Space Opera Fans discussion

The June 2025 Limited Pick is A Line in the Sand by Judith Moffitt. Please use this thread to post questions, comments, and reviews, at any time.

Official description:
Rob Michaels had lost one war. The last thing he wanted was to be involved in another. He just wanted to trade and fly his ship, GEM, in peace. Mark Haver was career military. A recent widow, all Mark wanted was to raise his teenage daughter and keep his ship, the UPS Unity, running. Jobel Famarion was third in line for the throne of the United Planets. Somewhere along the line, he had become a spoiled brat. The King sent him to the UPS Unity as punishment for causing a riot. Three men, who had no reason to be friends, needed to come together to fight the takeover of their government in a military coup.

We discussed this book several years ago. Here’s a link to that discussion:
https://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/...

I remember enjoying reading this book and gave it 4 stars but it’s been long enough that I’ve forgotten most of the plot. I look forward to rereading it in June.

I've finished our two books for May, and have just downloaded a copy of A Line in the Sand, so I'll be starting it slightly early. I'm looking forward to this one. (Although this is our 'Limited' choice for June, it was easier to obtain than our 'Reader' choice - although it forced me to temporarily break my boycott of Amazon).

I'm halfway through A Line in the Sand and enjoying it so far. It has a good plot, good characters, with good ships and crews. For me, the writing isn't quite as strong as the other elements and I suspect a good editor could have improved it significantly - but its a debut novel so deserves to be cut some slack, and I can understand why a new author would do their own editing and use a tool like ProWritingAid.

At this stage I'm reasonably confident I'll carry on and read the next in the trilogy (remember the good old days when not every book had to be part of a multi-volume series??).

I've started this one a bit early - I'm looking forward to reading the views of others in the group (and my thanks to Teresa for nominating this one).

I’m planning to read this book after I read Fenrir, so that I have the option of binging the series assuming it grabs me the way it did the first time. The author mentioned a while back that she’s working on #4 but hasn’t given any estimate of when it would be available.

Finished A Line in the Sand, and enjoyed the book, especially the storyline and the characters. I felt that the quality of the writing let it down slightly; it seemed a bit formulaic - especially as the book progressed, and the ending felt a bit rushed. But a good debut and I wouldn't rule out reading the next in the series.

Took me about 3 days to read this...
Plenty of typos, a few missing words...
But, MAN, was this a great book!
This was a well-balanced mix of detailed 'what's happening in the moment' with the 'let's move the plot along and skip all the mundane boring bits.'
The sad parts brought tears to my eyes, and the happy bits... well, they came at all the right places in the book.
Usually, I would drop a star for the grammatical errors, but honestly... this book deserves more than 5 stars. This is definitely on my list of series that I want to read!

I’ve started my reread. The author is doing a good job of providing bits of backstory to explain the motivation and behavior of characters without info dumps, and the characters do have different personalities.

Man have I forgotten a lot of this book.

This is the review I did the first time I read this book:
Held my attention nicely. Needs polishing and editing but good for a first indie book. Lots of action, reasonable motivation for most of the characters, multiple alien species. At one point it brought tears to my eyes and books hardly ever do that to me. I’ll be buying the sequel.

Teresa wrote: "This is the review I did the first time I read this book:
Held my attention nicely. Needs polishing and editing but good for a first indie book. Lots of action, reasonable motivation for most of th..."

Did you you read the full series last time, Teresa, and how did they compare?

I read books 2 and 3 as they came out, going by my Goodreads records and the publication dates. I gave book 2 four stars and book 3 three stars but didn’t write reviews for either.

This book has a lot of story threads to keep track of, and the POV changes frequently. When I’m mentally alert that’s fine, but I’ve been mildly sick and brain fogged all week, so I’ve had to switch to reading easier books. I’ll resume reading this one eventually.

Teresa wrote: "This book has a lot of story threads to keep track of, and the POV changes frequently. When I’m mentally alert that’s fine, but I’ve been mildly sick and brain fogged all week, so I’ve had to switc..."

Sorry to hear you've been ill Teresa - I hope you get well soon.

Teresa wrote: "This book has a lot of story threads to keep track of, and the POV changes frequently. When I’m mentally alert that’s fine, but I’ve been mildly sick and brain fogged all week, so I’ve had to switc..."

Are you feeling any better, Teresa?

Seeing as how I just noticed I never posted the nomination threads for July, and it’s far too late….. I’m over the worst of the symptoms but haven’t tried to resume reading this book yet.