#beth blabs

Interesting concept! Mostly I picked this book up because I liked the idea of a female character being badass and fighting space pirates. One could argue that the whole slavery thing is a little problematic but, you know. I’m white and not really educated enough to comment on that. 

Either way, I’m currently on chapter 5 (out of 18) and basically the whole beginning of the book is detailing how Sassinak got to where she is now. Personally I didn’t find the concept of someone who’s clearly gone through something traumatic returning to a similar environment (a military space fleet) realistic, but I guess for the sake of the story it’s fine. The authors do at least address towards the end of her training (in a tiny bit of dialogue) that she’s still affected by the slavery she went through as a kid.

I’m a little disappointed with how linear the plot is so far– the whole first ‘book’ of the thing is basically just the first part of the reading on the back of the book. I was under the assumption that we’d start out with guns blazing and space pirate action right away! There’s been no need for flashbacks (which I think it would’ve benefitted from) because of the linearity of the plot. So, eh.

Some of the alien species are fun. Some feel like they might be bordering on racist. There are aliens who are ‘mineral', which I hope is explored more later. I’m intrigued by the Ssli alien type, described as being sentient strange things “three meters in diameter [and] still almost circular” and “intricate”. Hoping this Ssli character is explored more! On a slightly different topic, it is interesting that in this futuristic setting all humans are labelled as ‘bisexual’– and the same sort of thing applies to other aliens, though not all are bisexual or even have a similar gendered preference structure– or gender, just in general. ‘Wefts’ I think they’re called, are shape shifters and don’t technically have a gender.

So far, I’m giving the book the benefit of the doubt– it was published in 1989. I think because there are two authors, the writing style has some issues that feel choppy, but I’m not holding it against it. The dialogue could be better. But in general the characters and the setting are fun and have a sort of star-trek vibe to it, so it’s been fun getting into it. Some plot points feel forced, but eh, whatever. As long as we get to cool space fights soon...