I received this book from the marvelous @teresaelectro as part of the 2022 Cannonball Read Book Exchange. Let me start by saying this book was simply a ton of fun.
Captain Tavi Zarola is a former military captain who runs a small bounty-hunting crew. Though the massive inter-galactic war between the humans and the Valovians is over, tensions are still high. There’s peace in the galaxy, but it is precarious. Maintaining that peace is what is on Tavi’s mind when she is approached by the Valovian Prince Torran with a job. Torran wants to hire MC and her team to secure something that was stolen from him, but he is hesitant to give much information. Tavi knows that something is afoot here, but she takes the job because it’s a lot of money. And she and her team could use the money.
What follows is a sci-fi caper with a healthy dose of romance. Tavi and Torran and their crew join up on a single ship and travel from human-controlled space back to Valovian space. Throughout the journey through wormholes and space, each group struggles through the cultural differences of the other despite their history of war and conflict. Sometimes they are successful, oftentimes they are not. Tavi and Torran eventually strike up a deeper relationship than the reset of the crew. Romance is not usually my cup of tea, but this was delightful. Tavi and Torran’s relationship felt natural and nicely tempered by the high-stakes caper going on around them.
The universe that Mihalik has created is a ton of fun. She’s built the world out enough that I could understand exactly how this story fits into it, but Mihalik never lets the world building get in the way of the characters and this story. The sci-fi tech adds nice flavor to the story without ever dipping into Macguffin or deus ex machina territory.
Read Harder Challenge #13: The author is a Texan!
CBR Passport Challenge #3: Space Opera
