Chilling Effect
ByPublisher Description
“Jam-packed with weird aliens, mysterious artifacts, and lovable characters... a tremendous good time and an impressive debut.” -- Kirkus Reviews (starred)
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.
Captain Eva Innocente and the crew of La Sirena Negra cruise the galaxy delivering small cargo for even smaller profits. 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.
But Eva may lose her mind before she can raise the money. 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. The worse things get, the more she lies, raising suspicions and testing her loyalty to her found family.
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. 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.
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Meet readers like you in the Fable For You feed, designed to build bookish communities268 Reviews
Christina Kjonaas
Created 7 days ago
SlowReaderPeter
Created 28 days ago
“Okay, I found this book to be delightful, a bit of a mess, and with a bunch of promise for both the series and the author.
The first thing I’ll say is that of all the characters, only Eva is truly fleshed out and developed thoroughly. We have bits and pieces of other characters, but they all feel a bit “stand-in,” to some extent? Like, the family members feel a bit generic-y family based on tropes or archetypes, the various crew members largely feel like they’re just filling the role of “you are pilot, you are spunky best friend,” etc. Which doesn’t give us a whole lot of depth, but at least they are loosely established for hopefully more development later.
I also thought that occasionally the author would just sort of not explain things or describe them, which I found odd and a smidge frustrating. Throughout the book we are treated to a large variety of alien species, sometimes only in passing, others in more extended spurts. But for the most part they aren’t really described much. So, we know these aliens exist, but we don’t have a thorough understanding of what most of them look like. I also thought similar problems came up in moments of action, where the descriptions were just sort of lacking or incomplete, and it made situating action pieces and scenes to be challenging at times.
Now, all of that said, this was a fun book, and I felt the author actually had a lot of technically well-written moments. You can really see the promise in her ability to grow. The story never once slowed down, and a couple moments felt a bit nonsensical. But I had a very enjoyable time reading this book and definitely plan to continue on with the series.”Michaela Romero
Created about 1 month agoAbout Valerie Valdes
Valerie Valdes is co-editor of Escape Pod, as well as the author of the Chilling Effect trilogy and space fantasy novel Where Peace Is Lost. Her short fiction and poetry have appeared in Uncanny Magazine, Magic: the Gathering and several anthologies. She lives in Georgia with her husband and children.
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