False Dawn

by Maia Strong

As a police detective aboard generational starship Lažna Zora, it's Galen Traub's job to investigate when someone goes missing. He never expects that someone to be his husband. Time is ticking quickly past and the longer Dayan is missing, the less likely the chances Galen will find him alive.

While Galen searches for him, Dayan Andrus is trapped in a nightmare, forced to relive events from his past while his kidnappers collect data derived from his memories. While Dayan lives inside his manipulated mind, his body is without food or water, strapped to a chair, captive.

Can Galen reach him before he's driven over the edge?

Genres: M M Romance, Science Fiction

139 pages, Kindle Edition

First published July 1, 2010

About the author

Writing, acting, bellydancing, and teaching people to talk in funny voices. Who knew you could make a living doing stuff like that? I didn't, and in fact I can't. Those are the things I do to feed my soul rather than my stomach.

I've always written, but I never expected to write romance. I have documented evidence of a seafaring play I wrote in the second grade. Something involving a giant duck, if memory serves; I'm too scared to dig it out of the binder and find out for sure. Since that rather inauspicious beginning, I've turned my hand to fantasy, science fiction, action adventure (with dinosaurs, oo!), and now steamy romance--with fantasy in it because that is my first genre love. It's inescapable when the first time you read The Lord of the Rings is in the fourth grade. (I read Asimov's Foundation trilogy the next year, but I didn't really understand it. I have yet to try reading it again lo these many years later.)

Off the page, I work in a number of positions with local theatres, I bellydance, and I train and perform aerial. I enjoy traveling, eating good food, drinking good coffee, and hanging out with my husband and our kitties.

Reviews

[Laura Estelle]

I had no idea what I was getting into with this book. I was starting with a description of "queer space opera romance", which has the potential to be very much my thing.

Disappointingly, it was neither utterly fantastic nor a fascinating trainwreck. I did read it quickly, helped by the straightforward & competent prose style + novella-ish length.

My two favorite things about it were (spoilers!)
* How the romance was told via flashbacks, while the detective plot happened in the present
* The bad guys were very sympathetic (and fun) characters. Gotta love robots trying to figure out how to be more human, and doing evil in the process!

However, it lacked the (character and world) depth that put a book among my favorites.

[Mara Ismine · Rating 4 out of 5]

Enjoyable crime mystery with a twist at the end. The main characters get a happy ending, but I couldn't help feeling sorry for the villains.