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This is not new — it has been out for several years. It has a fairly favorable review at SB (rated B):
https://smartbitchestrashybooks.com/reviews/collision-course-by-zoe-archer-a-guest-review-by-carrie-s/
Probably you should just read that review, but here are a few thoughts from me, anyway.
Wow, this is super claustrophobic in terms of casting! Heroine is arrested and threatened with prosecution but she can avoid all that unpleasantness by piloting Hero into dodgy section of space and helping him find
OKAY LET’S GET ONE THING STRAIGHT HERE. THE DANGER IS NOT FROM THE PROTOPLANETS. YOUR HAZARD HERE IS NOT THE STORM ON TATOOINE, ER, MOS EISLEY, ER, WTF. NO, YOUR RISK HERE IS SPOILERS.
As long as everyone is now gone, I will continue in my non-shouty voice.
and rescue his coworker, ex-lover, hot shot pilot / fighter Celene Jur, a name which for unknown reasons I persistently confuse with Juul, which is something else entirely. And her ship. Or, destroy the ship and maybe all of them if rescue becomes impossible.
Of course, it isn’t presented in quite this much detail — some of those bits are saved for dramatic effect _after_ Our Dear Couple Has, Er, Coupled.
There is Backstory! Oh, My, Goddess, is there backstory. But first, honestly, the bit where they deal with contraception and disease transmission is, truly, awesome. Every bit as awesome as the review led me to believe. Really, I read this thing BECAUSE of that exchange — quoted in full in the review — and it was completely worthy. I did not snort tea, and I am not sleep deprived, but that was fantastic. More of that in SF / romance mashups, please! Heck, just more of that!!
Thing I really could have done without, but probably _would not_ have skipped the novel to avoid: Mara is a Princess. An exiled, tortured Princess. Now, if I had that as my background, it would seriously derail my turned-on-ed-ness if a lover, having heard that sad sad backstory, then called me Princess. I don’t want to be called JW in moments of intimacy, and honestly, the Princess thing has that level of toxic cult crazy surrounding it (possibly worse, since scarring physical torture was deployed to try to get her to marry the person she was supposed to marry at 16 or whatever).
All that aside, I sort of liked the idea that Mara is a serial Time To Move On type. She left her home planet, and just because The Awful happened for a bit, didn’t mean she went back with her tail between her legs to marry the idiot and participate in the oppression back hom. She became a somewhat confusingly well-behaved and well-respected smuggler and scavenger. And then, when she was offered the opportunity to engage in a Worthy War against more Awful, with her new Hot Boyfriend, she took it. Which seems pretty legit, since he was willing to go to a lot of effort to rescue an ex-lover, and they were able to work together cordially, and the ex- treated Mara well. This is a guy worth dating, if only because he’s a Decent Sort if it ends.
So: highly trope-y (dodgy heroine and more or less as dodgy hero go on road trip to rescue his ex-girlfriend so they can all go on to Fight the Good Fight against the Big Bad). Wildly implausible in so, so, so many ways. A moral system that is risible (so, we don’t kill the guy who recognizes the Hero, because, that wouldn’t be right, but we _do_ kill untold numbers of people in the shooting alley? Hmmmmm. Okay).
I don’t regret reading it. #33.
https://smartbitchestrashybooks.com/reviews/collision-course-by-zoe-archer-a-guest-review-by-carrie-s/
Probably you should just read that review, but here are a few thoughts from me, anyway.
Wow, this is super claustrophobic in terms of casting! Heroine is arrested and threatened with prosecution but she can avoid all that unpleasantness by piloting Hero into dodgy section of space and helping him find
OKAY LET’S GET ONE THING STRAIGHT HERE. THE DANGER IS NOT FROM THE PROTOPLANETS. YOUR HAZARD HERE IS NOT THE STORM ON TATOOINE, ER, MOS EISLEY, ER, WTF. NO, YOUR RISK HERE IS SPOILERS.
As long as everyone is now gone, I will continue in my non-shouty voice.
and rescue his coworker, ex-lover, hot shot pilot / fighter Celene Jur, a name which for unknown reasons I persistently confuse with Juul, which is something else entirely. And her ship. Or, destroy the ship and maybe all of them if rescue becomes impossible.
Of course, it isn’t presented in quite this much detail — some of those bits are saved for dramatic effect _after_ Our Dear Couple Has, Er, Coupled.
There is Backstory! Oh, My, Goddess, is there backstory. But first, honestly, the bit where they deal with contraception and disease transmission is, truly, awesome. Every bit as awesome as the review led me to believe. Really, I read this thing BECAUSE of that exchange — quoted in full in the review — and it was completely worthy. I did not snort tea, and I am not sleep deprived, but that was fantastic. More of that in SF / romance mashups, please! Heck, just more of that!!
Thing I really could have done without, but probably _would not_ have skipped the novel to avoid: Mara is a Princess. An exiled, tortured Princess. Now, if I had that as my background, it would seriously derail my turned-on-ed-ness if a lover, having heard that sad sad backstory, then called me Princess. I don’t want to be called JW in moments of intimacy, and honestly, the Princess thing has that level of toxic cult crazy surrounding it (possibly worse, since scarring physical torture was deployed to try to get her to marry the person she was supposed to marry at 16 or whatever).
All that aside, I sort of liked the idea that Mara is a serial Time To Move On type. She left her home planet, and just because The Awful happened for a bit, didn’t mean she went back with her tail between her legs to marry the idiot and participate in the oppression back hom. She became a somewhat confusingly well-behaved and well-respected smuggler and scavenger. And then, when she was offered the opportunity to engage in a Worthy War against more Awful, with her new Hot Boyfriend, she took it. Which seems pretty legit, since he was willing to go to a lot of effort to rescue an ex-lover, and they were able to work together cordially, and the ex- treated Mara well. This is a guy worth dating, if only because he’s a Decent Sort if it ends.
So: highly trope-y (dodgy heroine and more or less as dodgy hero go on road trip to rescue his ex-girlfriend so they can all go on to Fight the Good Fight against the Big Bad). Wildly implausible in so, so, so many ways. A moral system that is risible (so, we don’t kill the guy who recognizes the Hero, because, that wouldn’t be right, but we _do_ kill untold numbers of people in the shooting alley? Hmmmmm. Okay).
I don’t regret reading it. #33.