Reviewed by EBookObsessed on
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.
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Reading updates
- Started reading
- 4 January, 2019: Finished reading
- 4 January, 2019: Reviewed