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I got this via kindle unlimited. I saw a somewhat favorable review on SBTB, but I am not sure I would have bought the thing — via kindle unlimited, it is a no brainer. If you don’t like it, it just goes back.
I did not realize until _after_ I had finished it that it was a KKR book. It’s less clear to me whether I would have read it, had I realized that at the beginning, but I’m going to review this the way I was going to review it before realizing who the author was, and then explain how that might have impacted my initial decision to read or not.
The book opens with the woman lead dragging her victim / target / assignment’s dead body towards an airlock and being flummoxed by the airlock. She wants to dump the body without setting off the Cruise Ship In Space’s alarm, and is having trouble. The man lead shows up, chatty and funny, and proceeds to commit fire alarm mayhem: he opens the lock, dumps the body, then drags the woman around while chattily acting drunk and setting off multiple other airlock alarms on multiple levels. Security finds them, fines him, and they head off to the lounge to be conspicuously boozy and sexy with each other before then going to his magnificent suite to have actual sexy times. It becomes clear (first person perspective alternating) that he remembers her from when they were young but she doesn’t remember him.
Breakfast is a little rocky, and she leaves in a huff, and things go downhill from there. She eventually figures out Who He Really Is, and extended chase around the sector ensues. She meets up with her “heart brother” to ask him to look into this guy’s background. He stumbles across his ex. He eventually confronts her at her apartment door when she orders robot takeout. Lots of backstory is revealed. “Heart brother” comes through with the goods on the guy. There is more antics about possible assignments she could take, one of which she really doesn’t want to take and he really wants her to take and not fulfill on.
Then it is off on another Cruise Ship in Space to that assignment, where his ex- pops up, acts like a complete bitch on wheels, the quite obvious setup is deployed, a variety of people get shot but don’t die, one person’s necks is quite spectacularly broken, and then epilogue.
What’s bad: very thin cast of characters. Space is apparently a very empty place. In addition to the people who are going to have sex with each other, and the people who want to have sex with her and she declines and the woman who used to have sex with him and Wow She Really Is Not a Nice Person, there are basically an extremely short list of briefly met coworkers and the foster brother dude. That’s it. And it sounds like more than it really is, basically. Honestly, the woman character’s interaction with the woman in security is a fairly substantial scene in this book, which gives you a sense of just how limited the characters and their interaction really is.
What’s good: moves super fast. Not too angsty. Fun stuff. Competence porn. Downside of the competence porn is that he is such an idiot. His opinion of her changes wildly from one moment to the next, mostly because he fails to understand what he is seeing, which leads this reader a little baffled. Is she actually chaotic and a troublemaker and he is just basically making excuses for her? Is she actually Really Fucking Brilliant and he just fails to appreciate her for a while? I think this is supposed to be layered / complex characterization. It does not work very well for me.
While I did kind of get a kick out of the description of her apartment, it seemed wildly implausible that an assassin would really live in a place like that. But, you know, I don’t know any actual assassins so what do I know. One thing I will note about assassin characters in general: you just don’t see them actually doing the deed very often if ever (you see her kill, but I don’t think you see him kill; and her one on screen kill is not a paid for job). (I know there are exceptions to this rule, but this book is not one of them).
I also found his successful grab with the robot takeout to be implausible. But, whatever. That’s not really what this book was about.
I also felt like the psychological trauma backstory for her was inadequately resolved. Altho it _does_ go a long way to explaining her basic psychopathy (his is adequately explained right from the beginning).
Yes, I get that they are not really psychopaths, because they are way too good at reading other people’s emotions and at planning ahead to truly be psychopaths.
OK. How does the author identity fit into this? First, the fun romp, chase sequences, sexy times, etc. are all very KKR. That’s the good part of what you get from her books. Second, the inadequately handled technical details and the woefully under handled trauma backstory are also part of what I remember from reading her years and years and years ago. And yes, the feeling that there just wasn’t much _to_ the whole story is also very KKR. All that said, she’s really honed her craft over the years, and I will keep her and this series in mind for when I am looking for this particular kind of quick romp of a read novel in the future.
ETA: Book number 6.
I did not realize until _after_ I had finished it that it was a KKR book. It’s less clear to me whether I would have read it, had I realized that at the beginning, but I’m going to review this the way I was going to review it before realizing who the author was, and then explain how that might have impacted my initial decision to read or not.
The book opens with the woman lead dragging her victim / target / assignment’s dead body towards an airlock and being flummoxed by the airlock. She wants to dump the body without setting off the Cruise Ship In Space’s alarm, and is having trouble. The man lead shows up, chatty and funny, and proceeds to commit fire alarm mayhem: he opens the lock, dumps the body, then drags the woman around while chattily acting drunk and setting off multiple other airlock alarms on multiple levels. Security finds them, fines him, and they head off to the lounge to be conspicuously boozy and sexy with each other before then going to his magnificent suite to have actual sexy times. It becomes clear (first person perspective alternating) that he remembers her from when they were young but she doesn’t remember him.
Breakfast is a little rocky, and she leaves in a huff, and things go downhill from there. She eventually figures out Who He Really Is, and extended chase around the sector ensues. She meets up with her “heart brother” to ask him to look into this guy’s background. He stumbles across his ex. He eventually confronts her at her apartment door when she orders robot takeout. Lots of backstory is revealed. “Heart brother” comes through with the goods on the guy. There is more antics about possible assignments she could take, one of which she really doesn’t want to take and he really wants her to take and not fulfill on.
Then it is off on another Cruise Ship in Space to that assignment, where his ex- pops up, acts like a complete bitch on wheels, the quite obvious setup is deployed, a variety of people get shot but don’t die, one person’s necks is quite spectacularly broken, and then epilogue.
What’s bad: very thin cast of characters. Space is apparently a very empty place. In addition to the people who are going to have sex with each other, and the people who want to have sex with her and she declines and the woman who used to have sex with him and Wow She Really Is Not a Nice Person, there are basically an extremely short list of briefly met coworkers and the foster brother dude. That’s it. And it sounds like more than it really is, basically. Honestly, the woman character’s interaction with the woman in security is a fairly substantial scene in this book, which gives you a sense of just how limited the characters and their interaction really is.
What’s good: moves super fast. Not too angsty. Fun stuff. Competence porn. Downside of the competence porn is that he is such an idiot. His opinion of her changes wildly from one moment to the next, mostly because he fails to understand what he is seeing, which leads this reader a little baffled. Is she actually chaotic and a troublemaker and he is just basically making excuses for her? Is she actually Really Fucking Brilliant and he just fails to appreciate her for a while? I think this is supposed to be layered / complex characterization. It does not work very well for me.
While I did kind of get a kick out of the description of her apartment, it seemed wildly implausible that an assassin would really live in a place like that. But, you know, I don’t know any actual assassins so what do I know. One thing I will note about assassin characters in general: you just don’t see them actually doing the deed very often if ever (you see her kill, but I don’t think you see him kill; and her one on screen kill is not a paid for job). (I know there are exceptions to this rule, but this book is not one of them).
I also found his successful grab with the robot takeout to be implausible. But, whatever. That’s not really what this book was about.
I also felt like the psychological trauma backstory for her was inadequately resolved. Altho it _does_ go a long way to explaining her basic psychopathy (his is adequately explained right from the beginning).
Yes, I get that they are not really psychopaths, because they are way too good at reading other people’s emotions and at planning ahead to truly be psychopaths.
OK. How does the author identity fit into this? First, the fun romp, chase sequences, sexy times, etc. are all very KKR. That’s the good part of what you get from her books. Second, the inadequately handled technical details and the woefully under handled trauma backstory are also part of what I remember from reading her years and years and years ago. And yes, the feeling that there just wasn’t much _to_ the whole story is also very KKR. All that said, she’s really honed her craft over the years, and I will keep her and this series in mind for when I am looking for this particular kind of quick romp of a read novel in the future.
ETA: Book number 6.