liked the characters and story really well, In fact once I start the book yesterday it kept me interested and reading till I finished it last night, I recommend this book
Received a copy of book from NetGally, com and Marie Andreas
L scheduked
sitelink word
.Warrior Wench is the first book in the Asarlai Wars series, This can be read as a standalone, This story contains and interesting sort of characters, None are perfect and that makes it more interesting to read, Rating:./
: A fairly mundane attempt at the 'Space Operatic' with bold characterization and fairly good world building,
The Bad: Vas, while being hotter than a twodollar pistol, is also a borderline sociopath that kills with a justified contract or you just plane pissed her off somehow.
She has tons of enemies that want to kill her yet remains underfoot within a crowded galaxy, Confused Me too. Despite her tendencies towards the erratic, she is a pirate/mercenary/captain with a heart of gold, Not too deep down as she lacks complexity she has feewings for Deven and resists the urge to kill people here and there,
The Ugly: The idea that she and her crew will be the laughingstock of the entire galaxy because her new ship was once a flying brothel is not believable.
. in the slightest. The insertion haha and subsequent transformation from a hard core space captain into a loveaddled dolt really drove this novel into the dirt,
The Good: The supporting characters and their individual instances are quite funny and spin the novel in a direction not to be taken seriously.
at any level. It is a funny space romp with a hint of seriousness and a dash of the inventive, The characters grow on you as does the ribald humor, Forget the strained scifi tropes and the patterned archetypes that reside within, and have some fun you tightass sumbitch,
I will not continue on with the series unless the author gives me a free copy or grants me Beta reading powers.
I received a free ARC from NetGalley of this novel for review,
Vaslisha “Vas” Tor Dain is a mercenaryhip captain whose life is upended when she returns from what she thought was a twoweek vacation only to realize she has actually been absent for an entire month with no memory of what happened in the interim.
Her ship, “The Victorious Dead”, has apparently been salvaged and so she is forced to accept another ship, a pleasure barge named the “Warrior Wench” in its place.
Fortunately the Warrior Wench has top of the line armaments and luxurious accouterments solife could be worse, But add to this the fact that the Commonwealth Government has found itself without the ability to stop entire planets from being blown up by some unknown spaceships, and you got yourself a whale of a tale to be told.
Its a nice setup for an actionpacked fun science fictiony read and thats exactly what this is, The style is sort of a combination of Chris Woodings “Ketty Jay” series and Carrie Vaughns Kitty the Werewolf series, Throw in a bit of Star Trek, some Firefly, and a healthy dose of Buffy and you begin to get the idea, There is a lot of action, interesting alien characters, some romance, some intrigue and mystery, and a huge heap of what the heck is going on.
” The main character, Vas is fun to follow along with and most of the novel is seen through her eyes, However, I never felt like I got to know the other characters all that well, Most of Vas crew are alien species, and some are pretty strange but their unique natures were given only cursory attention and frankly, I struggled to identify with them most of the time.
If youre looking for a fastpaced science fiction space mercenary story with a hot female captain, you could certainly do worse than taking a
gamble on this book.
No hard science heresort of the thrusters/inertial dampeners/”All systems go, Captain” sort of science fiction, The plot is interesting but doesnt offer much that you havent encountered before in fact, at times I felt like I was reading a combination of other plots of books or movies that I had experienced previously.
Often I felt like I was merely skimming the surface of the story while I was yearning to delve deeper into these characters and discover more of their backstories and how they came to be part of Vas crew.
Perhaps that will come in book two,
This is the first of a projected trilogy and this first book left me wanting to know what happens next, I am hopeful the next book will provide a bit more depth and perhaps not spend quite as much energy towards full octane plotting.
But for pure entertainment, its a good time,
This came across as a "firefly" type story, All was entertaining until the lastthen I think the author didn't know what to do and started throwing in ideas that didn't gel with the story.
Still enjoyable and I will read the next one, Trilogy review: A solid space opera with great characters, an interesting plot and a wellthoughtthrough universe, Recommend.
I have very, very little experience in space operas, very little in scifi,
I actually picked up the fourth book of this series until, somewhere around, I could no longer shake the feeling there were books before this one and found the trilogy I rapidly read thought.
. . well, if such thing is possible with all those pages,
On one hand, I am not entirely sure how much I enjoyed it or maybe let's say that a lot of the enjoyment was objective instead of emotional I respect and really like the main character and finding a good female MC feels like such a win, I like the crew even though the alien species are a funny bunch I can't exactly picture in my mind, I think the plot is pretty epic, the world complicated even though I am not sure I understood or enjoyed all the complicated machinations/events/history behind what was happening.
. .
Not to mention the kickass romance seamlessly incorporated into the story without any fuss or special attention or suppression, In other words, I like romance but that means that most of the time, any book I pick is maybe at least half made out of it.
To see a power couple fall somewhat naturally in love and bed over the course of the trilogy was just so delightful I respected them both, I respected how they treated each other, I respected the pace, the whole unobtrusive but neither hurried or fake.
. . gosh, I just adored it all,
But when someone was in danger, if someone just died, . . the emotional impact was just not that pronounced, If I was to continue with the theory of having an author and reader side the author enjoyed it, the reader missed something I could connect with more deeply.
Also, this totally just confirmed my theory sciif is better on screen, I adore books and I prefer them but some things are just so much better in Technicolour including aliens, space tech, space ships, space fights or even just normal fights with blasters or sharp objects.
All of which this book was full of,
Still, I may be getting a new appetitive for this genre, We'll see. I bought Warrior Wench for one simple reason: It was written by Marie Andreas, whose Lost Ancients series I totally love, The fourth Lost Ancients book is not yet out, so in Ancientsdeprived desperation, I made the hyperleap from fantasy to sci fi, and discovered that Marie Andreas' stories are absolutely gripping no matter what she writes about or what genre she explores.
The story is built on a mystery that begins to unfold as Captain Vaslisha Tor Dain is busy discovering that something shocking has happened to her ship while she's been on shore leave, and she is forced to temporarily take the ship, Warrior Wench, in exchange.
Just how deeply a merelyannoying bureaucratic mistake is rooted and the sinister explanation behind a seemingly isolated happening keeps the tension building and the pace escalating in a story full of surprise twists and rapidly rising stakes.
Although relationships take a back seat to the fastpaced, edgeofyourseat action that built as the book raced towards it's stomachgrabbing ending, as befitting a good Sci Fi novel, I got to know and appreciate each member of the crew, each wildly different.
Marie Andreas has a magical knack of making each character real,
And although we only get a glimpse here and there, the Asarlai are the scariest race I've encountered in space fiction book or movie.
I have just purchased the sequel, The Victorious Dead, and I can't wait to read it, I only hope that by the time it ends, Marie Andreas has another book ready to launch, In any genre!
Vas is the captain of a mercenary ship, She has just return from an extended vacation to pick up her ship and her crew, only to find her ship has been scrapped for parts.
The replacement ship, though bigger, newer, and fully of shiny addons, comes with the unfortunate monicker of the Warrior Wench, as well as the reputation of being a brothel.
And that's just the start of her bad day, Vas is poisoned, trackers are inserted into her blood, and she narrowly escapes being framed for murder,
The action in this one is fast and furious and the mysteries pile up one upon another, There is a conspiracy at work, but just who or what is behind it is unknown,
I really enjoyed this read, Been reading more on the fantasy side of the sf/ fantasy spectrum lately, and this reminds me why I love a good sf romp.
And the blessing of books over tv/movies, the aliens in this story aren't quite as humanoid as your average Star Trek alien,
There is a slow burn romantic thread, but low key, Maybe a bit too low key for my tastes, I would have jumped his bones long before Vas gave in,
Her second in command, Deven is a powerful esper telepath, Older and more powerful than anyone knows, He also has an incubus like affinity for sex, So what's a girl to do when a little psychic healing breaks down boundaries,
Happy to see book two is out, Will be grabbing it momentarily,
I was glancing through the reviews for the sequel and noticed someone comepared this to Sarantha Jax, sitelink goodreads. com/book/show/ Apt comparison. I'd also add Scarabaeus sitelink goodreads. com/book/show/ to that list. This was an exciting intergalactic romp for a bunch of mercenaries led by a strong woman, There are many worlds and species and aspects of intrigue, but it never became confusing, nor were there any massive datadumps, Information was presented during the story as appropriate to the situation,
The mercenaries are diverse, and they each have special skillsets, and weaknesses, The names were easy to follow, These guys have many enemies, and the situation changes on every page, but it still flowed well,
This is the start of a trilogy, so it ends a bit abruptly, I'll be reading the rest,
PS: This was included in a group of books from StoryBundletm, thumbs up entertaining as heck!
Look, I chose this book because Warrior Wench is a hell of a good title, And, granted, I thought the lady presented on the cover was lovingly named the Warrior Wench, Because anyone that allows themselves to be nicknamed Wench and still be badass is cool, nay HahaaAlas, I was wrong! Warrior Wench is the name of a spaceship, originally intended to be a space brothel yup, sex sells in space, too but, what has that got to do with anything, I will say not winkwink
Vaslisha, or Vas for short, is the captain of a mercenary crew.
The dashing redhead on the cover of the book is your badass female chief of chiefs! I liked her, I liked her a lot, That said, I liked the whole of her crew a lot, There was human and various other specimens of space population presented, So, diversity right there for you, And, if a character was mentioned in the book, you bet your ass there was something uniquely amusing about them to keep the good times rolling.
Say, telepathy or infamous anger, or just the very simplest form of humane malfunction,
As far as spacey adventure goes, or even scifi, I dont care if the book was full of tropes and genre specific cliches it felt perfect for the likes of softcore scifi newbs like me.
Not to mention, it was entertaining as hell! Really, my appetite for controversy was met, my need for quirky characters was satisfied, and importantly there was a bulky story behind it all what with missing spaceships, ancient alien race, spacey hide and seek the list goes on.
Main thing is youll be thrown for a proper loop as the mysteries pile up without any answers until the very end, Its irritating and puts ants in pants if nothing gets answered for such an amount of time and more whodunnits and whydunnits are thrown in the mix.
I mean, some people like feeling itchy like that, I did. It paid off in the end!
So, to sum it up Warrior Wench is fun, totally readable e, g. no big scifi words or trying to imagine the scientific unimaginable, enjoyable and gripping, I got intrigued enough to fly through the book in speed of light and to want to continue with the trilogy! I would recommend to anyone looking for a racey spacey read pewpew.