There are a few good moments, but they’re tenuously linked and overall it felt like individual scenes were more important than the plot. It might do for you, lady, but all the people who died might have preferred you weren’t such a dick. Captain Eva Innocente has a strong voice but the wrong kind- she’s an attitudey failure that seems to think that accepting her own mistakes makes everything ok. It’s a difficult one to love, with shallow characterisations and a plot that’s all surface. The book is a mix of Becky Chambers style small stories and gung-ho space opera.

But when the dominoes start to fall and she finds the real threat is greater than she imagined, she must decide whether to play it cool or burn it all down. To free her sister, Eva will risk everything: her crew, her ship, and the life she’s built on the ashes of her past misdeeds.

The worse things get, the more she lies, raising suspicions and testing her loyalty to her found family. The ship’s hold is full of psychic cats, an amorous fish-faced emperor wants her dead after she rejects his advances, and her sweet engineer is giving her a pesky case of feelings. When her sister Mari is kidnapped by The Fridge, a shadowy syndicate that holds people hostage in cryostasis, Eva must undergo a series of unpleasant, dangerous missions to pay the ransom.īut Eva may lose her mind before she can raise the money. Joining a group of freedom fighters seeking to overthrow a dictator, Eva learns that The Forge is in the final phase of creating a new Gate - dangerous technology that was thought to be lost forever.A hilarious, offbeat debut space opera that skewers everything from pop culture to video games and features an irresistible foul-mouthed captain and her motley crew, strange life forms, exciting twists, and a galaxy full of fun and adventure.Ĭaptain Eva Innocente and the crew of La Sirena Negra cruise the galaxy delivering small cargo for even smaller profits. When Eva's sister contacts her with a request to find a missing scientist, the trail ends at the last place Eva ever wanted to see, the site of her greatest failure. For fans of Becky Chambers, Mass Effect and Firefly.Ĭaptain Eva Innocente and the crew of La Sirena Negra find themselves once again on the edge - not just of populated space, but also of a covert war between The Fridge, the intergalactic crime ring, and The Forge, a secret alien research organisation. Space adventure at its finest - Prime Deceptions is the outrageously fun sequel to Valerie Valdes' debut Chilling Effect, featuring the further adventures of Captain Eva Innocente and her misfit crew.

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