In the years since the war between the Valovians and the Federated Human Planets ended, Tavi and her crew have made their living as bounty hunters. When they are approached by Torran Fletcher, a Valovian general, who requests their help to find an object that has been stolen from him, Tavi agrees to take the job in exchange for an outrageous amount of money. Torran and his crew board Tavi’s ship, Starlight’s Shadow, to join the search. Tavi is skeptical of Torran and knows that he is not telling her everything, but she doesn’t expect to uncover a plot that jeopardizes the peace between humans and Valoffs.
Hunt the Stars is the first book in Jessie Mihalik’s latest series. I read Mihalik’s Consortium Rebellion series and loved it, so I was super stoked when I heard she was coming out with a new series and picked this book up on its publication day.
I really liked this book. I love the way that the author has intelligent and strong women in her books. Tavi is the captain of the ship, as well as a military hero from serving in the Valovian/ FHP war. No one questions her decisions and she is an impressive leader. Of the four other crew on her ship, three of them are women. Torran also has a woman on his security team/crew (and she’s not the doctor!). I’m really loving these impressive women that Mihalik is writing about.
Aside from the characters being great, I thought the story was interesting as well. There is not a lot of action in the first half of the book, as it mainly details the ship traveling to the planet where Torran’s object was stolen. Once they arrive on the planet the action does step up a bit and I found myself quickly turning the pages, wanting to know what happens.
Onboard the spaceship, we see a lot of the two crews interacting with each other. I liked the themes of family and crew as a family and how everyone on the ship works together. The crews eat dinner together and binge watch television shows. They are all responsible for cleaning the ship and I love how everyone comes together. The family aspects really reminded me of Firefly and The Expanse.
This is a slow-burn romance as Tavi and Torran start off as enemies, as they were on opposite sides of the war. But slowly as they travel and work together, they realize they have a lot of misconceptions about one another. They also realize they are attracted to one another but vow to not do anything about it until they have found Torran’s missing object and completed the mission.
I always enjoy the way that different authors describe their aliens. I kept trying to picture the aliens in this book and I guess they look like humans, but a little taller? I was a bit confused as to how people could tell the aliens apart from humans. I also love how different authors envision what the future will be like. For instance, we are thousands of years into the future but Tavi still cooks on a stove. I guess civilization hasn’t invented something better to cook food. I did enjoy that the dishwasher was called a sanitizer; I imagined it cleaned dishes in seconds. I also found it amusing that the gym equipment onboard the Starlight consisted of a rowing machine and treadmill and elliptical. I’m not sure what fitness will look like in the future but it made me smile to think that someone is still running on a treadmill thousands of years into the future.
Don’t mind me, I’m just over here waiting anxiously for the next book to come out.
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