Captain Wu

Starship Nameless #1

by Patrice Fitzgerald, Jack Lyster

Captain Wu’s the name. Smuggling’s her game.An immersive, creative, action-packed thriller of a book!A counter-cultural treasure full of twists; a fast-moving joy to read!Looking for more swashbuckling in your space opera? Here you have it! CAPTAIN WU, the first book in the completed trilogy, features a ragtag crew with a wily captain in her sixties who is out of money and always on the run. Throw into the mix the captain’s hacker-in-training granddaughter, who’s stowed away, and an authoritarian interstellar government that has decided to pay attention to the small fries for some reason, and you have yourself an excellent adventure. To be fair, they only started shooting after she started insulting them. She was just about to hand off the package when three tentacle-faced strangers attacked. Wu loves a good fight and lives for a good heist. The Captain and her crew make their living taking undercover assignments from questionable clients... and it pays. Or at least, it used to.But this time, Wu is barely able to make it back to her ship alive. Soon the Starship Nameless is racing around the galaxy with not only the powerful Commonwealth on its tail but another dangerous creature bent on revenge. And then an unexpected visitor arrives, putting Wu and her crew in the position of taking care of some very precious cargo. Is it time for the Captain to give up criming and retire?Not a chance.Captain Wu is the first volume in the Starship Nameless trilogy, followed Smugglers Starship Nameless #2New Starship Nameless #3

Genres: Science Fiction, Space Opera

286 pages, Kindle Edition

First published February 15, 2021

About the author

Patrice Fitzgerald is an indie author, publisher, attorney, and intergalactic singer of songs. She has been publishing herself and others since 2011 and is the force behind the BEYOND THE STARS series of space opera anthologies. Patrice is thrilled to introduce Captain Wu and her STARSHIP NAMELESS crew in her most recent trilogy, written with the inimitable Jack Lyster.

Reviews

[Lena (Sufficiently Advanced Lena)]

I read this as a finalist for SPSFC!

Personal Score: 6.5/10

A great book if you are looking for a fun and fast paced scifi adventure. The highlight for me was the main character, Wu, who honestly is so damn cool. I would also like to mention her crew which was also a fantastic part of the story along with her grandaughter, who was certain interesting adition to the dinamic of Wu's life.

The plot was overall okay,(a mysterious package and a deathly chase) but not enough for me to love it.

More details in the upcoming video review for the finalists!

[Paige · Rating 4 out of 5]

I read this as part of the SPSFC Finals! This review reflects my thoughts and not my team as a whole.

Ooooookay this was fun. I absolutely flew through Captain Wu at quite the pace and it kept me hooked the whole time. Space pirates, found family, a mysterious package are all mixed into this space opera and it created a great story!

I really enjoyed that the MC (Captain Wu herself) was an accomplished smuggler who had been around for quite a while, but still could keep up with the younger generation. Her granddaughter is introduced early on in the story and I loved seeing the dynamic between them. Wu's grandmotherly instincts warring with her smuggler's brain, making a great side plot that just made me love Wu all the more.

The story itself is great. Wu and her crew end up with a mysterious package and they have noone to deliver it to. So, they do the logical thing and open it up. Most of the book is the crew trying to outrun Xenos that are chasing them which takes the reader on a tour of the galaxy, introducing new xenos, new planets and new forms of transport along the way. This is clearly a well thought out universe and I would love to see even more of it. I'd also love to learn more about the Commonwealth in the future books.

The highlight of the book for me is Wu and her relationships with her crew and granddaughter. It feels like characters are really at the heart of the story and some of my favourite moments involved them trying to teach Wu's granddaughter to fly their spaceship. This isn't a book that is bogged down by politics or a complicated plot. Instead it's a fast-paced trip across the universe with a crew you'll come to love.

[Scott - Book Invasion · Rating 5 out of 5]

A finalist in the Self Published Science Fiction Competition!
(My top pick!)

This was quite the smuggler’s adventure story with a ‘middle aged’ (60 yrs young) grandmother who has also ran the smuggling game for quite some time (and has the street smarts to get around). It tells the tales of Captain and her rag tag space crew of the Starship Nameless. The story opens up immediately with a bar fight and chase scene right out of the gate. Readers strap in as we’re following Wu through a smuggling deal gone wrong and she has to flee some pretty mean pursuers through the book and plenty of unexpected twists.

This was a fun rag-tag space smuggler story with all the action of a Harrison Ford flick. Call it Firefly, call it Cowboy Bebop, it has a pinch of everything. I enjoyed the dialog and the characters we were introduced to. This was a solid sci-fi all around and one that I really enjoyed. I hope to continue this series to see where it all ends up.

Personal Rating: 8/10

[Sibil]

So, the other day I talked to you about Good Neighbors and I was saying that I wanted to see more characters like Mia around, well, I want to see more characters like Captain Wu around too! She is grumpy, even if her grumpiness is on a completely different level from Mia’s. Mia is grumpy as “normal” people are grumpy, Captain Wu is more grumpy on the almost alcoholic, veteran of something, old captain kind. And again, usually, we have male characters in this role, and here I really appreciate that we get to see a woman. But this is not all! She is sixty-something years old! How fantastic is that??
I love to see all the ages in my books, and when I find an older character I am really really happy! And this was just peachy! Even if “peachy” is not a word you would associate with Captain Wu!

So, the MC was pretty impressive, and I loved her. But we have also an interesting crew. Six is my favorite, even if they are the hardest to pinpoint because of their race and the fact that nobody seems to know a lot about them, but since I am planning on continuing this series, I really hope to get more info on the next books! And also Rev and Gillium (I hope to have written this one right, because I may have some memory problems, so sorry about that!) were pretty good.
And we had also a couple of criminals that were secondary to the story but that were pretty intriguing, too, and this is not a bad thing!

And then we have a rich world-building, with different Xenos in there, and planet and tech. It is pretty interesting, even if I have to say that this book is not heavy on world-building. This is the perfect book if you want to take a break from more demanding books, and want something set in space, with a lot of action, intrigues, fights, and some interesting characters. It is not a masterpiece, that’s true, and the world-building could have been more developed because it has a ton of potential and what we get to see is fascinating! It is like the majority of urban fantasy I have read. They are good to keep you intrigued and hooked, they have great characters and a plot full of action and twists that would keep you intrigued and hooked up till the end, but usually, they are not really strong on the world-building. But who cares? You know that going in, and you know that you would be in for a treat all the same, and you go in gladly! And this is exactly the same for this book! I had a great time with it, and I have all the intentions of going on with this series!

And the banter! It is really good, and we have some really funny moments, even if our characters are not in a funny situation at all!

“At least we can be happy that with our final acts we pissed off a bunch of very powerful people.”
In spite of everything, Wu smiled “Yeah, I think we can feel proud of just how irritating we’ve managed to be” she said. “yay for us”.

So, as I was saying, I had a great time with this book. I really enjoyed the characters, and I really hope to see more of them around in the next book, I was hooked up from the beginning, too! It was funny, it made me think, and it was a real pleasure from the start to the end!

[Andrew Hindle · Rating 4 out of 5]

Captain Wu was a space opera adventure just like it says on the packet, an action-packed and fun-character-filled tale of a plucky crew of smugglers just trying to make ends meet at the raggedy edge of the law in a crazy mixed-up cosmos. When a delivery goes bad and the crew of the 'Nameless' find themselves in possession of a relic sought after by shady characters willing to kill all witnesses, Captain Wu - a hero as resourceful as she is eponymous - has to do what it takes to keep her family safe. Her found family, that is, and her biological family as well. Although she was also kind of found, because - look we're getting into the weeds here, let's move this rough ol' beast along towards Bethlehem already.

I was immediately charmed by the main protagonist[1] and I loved the different planets the Nameless visited. This story has some gorgeous worldbuilding, merging the grimy geopolitical functionality of Firefly with the science-fantasy interstellar mechanics of the Stargate franchise to good effect.

Was it too derivative? I don't think so ... although Rev's sister, gifted and disappeared-off to some Commonwealth academy for possible use in later books, was a tad on the nose. To say nothing of Patience the owner of Whitefall, I mean Tell the owner of Dust. But hey. When you have a construction dynamic that puts resource scarcity and legal outsidering very much centre-table, you're gonna end up with a Serenity-type shipboard business model and a system of planets not unlike the Verse, and sci-fi nerds are going to recognise it, and that's just unavoidable. Best thing you can do is downplay the parallels as much as possible, and Captain Wu managed that just fine.

And if you can't downplay them, then ("Dune was taken") lampshade them. That also works.

Yeah, I was charmed by Wu from the start. I don't know if her whole side-schtick as an underground death cage fighting contestant made a lot of sense, her tough badassery and emotional issues could have been illustrated in some other way but by all means, let's have a fucking underground death cage fight thing. Why not? I was also amused at the very outset by her self-identifying as a terrible shot with a gun (this despite her sassy gun-toting pose on the cover) and was expecting it to be more of a running / significant element in the story, but it wasn't really brought up again. I consider that a squandered opportunity.

From the fun action of the introductory hook, the excitement doesn't let up and we're led on a very enjoyable page-turning adventure through space as the crew of the Nameless try to figure out why they're being shot at and chased. Each character is distinct and intriguing in their own way, from the spunky hacker-type Lilly to the phlegmatic and delightfully behaviourally-atypical xeno Six, and I felt very close to them all by the end of the story. That's a rare thing, and deserves recognition.

I don't know if I buy the premise of the Commonwealth having a monopoly on energy. Of course it would be super easy to get bogged down in the mechanics and the socioeconomics of it all and the authors did a good job here of walking that line between "here's how the galaxy works" and "Commonwealth, control, modes of, see Appendices C - H". I am a fan of the info-dump so I wouldn't have minded the latter approach, but I am aware that I'm in a minority there. It's just ... planets and suns have so many different ways of releasing energy and a space-age civilisation would be even better at harnessing it than we are, so how are batteries and a single charger-planet a viable foundation for an interstellar monopoly? I was baffled by this almost to the point of being bumped out of the story. It really needed to be something more esoteric, but - like they said - Dune was already taken so...

All in all this was a well-constructed and interesting-to-read story and setting, and I definitely want to know more. Let's take a look at what the meters have to say.




Sex-o-meter

Sex is referred to a few times in the story but it's not really integral. Wu is appropriately horny, as befits a late-middle-aged bisexual space buccaneer who gets in underground death cage fights to let off steam. The sex-o-meter therefore awards Captain Wu a pon farr that turns out to be a sweaty false alarm due to the radiation from a nearby nebula out of a possible death by snu snu.

Gore-o-meter

Plenty of hand-to-hand fights and shoot-outs and stuff, and a bit of pretty harrowing human-on-xeno abuse, but nothing particularly bloody or gutsy or splattered-offal-all-over-cockpitty here. I'd read this to my kids (11 and 8). Two-and-a-half flesh-gobbets out of a possible five.

WTF-o-meter

The squid xenos were cool, their whole characterisation and mode of speech was chilling. That's not so much a WTF as just me not knowing where else to mention it - but their origins, and their endgame, and the whole story of the masters and the book that is central to this story? That is some excellent WTF right there. I was left uncertain about whether the Commonwealth were just another hand of the masters. They're not the masters themselves, right? Please? Anyway it ended on a cliffhanger with not many answers to any of the big questions set up throughout the narrative, so there you go. For WTF, Captain Wu gets a Dejarik out of a possible Fruity Oaty Bars! - go ahead and google those. It's fine.

My Final Verdict

I really enjoyed this book, and although I'd be tempted to play a bit more with a longer gradient of scores, the Amazon / Goodreads scale is what we have so let's give it four stars and leave it at that. Thanks Fitzgerald and Lyster for a grand read!

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[1] Cap'n Wu is a bisexual grandmother of Asian descent, which checks a whole lot of boxes even if the authors ... don't so much? I remain uncertain how to approach this sort of thing because I love seeing the rich tapestry of human identity and cultural markers in fiction. We are a fascinating species of apes, no two ways about it. Get us away from the Flash Gordon (or shit, even the Malcolm Reynolds) space hero! And if a bisexual grandmother of Asian descent writes a sci-fi book, please let me know so I can read the shit out of it.

But still, and not to make a whole second review about this, the question of who "gets to" create voices like this in fiction is increasingly a thorny one. You'll naturally want to hear this cishet white male opinion (I am even approaching middle age, and have a large grey beard) on this, so it's this: I think it's very, very important to have characters and backgrounds like this in the stories we tell each other. Normalise the gay protagonist, the Somali-descended space farmboy, the badass lady swashbuckler, the transmasc inventor of a gun that turns people into robots (but with a 0.1% chance of glitching and turning them into vessels for an eldritch horror from the underside of the universe)! I also think it's very, very important that people in the real world who actually live these traits[2] get their place at the table. They should write, and be read, and be celebrated.

Is it up to women to create more female characters? Is it up to LGBT+ authors to write more LGBT+ heroes? Is it up to artists of colour to bring people of colour into any and every creative space they can? Sure. It's up to them. Can people like me help in any way? I sure hope so. We can help by buying, reading, spreading awareness and positivity and acceptance in what is still (trust me, it still is) a very closed series of circles and locked doors.

Can we also help by working more diverse identities into our own writing? Again, I hope so. If we can all only tell stories about and within our own sociocultural contexts, it's going to be a lose-lose situation for everyone. But at the same time, white cishet blokes need to be aware that the white cishet bloke sociocultural context is still damn near a worldwide universal, and we're not going to change that by shouting louder. We're only going to change it by listening to the ones our forebears very effectively silenced. And that's a highly uncomfortable prospect for some people. But shit, I've gone and written a whole second review about this even though I said I wasn't going to.

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[2] Farmboys, swashbucklers, gun-makers ... you know.

[William Tracy · Rating 5 out of 5]

Read for SPSFC Semifinalists!

Overall Thoughts
Do you not have enough swashbuckling in your space opera? This book will fix that. It features a ragtag crew with a dysfunctional captain in her sixties, out of money, and always on the run. Throw into the mix the captain’s hacker-in-training granddaughter, who’s stowed away and an authoritarian interstellar government who’s decided to pay attention to the small fries for some reason, and you have yourself an excellent adventure.

Plot
Like all pirating adventures, this starts out with the crew out to score another job and get some real money to keep their ship running, however it quickly gets complicated, first by the captain’s granddaughter (who’s lied to her mother about joining up with her estranged grandmother, of course), then by some unknown aliens who really won’t leave them alone—all across the galaxy. The plot is maybe not as deep as they come, and I will warn that it ends on a sort of small cliffhanger, but the real fun here is from exploring the interstellar world and the characters in it.

Setting
I love the used, oppressed feeling of the different worlds and places featured in this story. From desert towns, to icy expanses, polluted industrial outposts to gleaming, expensive space stations and scarily advanced ships of the government, this elects Star Wars, and Firefly, and The Expanse in equal measures. The story never really sets too long on one place, avoiding some of the standard scifi tropes of monoculture planets and travel times. There’s a convenient wormhole network and some good hand-wavy explanation for how it works. There are even hints that not all is as it seems, and the story sneaks in a few pointed jabs at authoritarian governments and how resources are artificially constrained. I’m interested to read the next books in the series and see if they follow up on these promises. Overall, though, I was greatly entertained, which was the point!

Character
The characters definitely made the story here, which is definitely the goal for this gritty sort of action space opera. Captain Wu herself is delightedly unstable. Even though she’s in her sixties, she likes to go out drinking and fighting in pit matches. The trans pilot is usually high on something illegal, but makes a few great speeches on how to approach life to the stowaway granddaughter. The granddaughter herself is an amazing wrench stuck in the whole story, and her interactions with her grandmother are alternately comedic and touching. The muscle of the ship probably has the least story to him, but I don’t think anything is lost there, and the enigmatic alien crew member is sufficiently mysterious. Again, I hope to learn more about them in later books, but this is a delightful entry into the series, and makes me want to go watch Firefly and Solo again!

Score out of 10 (My personal score, not the final contest score)
A fun space opera romp from disaster to disaster with compelling and dysfunctional characters. 8/10.

[Matthew Cushing · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book was a finalist for the 2021 Self-Published Science Fiction Competition (SPSFC), and I read it as a judge.

A 61-year-old Asian woman ship captain and grandmother provides a refreshing perspective on the swashbuckling hero. Several of the Starship Nameless crew are interesting characters, particularly the captain’s young, awe-shocked granddaughter and a wizened, furry alien that lives in the ship’s ductwork. The universe that Fitzgerald and Lyster have established is creative, with fascinating planets, interesting aliens and characters, and reasonable technology – with limitations – that provides its own set of challenges to overcome when the action gets frantic.

The plucky crew of a small ship, eking their way in the galaxy smuggling contraband and living outside the long arm of the law has been played a lot, but Fitzgerald and Lyster still bring some uniqueness and creativity to the trope.

The story flows easy from the beginning, when Captain Wu is ambushed at a merchandise exchange and a series of events are kicked off that lead the Nameless crew on a search to research the cargo they carried, figure out why assassins chased them, and see if they can earn some money along the way. A positive tone throughout, there is little sense the crew is ever in danger while their adversaries face a staggering mortality rate.

For me, the ending faltered as the story stops with many questions left unresolved. Some answers are speculated by the crew, but this is unsatisfying as nothing is confirmed through the narrative. Perhaps an aggressive attempt to sell book two of the series and continue the story, I found the approach disappointing.

Overall, it’s a fun read, and I enjoyed it more than not.

[Jay Brantner · Rating 4 out of 5]

I read Captain Wu as part of a judging team for the Self-Published Science Fiction Competition (SPSFC), where it is a finalist.

It’s a little bit hard to evaluate a book that isn’t trying to tell a complete story. It almost reads like a TV pilot episode. Yes, you’re going to include enough of an arc that the audience doesn’t feel ripped off. But you’re not going for satisfying, you’re going for entertaining and leaving the audience wanting more.

And it succeeds, at least on the entertainment front. While action-heavy space opera isn’t usually my thing, Captain Wu leans hard into the Firefly aesthetic (but with a bit more diversity in the cast), and at some point my nostalgia just takes over. We’ve got snarky smugglers trying to keep under the radar from an interplanetary Allia—Commonwealth. But this is becoming increasingly difficult after a job on a backwater planet goes sour and leaves them hunted by a mysterious but persistent alien species.

I don’t know how much depth there is, but it’s also a very short book that reads remarkably quickly. It’s there to entertain and introduce the characters, who you’ll get to know in future episodes. Does it leave on a cliffhanger? Yeah.

I can only score it so high, because it doesn’t have enough depth or a full enough arc to really knock my socks off—we still don’t really even know what was such a big deal about the job gone south! But at the same time, it was a fun read. And a fun read is enough for 3.5 stars, probably rounded up.

First impression: 14/20. Full review and official SPSFC score to come at www.tarvolon.com

[Veronica Strachan · Rating 5 out of 5]

Thank heavens for such a brilliant 61-year-old female protagonist!!!! A slick and snarky opening morphs into a rollercoaster ride through the troubled travels of Captain Wu and her motley crew. Patrice Fitzgerald and Jack Lyster have drawn a well considered and complex universe with plenty of tech - enough for me anyway - culture, politics, corruption and power plays. The worlds are populated by a number of alien races and a slew of diverse humans too. Loved the characters, particularly Leanne Wu and Rev. The plot was a brilliant balance of fast paced action, awkward family time and fun camaraderie. Despite the fast pace, we get some recovery time between Captain Wu’s amazing physical escapades. The inclusivity was refreshing and effortlessly woven into the story. The ending had me lining up the next book in the series.
A really enjoyable read.

[Emily Pennington · Rating 5 out of 5]

A Delivery Glitch . . .

With the non-stop action, adventure, suspense, and a heroine who doesn’t know when to quit, you have all the criteria for an amazing read! Captain Wu is indeed unstoppable and fearless. Smuggling is her talent, and it gets her in more than enough trouble.

The Captain makes her delivery, but when the squid-shaped xenos kill the guys there to receive it, Wu has to make a quick escape back to her ship, barely making it alive! Now the Nameless not only has the powerful Commonwealth chasing her, but a dangerous creature determined to seek revenge is close behind. Is escape possible? Or will Wu have to resort to subterfuge to make it out alive? Should she maybe consider another “day job”?

Soap operas are fun and fast-paced. Grab your copy. I think you will enjoy this one!

[Katie Houston · Rating 5 out of 5]

Really fun read

Loved it! Wu is such a badass woman. I would recommend for anyone that likes a fun, fast paced, action packed read.
Looking forward to the next one.

[Jon Adams · Rating 4 out of 5]

Another great read from SPSFC.

[L.V. Ditchkus · Rating 4 out of 5]

The female sexagenarian warrior captain hooked me at the beginning. Capital Wu is head-strong and sarcastic, yet the author makes readers cheer for her and her rag-tag crew. This book has all the elements sci-fi fans want to see in a space opera with a mystery treasure and all sorts of oddly shaped aliens. Fast-paced space battles and fight pit scenes are well crafted, and the galaxy is vast and well-defined.
A few places slowed me down when people didn't act as expected (i.e., based on their established characters or the storyline) or motives didn't sufficiently justify actions. I needed to suspend belief when the captain/crew concluded who was chasing them without sufficient evidence. If the reader doesn't believe it, why would they? While the book ended with a lull in the action, I didn’t find it satisfying. Not enough was resolved to make this a complete story.

[Jacob · Rating 5 out of 5]

Captain Wu
A rip roaring adventure of a tale with amazingly well created and believable characters who have realistic and interesting interactions. Exactly what I look for in my SciFi!

Captain Wu has been in the business for a while, whether that business is legit transportation or just to the side of legit with smuggling, she doesn’t let that bother her too much.

What does bother her is when her life, and that of her crew is in danger, and then everyone better watch out for her as she moves the heavens to fight fir their safety.

This was a GREAT read! It was a Finalist in the first ever SPSFC, and I was really happy to have it in my hands as I devoured it. One of those stories that keeps you wanting to read the next page. This is a book that you will WANT to give a read to!

[Emmalyn Renato · Rating 4 out of 5]

My selection for the Reddit r/Fantasy 2024 Bingo 'Self-Published or Indie Publisher' square (hard mode). This (short) novel was a finalist for the 2021 Self-Published Science Fiction Competition (SPSFC). It's criminal that as I write this, it only has 37 ratings on Goodreads. It's fast'n'furious space opera. Captain Wu (a "middle-aged" Asian grandmother), is the starship captain of a garbage scowl called Nameless, with a rag-tag found family crew. When smuggling a mysterious package to a sand planet, it all goes wrong, she gets shoot at and then they are all on the run from squid-like aliens who are determined to get the package and kill the Nameless crew in the process. There's no heavy plot here. It's basically a story about a deathly chase for survival and trying to understand the bigger picture. It does have all the elements I like in these kinds of tales: interesting characters, good inter-relationships between crew members, humor, well thought out scenes and a relentless pace. It will remind you of Firefly and Cowboy Bebop in parts. We are left with a complete cliff-hanger, so one star off for that. Luckily the other two books in the trilogy are already available, so I'll get around to them fairly soon.

(Other 2024 Bingo squares that this would fit: First in a Series; Criminals; Space Opera (HM); Survival (HM)).

[Pat · Rating 1 out of 5]

Liked the little bits of hard science, but ... Space opera is fun; and this is trying to be, but the constant need to drag a 13-year-old into every scene got on my nerves pretty quick. The adult characters, while a bit shallow, are fairly interesting; the teenager doesn't really seem like a teenager: she's there to be info-dumped on so the reader learns background; and she's just the bestest at looking up information and noticing things; and the whole thing got pretty tedious.

Great cover, though.