A Red Peace (Starfire Trilogy, #1)

by Spencer Ellsworth

• ASIN: B01MXXOOAF
• Publish Date: 2017 (first published 31 October 2017)
• Publish Status: Unknown
• Format: eBook (Kindle)
• Pages: 210
• Language: English

Reviews

[Quirky Cat]

Disclaimer: I received A Red Peace from Net Galley in exchange for a fair an honest review.

A Red Peace is the first in the Starfire Trilogy written by Spencer Ellsworth, and along with an interesting plot (more on that in a minute) it comes with an utterly stunning cover. Please take a minute to appreciate the artwork, detail and color palette of the cover. I’m in love with it. As far as the plot is concerned, it’s a bit like space opera meets the Wild West. It’s full of aliens, giant space bugs (who doesn’t love giant space bugs?) and psychic weapons galore.



A Red Peace starts off with the end of a war; which is unexpected, despite the name of the title. The Resistance (a group of Jorians seeking their freedom from the humans) have won, but their job doesn’t appear to be over yet (yay for plot continuation!). There’s more going on in the Resistance than there appears to be at first glance; and there’s certainly more to their motives than the lower ranks are allowed to know.
Jaqi (a name I had a lot of fun imagining how it was pronounced) is a half-breed Jorian girl looking to find her place in the world; especially if that place involves tomatoes, but really any actual food will do. I was immediately drawn into liking Jaqi’s character, her motivations are very straight forward and human (yes, I see the irony in that statement, but you know what I mean). Despite knowing better, Jaqi constantly finds herself doing the right thing, even if it means putter herself at risk (for little to no payout to boot). It’s hard not to like and even respect a character like that.
Araskar is a perfect foil for Jaqi’s character – he’s been through hell (I think being on the Resistance during the war probably counts as such) and has completely lost his hope. He’s content with the idea of dying; especially if that means none of his slugs (lower ranking soldiers he’s in charge of) die in his stead. While that sounds honorable, to me it read mostly as him looking for a way out, an escape. Just like his drug addiction. While Jaqi is looking for hope, Araskar is all but lost to the concept. It makes their meeting so much more intense and meaningful.
Earlier I mentioned Jaqi’s love of tomatoes because it’s basically the reason she gets pulled into this whole mess (and thus the plot) in the first place. I personally loved that part; that something so little ended up spinning out into something so massive and unanticipated.
What I particularly loved about Ellsworth’s work was the way he blended his imagery with music and color. It was exceptionally evocative, and didn’t even have to be subtle in some cases – such as when Araskar was directly interpreting it for us. The most poignant moment (for me at least) was later in the novel (I promise this isn’t a crazy huge spoiler) where Jaqi gives Araskar a guitar and tells him to learn how to play. To me this not only connected the musical element to the characters (again), but represented Araskar physically being handed a chance at hope. It was beautifully done.
I really enjoyed reading A Red Peace, and am greatly looking forward to the next installation. Unfortunately I have a bit of time before that happens, and patience is not one of my virtues.


For more reviews, check out Quirky Cat's Fat Stacks

[KitsuneBae]

This review first appeared on: Wayward Kitsune.

I received this book for free from Netgalley in exchange for an honest review. This does not affect my opinion of the book or the content of my review.

Unsettling at first but once you get used to all the jargons used in this book, you’ll find yourself having a hard time in putting it down. The basic premise is that the age of humans is coming to an end when the crosses (term for human/alien hybrids) that they’ve made—through vat culture—rallied together and started a resistance . Our female protagonist, Jaqi, who is a cross herself wanted nothing to do with the war and had spent her life in hiding and doing shady stuff. But just like the girl of destiny, she suddenly found herself in the thick of it all. Then, we have our male protagonist who is also a cross and a high ranking soldier of the resistance. Plus, he’s suffering from a terrible PTSD to the point that he got addicted to drugs.

It’s pretty interesting to follow the story particularly that we have these seemingly underdog hybrid crosses (who were once treated as machines and servants by the superior human race) made a reversal of their pitiful lives and are now doing everything to wipe out their overlords, the humans. I think it would have been more interesting if the book gave me a chance to know our characters (main or supporting) more because the way Ellsworth wrote them made me feel like I was just scratching the surface.

Also, I didn’t buy the idea of Jaqi throwing out all of her rules out the window for a couple of kids she just met. It just didn’t compute with her happy-go-lucky and always on the run personality. Personally, it’d made more sense if she had just left the kids to die and maybe…the author should’ve used another and more realistic way to trigger the events of the book.

Another thing that I wished for this book is for a more comprehensive world-building given the ambitiousness of the whole story. There’s a galactic war to raze the human race to extinction, a Dark Zone threating to swallow the whole universe, and hate-filled alien/human hybrids who, instead of using high-powered ammo, wield swords that suck the memories of its victims. There a lot of things worth showing in this book and I hope that Ellsworth will do such in the sequels.

All in all, I’m really glad to have given A Red Peace a try. It may not be as intense as Luke Skywalker discovering that he’s a Jedi but it’ll surely feed your sci-fi hunger. I’m looking forward to read the next book in the series.