Fortune's Pawn, by Rachel Bach

[Anthony G Williams]

Fortune's Pawn is the first of the Paradox trilogy, the others being Honour's Knight and Heaven's Queen. They form one continuous story, following the adventures of Deviana Morris, an armoured mercenary living on another planet – Paradox, long before settled by Earth – in the far future. She is very ambitious and committed, determined to be selected for the Devastators, the armoured royal guard of the Sainted King of Paradox. Powered and armoured suits feature a lot in this story and Devi's is a top-grade model, packed with sensors, able to protect her against almost anything and giving her enormous strength, speed and endurance. Even though she is still in her twenties, Devi has already had an impressive career but needs more experience to qualify, so she signs up with Brian Caldswell, a commercial trader and owner of the ship the Glorious Fool, who has a reputation for getting into all kinds of trouble and losing a lot of his crew.

And what a strange crew they are. Caldswell himself seems normal enough, but his navigator is an alien from an avian species, his doctor is a different, reptilian, kind of alien of a species that likes to eat humans, the cook (who rapidly becomes Devi's love interest) is a handsome hunk who is suspiciously good at combat, Devi's cabin mate is a dreamy young psychic girl, and the captain's young daughter seems to be so autistic she is almost catatonic.

The ship and her crew are soon involved in a whole sequence of mysterious adventures and it becomes clear that they are not conventional traders at all. Devi has to earn all of her combat pay in a series of brutal fights while trying to control her forbidden passion for the cook. The book ends on a major "reset" with the mysteries unexplained.

I read this in two sessions and quite enjoyed it, but I found it a bit lightweight and superficial and became rather tired of the overblown romance element. Overall, the book struck me as being targeted at female Young Adult readers and I was not intending to read the sequels. However, in searching to see what the other two novels were about I came across this review of the trilogy: REVIEW: Rachel Bach's Paradox trilogy » Girls in Capes which exactly reflects my feelings about the first book but goes on to say that the next two are much better. So I think I might persevere after all.

(An extract from my SFF blog: Science Fiction & Fantasy)

 

[Vertigo]

My thoughts:


Devi is an armoured mercenary hired as one of two security guards on board the trade ship the Glorious Fool. She wants the position because of the Fool’s reputation for getting into a lot of scrapes and Devi is a woman determined to build her own reputation.

This is fast and furious space opera. If you like kickass, determined, ambitious female heroines, lots of fighting and bizarre aliens and if you like your SF seasoned with a heavy dose of romance then you’ll probably love this book. If you don’t like the main female lead to be a self-centred braggart who turns weak at the knees as soon as a hunky man enters the room (why do so many female authors construct tough self-reliant female leads who disintegrate into hormone laden teenagers at the first sight of a handsome man? Anne McCaffery I’m looking at you!), and if you like your aliens to be believable then you might have a problem. I found the one just about balanced the other leaving me very ambivalent about this book.

Prior to this book Rachel Back has only written fantasy under the name Rachel Aaron and as far as the science in this book goes it shows; it is not her strong suit. For example she uses the concept of dimensions as places you can go in and out of in the way a fantasy story might use them rather than the way real science uses them as coordinate systems. Some of the time Bach very sensibly glosses over the science but at others she dives into details that aren’t speculative, they’re just plain wrong. There is a difference. A good shoot ‘em up military space opera with no pretence of being hard science fiction doesn’t need detailed science and is best sliding over such aspects without getting too involved with their detail.

So if you can live with the heavy dose of romance (I skipped over most of it without really losing anything from the story), colourful but shallow characters, a heroine who is so kickass her boasting is painful, and lots of seriously dodgy science then this is a fun military space opera and Bach’s prose – light, fast and fluid – makes for a fast, easy read.

I’m in two minds about whether to continue with the trilogy; once I’d mastered skimming the romance, boasting and science the story is a bit of a blast and apparently the second two are better.


3/5 stars