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Well-paced and deftly written, it's one of the most enjoyable space (or planetary) opera romances that I've had the pleasure to read, and I look forward to seeing more of Maxwell's work in the years to come. In a lot of instances you can say touchscreen or a tablet or whatever in a space opera, you don't need to constantly create your own thing like you might for planets or aliens or whatever.
in " The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly " Publishing This Week" newsletter. Unfortunately for the military, they chose the most unwilling and stubborn reader, as well as the most upstanding and rule-following architect ever. This is relatively slow-paced story—something I tend to enjoy when the protagonist is loveable (which Tennal definitely is). And maybe part of the problem is that I do read and love sf, and it fails at the thing I love about sf which is providing food for thought on the what-ifs, how something would be possible, would work. Maybe the only redeeming feature here was the writing, but even that was offset by the sheer length of the book.There was no security at the door for this kind of thing because everyone brought their own security. Before I began reading this book, I happened to chance upon a certain Tumblr post from the author stating the following: “hit right in the solar plexus with the fact I accidentally wrote a 140k captain carrot/moist von lipwig fic. He could have tried announcing the reader thing, but he needed to save that for when it would make an impact.
I originally pitched this as "like fake dating but with fake soulbonding, also both characters are in the space military. All of the conflicts arise from other sources entirely unrelated to the characters’ sexualities and identities. Once I learned there would be a sequel in the same world, but with different characters, I knew I had to read it.
The relationship between the MCs was an essential part of the story, but the sci-fi elements were even more so.
Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. It's a space adventure with a military-SF feel (I wouldn't classify it as strict MilSF since the army is mainly the antagonist and the main character spends the whole book trying to get out of it. Surit's memory, unbidden, presented him with a flash from the Note: Tennal, his presence like a lightning bolt, pressing his hand to Surit's chest and making an invitation.
I loved those two guys and their interactions, and from the moment Tennal and Surit knew they could only trust each other, I felt the care for another throughout the story. It sounded like great entertainment - and if turned out to be cheesy, that would not be a problem at my current mood.