Review: Nightchaser

Nightchaser by Amanda Bouchet
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I know I read a snippet of this book some months ago, just can't recall how or where.

In a significant change from Amanda Bouchet's Kingmaker Chronicles this new series is set in
the future in a world of interplanetary travel. A universe ruled by an Overseer who values conformity and blandness above all. Enter our heroine Tess Bailey, a cross between Captain Mal Reynolds from Firefly, Han Solo, Robin Hood, Katniss Everdeen and, in some ways, Catalisa Fisa from the Kingmaker Chronicles, the captain of a rebel spaceship which steals from the rich to redistribute food and medicine to poorer sectors generally and an orphanage in Sector 8 specifically.

Tess has a secret, a BIG secret. She is travelling under a false name, everyone in the galaxy thinks she died with her mother following an illness, revealing her identity could get her killed or hauled off for medical experimentation in one of the Overseer's secret laboratories. When she is cornered by the Overseer's right hand man, low on power and running out of options she reveals her identity in a delaying tactic then jumps her ship straight into the Black Widow - a do or die manoeuvre.

The Black Widow spits the ship out into a completely different sector where Tess and her crew can repair their ship and uncover precisely what is so important about the latest batch of vaccines they have stolen.

Fascinating right? Space opera, battles, evil overlords, an oppressive military/ police force called the Dark Watch, secret identities, etc. And then nearly all of the book is set in dry dock while Tess develops a relationship with Shade Ganavan, the owner of Ganavan's Products and Parts, who agrees to sell parts to repair the ship and offers to help with the repairs. Shade has a secret (of course he does), he's also a government sanctioned bounty hunter and shortly after meeting Tess he discovers that there is a massive bounty on her head. Shade needs the bounty to buy back his birthright which he was foolish enough to lose after his parents died, but can he know and like a person, maybe even more than like, and sell her out for money?

There is a whole load of backstory, Tess' childhood and mother's death, her time in prison, her relationship with the overseer and his right hand man, etc that we don't know about each of her crew has a mysterious past, even Shade has a mysterious past all of which frankly seem more interesting than the book we get. I would normally call this a world-building book, but it doesn't even create a world in any great depth, it just talks about really exciting stuff that happened outside the book. It says something that despite the opening space fight, a walk in space and various shoot-outs that my overwhelming memory about this book is of the ship sitting in the docks being repaired while Tess reads books and tries to seduce Shade.

Once again I feel that Amanda Bouchet has skewed her novel too far towards the romance/sexy times and too far away from character building and a gradual plot build up. I felt the start was a high adrenalin, space version of Robin Hood as was the end but the overwhelming majority of the middle of the book was romance, perky boobs and 'does the cute boy like me?' teenage angst. I can't even get a grip on how old Tess is supposed to be - I think its mid to late 20s but I wouldn't be surprised if she were only 18, she certainly acts like it at times.

Overall, I liked the premise enormously and definitely want to read the series but I feel this first book was more like part one, nothing but the romance gets resolved and frankly you could probably read chapter one and the epilogue without losing much of the story arc.

I received a free copy of this book from the publisher via NetGalley in return for an honest review.

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