Relics of Utopia: Starship Gilead Book 1, John Graves. I got this as an Aethon Books ARC. Repeat of my Goodreads review. 4/5 stars, March 2, 2022.
Graves has created a universe which is SF crossed with a elements of the medieval and dark ages. Humanity exploded out into the stars, and then collapsed into internecine conflict. Civilization is a stagnant shadow of its former greatness. Now a handful of great starships serve as interstellar castles for semi-feudal captains policing far-flung fiefdoms.
The Gilead is one of these, a survivor of a greater and now bygone era. A spasm of violent religious zealotry breaks out in her sector, upending the galactic order and challenging the ship's ability to survive. The odds are long. The enemy is clever and ruthless. Gilead's captain is aging. His son and heir is spoiled and petulant, with a light sprinkling of borderline sociopathic tendencies. His daughter is more promising, but is doomed to an arranged marriage.
This was a decent story with a couple of interesting and novel twists. The writing is generally good, and Gaines is equally adept at the action and his characters' inner lives--something not always the case with this genre. I greatly appreciated that the characters are multi-dimensional. It was nice to see protagonists whose thoughts and feelings evolve and change with the world around them. The bad guys are very bad indeed, and the action is well-described. Overall, the plot was serviceable but had few surprises.
If Graves keeps developing the characters, particularly Adrienne, this could be the start of a fun and entertaining series.
Holy cow, I hated this book. Seriously.
Space Corps, Ian Schwartz. I got this as an Aethon Books ARC. Repeat of my Goodreads review. 3/5 stars, March 9, 2022
Jonathan Blake has a problem. Elected by his crew to command humanity’s first faster-than-light ship, he quickly finds himself caught between simultaneously trying to save his family, save humanity from vicious alien capitalist-slavers, and save his command from a more capable subordinate. He manages to survive, whether he will triumph is an open question.
As SF, this is okay. The plot is pretty average, with a nice twist at the end to set up the rest of the series. Although Schwartz seems like a skilled writer, Space Corps' plot and dialog both dragged. It is also definitely light on character development. Blake, in particular, comes across as an annoying mediocrity. The other characters are are largely ciphers.
Blake and his comrades are revolutionaries, carrying the flag (probably a large red one) for a one-world government that's overthrown, well, the same sort of people represented by the the slave-owning, gladiator-slaughtering “Octos” they meet in space. Schwartz lays this on very thick, and it leaves the protagonists feeling cartoonish. (To be fair, the antagonists are too: the "Octos" are luminescent interstellar octopii.)
The basic themes here are great fodder for SF, done right. Martha Wells, for example, skillfully uses the tension between amoral corporations and do-gooders in her “Murderbot” series. But the ensuing struggles are the context against which Wells develops her plots and characters. They don't substitute for them.
Space Corps has potential, but needs more work.
Post-script, May 9, 2022: Ok, so re-reading and then posting this made me think that I was sublimating my annoyance with this book. This has potential, yes. But needs some basic work too. One of the things that jumped out at me when I was reading the intricately-plotted Dust Mites was just how much of a deus ex machina all of the one-world revolution/democratized means of production/we are all equal now stuff was. The actual question that went through my mind was something on the order of “So, how did they handle the dissidents and un-reeducated capitalists?” Wished away, I suppose. I was also freshly annoyed by Blake, just because he’s who he is. On the bright side, it does give me a newfound appreciation for the surprise move that Blake’s “ally” pulls on him at the end of the book. Maybe Blake is more dangerous than he appears?
Accellerating towards a literary identity crisis at 9x gravity.
Escaping Gravity, J.D. Sullivan. I got this as an Aethon Books ARC. Repeat of my Goodreads review. 3/5 stars, April 15, 2022.
Whether you will enjoy this book depends on what you think when you hear "space opera." If you're looking for (or even just open to exploring) a reasonable PG/PG-13 coming of age story with classic SF plot elements then give it a chance. If you require a shot of grim darkness mixed into your stories, this is not the novel you're looking for.
As I went through it I kept finding things that annoyed me, while also finding parts I would have loved reading when I was 13 or 14. Often those were the same things. An example is Sullivan's treatment of love, emotions and inter-species romance. The author has tried to balance an emerging human-vulpine romance brokered by an AI with sketchy ideas about romance with a painful commitment to keeping everything PG or PG-13. My parents would have disapproved of this just enough to make me want to read it as a teen. To post-teen me, it was clumsy and felt contrived.
On the positive side, I thought this had many of the basics in place. The world-building is solid, the plot's fit for purpose, there's at least a hand wave in the direction of explaining how space travel got waivers from the laws of physics, and the writing is pretty decent. On the minus side, the characters are pretty much one-dimensional. Dillon's "mentor" comes across as essentially a human with fur and a tragic backstory. It's a missed opportunity to inject a different perspective into the story. The plot could have delivered more suspense and impact.
Reading Escaping Gravity as straight-up regular space opera, I struggled to stay immersed, thus two stars off. As YA (or YA-adjacent, if that's a thing) it would work much better. I'm just not sure who Sullivan was writing for.
Why do I feel this is the Templars vs. the Saracens from the deck of a space-going World War 2 destroyer?
Against All Odds (Grimm’s War, Book 1), Jeffrey H. Haskell. I got this as an Aethon Books ARC. Repeat of my Goodreads review. 4/5 stars, May 8, 2022.
Jacob Grimm is a soon-to-be-cashiered interstellar Navy officer whose career is second in decrepitude only to the ancient ship he’s being assigned to command until his service time winds down. Out on the fringes of civilization, Grimm has to confront a ship where nothing--including the officers and crew--is reliable, a host space station where nothing is as it seems, and a rising threat that speaks of pure evil.
Against All Odds is the best of space operas on one level, but was also surprisingly disappointing on another. On the good side, this is a very well-written story with a solid, exciting plot and vivid characters. Grimm is entirely believable, but so are many of the secondary characters. The story moves along tautly, and came to a satisfying denouement which deftly set up follow-on books. (Which, to be fair, I will gladly read.)
If I could leave half stars, I'd take 1 and 1/2 off for the overwhelming un-creative anachronism laced through the story. (Rounding up since I can't.) Although the story is set in 2933, every detail of the ship, the Navy and the bad guys are ripped from the present day and given a slight sci-fi gloss. Petty Officers, check. Honors, ranks and decorations (they're still handing out Navy Crosses?) -- check. The main enemy, called the Caliphate because of course it is, has been slightly updated from the Barbary Pirates. It feels lazy, and for me undermined an otherwise excellent book.
That said, the book is currently ranked on Amazon as #1 in Hard SF -- and that one issue aside, it’s well deserved.