Nightchaser (Nightchaser, #1)

by Amanda Bouchet

'Utterly breathtaking' DARYNDA JONES

'Absolutely fabulous' C. L. WILSON

'So much love for this book! Buuuuuuy it!' NALINI SINGH
_______________

A convict and an enchanting rogue hold the fate of the universe in their hands . . .

Wanted criminal Tess Bailey and her band of merry thieves are desperate and on the run. The most powerful ruler in the universe wants them dead, and while he hunts them, the stolen ship they escaped on is running out of steam. Their one offer of help comes from Shade Ganavan, a tall, dark and arrogant stranger with ambiguous motivations.

At her side is gentle, blind Shiori, Fiona, an ex-rebel fighter with a rage so strong it could bring generals to their knees, and determined Jax and Miko, steering their ship through the depths of space. Together, their friendship gives them strength, but will their bond be strong enough to defeat an enemy whose ruthlessness is legendary?

As their luck runs out, Tess will have to choose an ending to her story - and whether to fight against or yield to a temptation so strong, it threatens to cleave the land of stars in two.
_______________

Discover why readers everywhere are enchanted by Amanda Bouchet . . .

'A Promise of Fire made me laugh out loud more than once' Thea Harrison, New York Times bestselling author of the Elder Races series

'Absolutely fabulous. I didn't want to put it down. Amanda Bouchet is now on my auto-buy list! I highly recommend her books to my readers and to anyone looking for a great blend of fantasy and romance' C.L. Wilson, New York Times and USA Today bestselling author of The Winter King

'Give this to your Game of Thrones fans' Booklist STARRED Review for A Promise of Fire

'A sexy, emotional romance' The Washington Post

'I want more of these characters and I want more of this world. I cannot remember the last time I wanted to both savour and devour a book . . . Bouchet's writing is so engaging and magical' SmartBitchesTrashyBooks

• ISBN10: 0349420874
• ISBN13: 9780349420875
• Publish Date: 1 January 2019
• Publish Status: Out of Print
• Out of Print: 2 September 2022
• Publish Country: GB
• Publisher: Little, Brown Book Group
• Imprint: Piatkus Books
• Format: Paperback (UK Trade)
• Pages: 416
• Language: English

Reviews

[FranJessca @ A Book Lovin' Mama's Blog]

This is the first book I’ve ever read by Amanda Bouchet, and I’m regretting that I haven’t read her books sooner. This author knows how to engage a reader in the story and keep the reader turning the pages (flipping through pages on a Kindle in this case.)

Nightchaser is what I would describe as a sci-fi romance story with some Star Wars elements to it. I’m a HUGE Star Wars fan, so believe me I enjoyed reading this book by Amanda Bouchet.

Nightchaser starts with a dramatic scene to it, which is why I mentioned in the beginning that this book is a page-turner. You’ll need to read the rest of the book to find out what is happening. There also involves one kick-butt female character. I’m a HUGE fan of female characters that can hold their own and Captain Tess Bailey is just that plus more in the story.

Captain Tess Bailey and her crew onboard the Endeavor are trying to avoid capture by a vicious dark General who is out to get Tess, especially since she stole something significant. She’s not willing to give up that easy though. She’s on a mission, and she will not let some General ruined those plans.

She ends up avoiding capture barely at the beginning of the story, and now she has to trust Shade Ganavan on fixing her ship so that she can continue on her mission. Shade though may have his own agenda after he finds out how much Tess is worth to capture.

Amanda did a fantastic job keeping me engaged in the story, especially since this is the first book for her new series. I loved how all the characters on the Endeavor came together. Each has their own story to tell, but definitely, Tess’s is the most fascinating at the moment. The ending of the story is what had me in shock. It was a, ‘What happened kind of shock and what is going on here?” I’m interested in where Amanda takes it next in her 2nd book in the series. I need more of Tess and Shade though after this book.

If you are looking for a book that has an action-packed storyline, sci-fi elements and some romance to it, then you’ll need to check out Nightchaser. This is one of my 2019 highly recommended books at the moment, and I’m anxiously waiting for the second book now. I give this book 4.5 stars and now have Amanda Bouchet as an auto-buy author. Now, I need to find time to read her other books she has written that I’ve read reviews on that is just as addicting as Nightchaser.

[kimbacaffeinate]

I am not going to lie, this started really slow for me. In fact, at one point I almost DNF'd the audiobook. I think it was a combination of a few things. First, I recently listened to Polaris Rising, which was phenomenal and second the story started out disjointed and I couldn't get my footing. I will say the second half of the book was stronger, and I ended up slipping in.

The world-building is light, with the author sharing throughout the story but we still have a lot more to learn. We know the people are oppressed and that there is a rebellion. Tess is a member of the ruling house but seeks to help those in need. Think of her as a space Robin Hood.

We meet, Captain Tess Bailey and her crew of damaged, misfit thieves as they escape with stolen cargo from a military superpower whose general (apparently Tess's father) wants the contents returned. There is now a bounty on her head. They escape and end up on a planet in another solar system but their ship is badly damaged.

Tess hires Shade Ganavan to make the repairs and this is where things get complicated. The story that unfolds is heavy on romance with suspenseful threads. Shade and Tess have sizzling chemistry, but both have secrets and don't act right away. Mixed singles followed by explosive heat and these two need to make decisions.

What Tess doesn't know is that Shade is a bounty hunter. He is trying to garnish funds to win back his family's business. Bringing Tess in could restore everything. He struggles with this internally just as Tess struggles to let him into her inner circle of trust. Both threads felt genuine as did their off the chart moments.

I enjoyed all the characters, Shade in particular, but it took me a while to warm up to and understand Tess. Again the struggle was in the first half.

The second half of the book was intense with plenty of action and confrontation with the enemy. We finally get details on this world, Tess's upbringing and something that makes Tess different. It could turn the tides and end her father's tyranny.

Susan Bennett did a stellar job with the narration and helped me pull through the first half. I felt she captured Tess and Shade from their chemistry to personalities.
This review was originally posted at Caffeinated Reviewer

[Nadz@Totally Addicted to Reading]

One of the hardest things for me in writing reviews is preparing one for a book, which received so many rave reviews. (I wonder what can I say what has not already been said.) What is even harder is writing a review for said book when it does not in your opinion live up to the hype.
I struggled with the story and I took a while to get to the end. For me it was the longest and slowest journey in a fictional world.


What I liked
World building: I enjoyed the world the author created from a fictional perspective. Living in constant fear and oppression, no freedom of speech and risk going to jail for the simplest of things is are some of what the inhabitants of this world faced.

Characters
Tess: Her loyalty, selflessness and inner strength were her most endearing qualities. Her experiences growing up shaped her into the person she is today. She has no wish for the orphans and her friends to experience the same horrors she did and so she would do anything to protect them.

Shade: Exudes confidence, is observant and have an awesome sense of humour.

The secondary characters proved an interesting bunch. From Tess’s crew members to evil Overseer.

The Not So Much
The Story: It began on a high note and I had expectations of grandeur for this one. This however was shot to the ground after the first ten percent of the story. I believe there was a lot of unnecessary information and the story lost its engagement factor as a result

I could not fathom the lack of tension and fearful anticipation by Tessa and her crew. They are on the run, granted they knew nothing about the bounty on her head, but they acted as if all was well.

I expected there would be lots of action. This was not the case. The action scenes appeared at around the seventy percent mark. At this point, the story felt rushed and the appeal this aspect was to emit was lost on me.

Romance: I understand her being attracted to Shade and yes, she has not been with a man for seven years. We all have wants, but how do you find time to be thinking about sexual gratification with the threat of recapture hanging over your head. She keeps putting herself out there and he rejects her every attempt at seduction. Her actions reeked of desperation. Eventually, they got together, but I had a hard time accepting their relationship, especially knowing they were both deceiving each other.

Shade’s deception did not go down well with me. He had ample time to make Tess aware of the situation, but he failed to warn her.

The ending, although not a cliffhanger indicated that the story will continue. Despite my disappointment with how this installment developed, I am curious to know how upcoming events will unfold.

Conclusion/Recommendations
I know there many readers who raved about this installment, but for me it was just ok. Although it was not a favourite, I would recommend it because there are others who may enjoy it more than I did. Readers who enjoy sci-fi romance can pick up this latest offering by Amanda Bouchet

[Ashley]

Maybe 2.5 stars.

Ugh I'm starting to feel like Amanda Bouchet is just no longer an author for me. I LOVED A Promise of Fire. The last book disappointed me, but I thought a fresh start with Nightchaser might be fun. Nope. Not really. I didn't hate it, but I didn't love it either, and I really wanted to.

1. There wasn't really a ton of world building. There's a lot of talk about this old war and a tyrannical overseer guy, but it just left me with way more questions than answers. How did that war start? What's the deal with Earth? I feel like it was randomly half ass mentioned once. How did this overseer come to power?

2. I didn't love the romance. I guess it just wasn't my type. I hated all the cheesy baby names like "sugar". They just grate on me. This is a personal preference thing, of course, but I don't mind pet names after a relationship has been established, but they just feel slimy to me when said between strangers. I don't want a random guy I've only spoken to once calling me "sugar". Ew. The love interest was also SUPER caveman-y -- talking about how he was so surprised when for the first time in his life he didn't have to slow down his walking pace to accommodate a woman. Eye roll. I just saw a cheesy guy trying to be all "dominant" than an attractive love interest.

3. The story felt all over the place. I didn't really know what was important. There was stuff coming in from left and right and I didn't really know what to focus on... the overseer, the rebels, some special advanced human species thing, religion, the orphanage, Shade's empire/legacy. But I guess the problem was that all these things made a shallow appearance, but none of it went into a huge amount of depth.

--------

This book was still kind of entertaining, but I definitely didn't love it and won't be continuing with the series. It might be time for me to part ways with Amanda Bouchet as it just doesn't seem like her books do it for me anymore. :( Huge bummer.

[EBookObsessed]

Nightchaser wasn't really the space adventure I was looking for, but it was a good romance and set us up for further stories. It doesn't end on a cliffhanger, but it does end at the start of what I presume will be the big adventure.

I chose Nightchaser because I thought a space adventure would be fun. I expected the Endeavor to be on the scale of Star Trek or at least Voyager and was looking forward to a Captain Janeway level captain taking us out into a Star Wars/Star Trek mergered fight against the dark forces story. Ummm...not so much.

That it not to say the story was bad, it was just less...intergalactic or adventurous than I anticipated. Tess Bailey, who was more the captain by default as she was best at making decisions, runs the crew of five individuals. All of whom are human. They all were lucky to escape from a hell-hole prison and abscond with the Endeavor. Since then they have aided the rebellion where they could stealing from the space dictator and providing food or medicine where it is needed most.

The Endeavor tripped across a tiny space lab which was in the middle of nowhere and vacuum-sealed it to their little ship before they were confronted by one of the high commanders of the space dictator's fleet. They jumped into a black hole, choosing to die rather than return to the prison and take the space lab with them. The black hole turned out to be more of worm hole than certain death and Tess and crew survived but the ship was damaged and they need to land for repairs.  That is where the crew meets Shade Ganavan.

Most of the story takes place on the planet with Shade and Tess doing the mating dance. See not only is Shade an awesome mechanic, but he is a sometimes bounty hunter and he knows that Tess is worth a king's ransom to the space dictator, twice if he can return whatever she stole. So kudos to Shade for hesitating on the strong attraction between himself and Tess because he isn't so much of a jerk that he would sleep with her and turn her in for the fortune. So there is a lot of attraction and flirting, and a good deal of confusion on Tess's part when Shade runs hot and cold on her.

We do learn a lot of background about Tess and her crew while we wait for things to happen but mostly it is the romance between Shade and Tess (and whether or not there will be any) which takes center stage.

I liked some of the simple things that are noted in the story, which no one usually bothers with in the big adventure, such as how pale the crew was since they spend so much time in the darkness of space. There is the novelty of seeing animals and how Tess isn't certain at first if the cats she sees are dangerous or not, also how the crew is fascinated by the cat she brings back to the ship and how animals react to space travel.   Her crew consists of an elderly lady who is blind and a woman who lost a hand when she cut it off to escape her chains as a sex slave. There was no magic replacements (or no money for magical replacements) and they had to do their space-jobs despite their handicaps. I also liked that they needed to get chunks of their ship repaired as the space tyrant literally blew holes in it. Tess had to go shopping for new everything since her room lost its outside wall and all her clothes and sheets, and everything not barred or bolted down get sucked into space. They also have to schedule their showers since water use is limited and Shade gets quite the shock over the four minute ice cold shower he shares with Tess.  It was not the sexy, foreplay he anticipated.  Even magical wand healing is expensive and Tess has to make due at one point with old-fashioned stitches. It had a lot of little details added in which big space adventures glance over.

There is a lot of set up and introduction of the main characters and some of the secondary yet still important characters as well.   Now that we have dealt with the romance, and of course, end up bringing Shade into the crew (shocking, right? It's a romance.)   I am going to look for the next book and see if the space adventure gets beefed up as part of the next story.

See more at EBookObsessed.com

[llamareads]

I loved Amanda Bouchet’s previous series, so I was extremely excited to see her next book was a scifi romance! While it’s pretty fun overall, it wasn’t quite what I was expecting.

“There was nothing on my ship that wasn’t stolen. Hell, even the ship was stolen. Even the crew was stolen because, well, jailbreak.”

There’s some similarities with the Kingmaker Chronicles, specifically that Tess, like Cat, is the long-lost heir to a despotic ruler and was born “different.” Unlike those books, Tess basically announces who she is within the first chapter and she’s far more trusting than Cat. Tess has spent the past five years after breaking out of jail with her crew of Jax, Fiona, Miko and ship grandma Shiori. They’re Nightchasers, rebels who run supplies around to the needy (including an orphanage) and avoid catching the notice of the Dark Watch, the Overlord’s minions. A good chunk of the story is spent with the ship practically in pieces and docked on Albion 5, Shade’s home. Shade runs a parts store, but that’s not how he makes most of his money…. and those secrets set him at odds with his attraction to Tess. Both will need to decide what secrets to share and how far to trust, because more than just their lives are at stake.

“I was a Novalight. I wouldn’t go out like a sigh in the Dark. I’d go out like a fucking bomb.”

Tess was an interesting mix of confident rebel and socially awkward woman. There were several times during the book that I wanted to shake her for being too naive and trusting, but I liked her overall, and respected her for her convictions. It took a lot longer for me to warm up to Shade, mostly because of his continuous waffling over his feelings for her. I loved Tess’s crew and her interactions with them, especially Jax, and I honestly wanted more, especially the hint of a romance between two of the crew members. A lot of pages were spent on building up the relationship between Tess and Shade, to the detriment of the rest of the plot.

“[T]he whole galaxy was a freaking jail. Not everyone needed bars to be locked up, and what I saw around me was evidence of entire populations falling into complacency for the sake of personal peace.”

And that’s where my main criticism comes in. I wanted more action. What’s there is excellent, but most of the middle of the book is spent waiting for the ship to be repaired and building the will they/won’t they relationship between Tessa and Shade. I mean, the most interesting thing that happens in the middle is that Tess visits a bookshop and gets a cat. I’m hoping it’s just first-book-in-a-series syndrome, because the last quarter of the book really picked up. I also found the writing a bit clunky at times, especially the philosophical discussions about the Overseer’s banning of art and focus on conformity and routine. The clunkiness was worsened by the POV. It’s told from both Tess and Shade’s POVs, but Tess’s is first person while Shade’s is third. It was incredibly jarring for me to switch back and forth between them, sometimes mid-chapter.

Overall, this wasn’t quite what I was expecting, and I’d give it 3.5 stars. I’m interested enough in Tess and her crew to keep reading, and I’ll definitely be hoping the next book has more action!

I received this book from NetGalley. This does not affect my opinion of the book or the content of my review.

[stacey_is_sassy]

She could start a war…

You may not know this about me, but I have an aversion to Tentacle Romance. My fellow readers have tried to convert me to loving “extra appendages” and “special abilities” but it’s just not for me. Unfortunately, I’m picturing characters like Jabba the Hutt, Yoda and Jar Jar Binks…which does not help my cause. So, I was pleasantly surprised when Nightchaser turned out to be Sci-Fi of the “Humans of the Future” variety.

I really like Amanda Bouchet’s style of writing. Her heroines are strong, courageous, determined and capable of making a decision in the toughest of circumstances. While this strength makes them heroines to admire, she also balances them by giving them vulnerabilities and challenges. While Tess shares some similarities to Cat from Kingmaker Chronicles they are different. I don’t mind that the similarities are strength and courage, who doesn’t like to see a strong woman at the front.

I tend to go into my reads a little blind, so, when introduced to male characters, *Are you my hero?* pops into my head. I met a few characters before the hero and I went through my usual checklist to see if my hero was up to scratch. Too much previous heartbreak for the first bloke and no emotional connection with the second one. Let’s just say, thank goodness it was Shade. Shade walked into the room and my Hero Beacon was flashing. The air was sizzling with chemistry, the snark and banter were appealing, and my smirk came to life with his physical description. I love that shiver up my spine when I meet a new hero.

Nightchaser was an interesting story that kept my attention from start to finish. It was a thought-provoking look into what our future could be. I think deep down, we know that we are damaging our world so we can’t help wondering what we are going to do if we ruin it completely. Will it be a bomb, environmental damage or is there an expiry date for Earth, that will end us?

I really enjoyed meeting the characters and learning more about where they had been and what their plans were for the future. Shade and Tess had a very rocky beginning. Even I wasn’t completely convinced that Shade was going to make the right decision for their future. Funny thing is though, I wasn’t completely sure of the right decision. Sure, I knew what would benefit Tess and her gang, but, Shade was working towards a goal and was close to realising it. I admired both Tess and Shade for their ability to look past their noses to benefit their world.

The goodies were good and the baddies were bad…then again…the goodies could be bad and the baddies could be good. The trick is in the balancing act. In true Amanda Bouchet fashion, we are not given a clear picture at the beginning. Each page explained a little more of how the characters came to be and where and what they hope to achieve in the end. This is not just Tess and Shade’s journey. Each of the characters, even the additional ones have a path and while some of those paths end, others are just beginning.

Nightchaser was a fast-paced, exciting and sexy adventure into the future. I was completely sucked in and I can’t wait for more.

Stacey is Sassy, received a complimentary copy of this story. The copy provided is not the final copy and may be subject to edits and changes.

[Cocktails and Books]

So different from her last series, yet I loved it. Tess is the perfect heroine both strong and a little broken. Shade was on my list for a while, but he redeemed himself. Can’t wait to see what happens next.