wandered around in a drug-addled state and occasionally disconnects from the comms and monitoring system to, like, go talk to a pirate for a while, and she never seems to worry that something bad is happening while she’s gone. Death and tragedy are similarly written without impact, so as a reader I felt entirely disconnected from the stakes.
Moreover, the book has so many potentially interesting set-ups and then does nothing with them. For example, there was a major solar system-wide war mere years ago, and Iridian was on the opposite side of the war as all of the other ex-soldiers among the pirate crew. It comes up a lot that Iridian dislikes one person or another for being a former enemy, and she has a lot of strong negative stereotypes about them, and occasionally the two sides glare at each other… but the book never bothers to tell you anything. I don’t know why the war was fought. I don’t know why it ended. I don’t know the positions of either side. I don’t know who won or how it ended. I don’t know anything aside from Iridian’s biases (and to be clear, the book is in 3rd person—it’s not like the narration would have required Iridian herself to stop and give an impartial description of the war) so I don’t know if I should be on her side or not. The book does nothing with this idea despite how often it comes up, so there’s absolutely nothing about the conflict that makes it compelling. It’s just there, adding to the page count of what is already an incredibly boring book.
All in all, Barbary Station was a somewhat paradoxical read: having finished it, and read it quite slowly and methodically to try to follow the convoluted technology plotline, it occurs to me just how little this book said. There’s a lot of words, but so few ideas. There’s no exposition, no characterization, and very little plot—which means that, in the end, there’s just nothing there.
I’m giving this book a 1.5 out of 5 stars, rounded up. I’m tempted to go lower, but the writing is technically fine. I found it boring, but I can at least imagine the person who would enjoy it. I really can’t recommend it, but hey, if you want to read a bunch of space gibberish while occasionally lesbians kiss in the background, have at it.
I spent a long time looking for a space pirates book for a reading challenge—of the options I considered, I found the premise of Barbary Station really intriguing. Engineer lesbians fighting alongside pirates to take down a killer AI? That sounds awesome!
Unfortunately, what sounded like an amazing premise ended up being incredibly boring.
The biggest issue in this book is that the whole book is just dull. The characters are dull, the drama is dull, and the way technology is depicted is dull. I’ll start with the technology because it was easily my least favorite part of the book: nothing about it ever made sense or was interesting enough to be worth the time spent on it. For the most part, the book’s chapters switched between the two main characters: Iridian, an ex-soldier, who spends most of her time trying to help the pirate crew fix various problems around their base, and Adda, who spends most of her time alone trying to learn about the AI through a hallucinogenic interface. Iridian’s chapters were at least passable, but every Adda chapter was just boring. She’s reclusive and mostly interacts with the technology, but the technology never gelled into anything that made sense. She rarely has any information, and what she does have is described so poorly that I couldn’t begin to understand what the information meant. I had hoped that her chapters would be more of a mystery; her puzzling out the AI behavior to figure out its protocols and how to interact with it. Instead, it’s mostly her knowing nothing, focusing on minutiae of systems that were never described well enough for there to be minutiae worth focusing on, and occasionally having breakthroughs that don’t actually seem to be related to the information she just got and are largely justified by her subconscious brain putting something together (and therefor being entirely off-screen and uninteresting to the reader). As such, Adda’s chapters were about as exciting as reading a car manual. They were impossible to follow, poorly described, and entirely uninteresting.
The characters were also just not interesting. The book is 437 pages long and I could hardly begin to describe either main character or why they like each other, much less much interesting about any side character. Adda is reclusive and doesn’t like people, Iridian is social and cares about protecting people….and that’s about it. Their relationship doesn’t go much deeper than memes about friendships between introverts and the one extrovert they like. There are some cute moments, but even the cute moments fall flat because there’s nothing interesting backing them up. The side characters are just the same; I couldn’t tell you any personality traits for anyone else past whether or not they like Iridian and Adda. Pel, Adda’s brother, is the only exception, and he’s about as deep as a kiddie pool: he cares for Adda, is generally likable and good natured, and is a player. It was nice because at least he’s personable, but he also kind of just floated on the edge of scenes to occasionally smile at Adda and call her “Sissey” (which made me cringe every single time).
Furthermore, the drama and writing is just dull. A lot of big things happen with so little fanfare that I almost missed them; they’d either appear out of nowhere and have no impact, they’d be resolved in a sentence or two with no fanfare, or the threat would just kind of…fade away into the background, forever forgotten. The emotions of the characters are never at the forefront, so the impacts of big events are rarely felt. Even when the other is in intense danger, Adda and Iridian never feel particularly worried or panicked. For a huge chunk of the book, Iridian is facing almost certain death, and yet Adda mostly just wandered around in a drug-addled state and occasionally disconnects from the comms and monitoring system to, like, go talk to a pirate for a while, and she never seems to worry that something bad is happening while she’s gone. Death and tragedy are similarly written without impact, so as a reader I felt entirely disconnected from the stakes.
Moreover, the book has so many potentially interesting set-ups and then does nothing with them. For example, there was a major solar system-wide war mere years ago, and Iridian was on the opposite side of the war as all of the other ex-soldiers among the pirate crew. It comes up a lot that Iridian dislikes one person or another for being a former enemy, and she has a lot of strong negative stereotypes about them, and occasionally the two sides glare at each other… but the book never bothers to tell you anything. I don’t know why the war was fought. I don’t know why it ended. I don’t know the positions of either side. I don’t know who won or how it ended. I don’t know anything aside from Iridian’s biases (and to be clear, the book is in 3rd person—it’s not like the narration would have required Iridian herself to stop and give an impartial description of the war) so I don’t know if I should be on her side or not. The book does nothing with this idea despite how often it comes up, so there’s absolutely nothing about the conflict that makes it compelling. It’s just there, adding to the page count of what is already an incredibly boring book.
All in all, Barbary Station was a somewhat paradoxical read: having finished it, and read it quite slowly and methodically to try to follow the convoluted technology plotline, it occurs to me just how little this book said. There’s a lot of words, but so few ideas. There’s no exposition, no characterization, and very little plot—which means that, in the end, there’s just nothing there.
I’m giving this book a 1.5 out of 5 stars, rounded up. I’m tempted to go lower, but the writing is technically fine. I found it boring, but I can at least imagine the person who would enjoy it. I really can’t recommend it, but hey, if you want to read a bunch of space gibberish while occasionally lesbians kiss in the background, have at it.
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