Review: Wretched

Wretched by Cara Crescent
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Three and a half stars.

This is a difficult book to rate, there were bits I quite liked, bits I really enjoyed and bits I found excruciating.

This is set in a future when Earth has fallen under the dictatorship of the UN, then various rebels overthrew the UN but the power vacuum left everyone worse off. The rebels are branded traitors and anyone disfigured or disabled by the war is shunned. Chief Donovan Reese played a large part of the rebellion and holds himself responsible for the terrible injuries suffered by the men and women under his command but also for fighting on the wrong side for too long, for allowing the UN to take control of Earth.

Earth is part of the IgA, an interplanetary organisation which fosters cooperation and sharing between planets, provided they adhere to certain codes of behaviour (a bit like the real UN), Troon has failed to make the grade because of its aggressive behaviour and almost medieval conquest mentality, in fact it is under sanctions.

Now Donovan and his business partner/co-pilot Macie are bounty hunters and they have been captured and tortured by a violent and aggressive alien race called the Vladsets from the planet Troon. Then their captors drag Donovan before the Queen Vessa. The seven foot tall, blue-gray aliens with big black spines forces Donovan to marry her daughter, Celeka, and then sends the three of them off into space. Celeka is a mystery, some kind of pariah to the Vladsets she is covered from head to foot in cloths which hide every part of her.

Donovan and Macie support a large number of wounded vets by employing them as cargo carriers, in turn the profits they make are used to support what is left of the former US military while they try to find a leader.

While Donovan tries to find out about his new wife he is also trying to secure his next bounty and investigate what is going on with Troon and the IgA inspector.

This is old fashioned sci-fi, part Star Trek (complete with blue spiky aliens), part Firefly with lots of spaceships, docking bays, stasis sleep chambers etc. If it had stayed like that I would probably have given it the full four stars. Unfortunately, the pace and storyline were too often interrupted by alien erotica as Donovan teaches his new wife how to have sex. Pages and pages and pages of it. I nearly DNFd a couple of times because it was so tiresome, it wasn't even anything different (no tentacles) just regular old vanilla sex with a little mild BDSM.

Anyway, that's just my view, maybe I'm a sci-fi snob and like it unadulterated by sex, that may float your boat.

Ultimately, I definitely want to see what the story is with Macie and some of Donovan's other friends, I like the world that Cara Crescent has created and I would be interested in reading more in this series.

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

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