In the far future, space has been colonized, spaceships fill the sky, and the universe is ruled by the three High Houses. Ada von Hasenberg, the fifth child of House van Hasenberg has been on the run for the past two years after fleeing prior to the betrothal ceremony between her and a son of House Rockhurst. Unfortunately her luck runs out when she is captured by bounty hunters and thrown into a cell already occupied by Marcus Loch, the universe’s most wanted criminal. When their ship is attacked by Richard Rockhurst, Ada’s rejected fiancé, Ada strikes a deal with Loch to help her escape.
I’ve been in a bit of a reading slump. The past few or so books I’ve read have been fine, however none of them have really had that wow factor. But that all changed as soon as I picked up this book.
I found this story to be fun and exciting. I really liked that it was set in space, on spaceships that could make food for you, and with clothes and jewelry that could shield you from laser blasts. This book is portrayed as “space opera”. I had no clue what space opera meant so I had to go to the trusty Wikipedia to look it up. I foolishly thought it had something to do with music but I was wrong. According to Wikipedia, space opera is a sub-genre of science fiction that is mainly set in outer space and usually involves conflicts between adversaries possessing advanced abilities, futuristic weapons, and other sophisticated technology – it’s a play on the term “soap opera”.
The book is a romance which, I have to say, was not apparent to me when I put it on my reading list. There’s the romance between Ada and Loch as well as a romance between some secondary characters. I didn’t feel the romance was a large part of the book however I have read some reviews where reviewers felt the book was more romance than sci fi. Perhaps it depends on what you’re reading the book for – I was more interested in the action over the romance so maybe that’s why I felt the romance was more of a subplot.
I thought the universe and world of the three High Houses was interesting. I like science fiction but not so much science fiction that I’m constantly being bombarded with tales of how things work. There were plenty of recognizable items and the book was just futuristic enough to be believable. Ada’s character was real and authentic with a good back story. I had to wonder if the author had Vin Diesel’s character from the movie Pitch Black in mind when she wrote the Marcus Loch character – he is described as bald, buff, can see in the dark, and is definitely an alpha hero. There were plenty of clichés in the story but I was entertained.
I did have to laugh because during the book, Ada gets captured twice, and Loch gets captured three times. They’ve both been able to evade capture for years, but are then captured at least five times in the space of a few weeks? It seemed a bit implausible but made for good action and conflict.
I really liked this book and will be on the lookout for the next one in the series.
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