Some secrets carry the weight of the world.
Rose McKenzie may be far from Earth with no way back, but she's made a powerful ally--a fellow prisoner with whom she's formed a strong bond. Sazo's an artificial intelligence. He's saved her from captivity and torture, but he's also put her in the middle of a conflict, leaving Rose with her loyalties divided.
Captain Dav Jallan doesn't know why he and his crew have stumbled across an almost legendary Class 5 battleship, but he's not going to complain. The only problem is, all its crew are dead, all except for one strange, new alien being.
She calls herself Rose. She seems small and harmless, but less and less about her story is adding up, and Dav has a bad feeling his crew, and maybe even the four planets, are in jeopardy. The Class 5's owners, the Tecran, look set to start a war to get it back and Dav suspects Rose isn't the only alien being who survived what happened on the Class 5. And whatever else is out there is playing its own games.
In this race for the truth, he's going to have to go against his leaders and trust the dark horse.
Review
I wanted to love this, I really did. I think what's happened is it's suffered very badly in comparison to a brilliant series in the Sci-Fi genre, the Firebird Chronicles by T A White, that I started reading last month. In fact, I probably picked this up because it sounded similar and I was jonesing for more. But it just didn't quiiiiite match up to that one for me.
The story follows human earthling Rose as she escapes from the nasty aliens who abducted her and seeks refuge with some nicer aliens. She has a sidekick in the form of an artificial intelligence "thinking engine", Sazo, that she talks to via an earpiece. Sazo helped her escape the bad aliens so she feels grateful and loyal to him/it, but she's also a bit scared of his ability to kill without a qualm. There's also the small problem of thinking engines being outlawed 200 years ago.
This setup and worldbuilding I did like. Though I found Sazo quite creepy. He wasn't the type of sidekick that steals the show with how cute and lovable he is. He was more like the sinister voice in Rose's ear that keeps threatening to kill people. That did improve over the course of the book but it never got to the point where I didn't think everyone would be safer if someone just... accidentally switched him off. And I don't think I was supposed to think that.
I should say, I did listen to this on audiobook so it could be the narrator's voice for Sazo that added to the creepy. The narrator was brilliant, but she definitely affected a strange and unsettling voice for Sazo to convey his inhumanness.
What let this book down massively for me was the romance. It just didn't connect to my heartbox, ya know? And this book is actually, unbeknownst to me either before or during reading, a Sci-Fi romance... As in, a love story that's all wrapped up with a HEA and the next book in the series is about a different couple... Honestly, you could NOT tell this book was supposed to be a romance! I just assumed it was going to be a Sci-Fi adventure space opera series with a focus on the action and the war between alien races, with a romance subplot that was perhaps going to grow and get more convincing over time. But at the end of the book, they started romantic speeching at each other, you know how they do when they're wrapping things up, and I was like...what is happening? I headed over to GoodReads and sure enough, the next book is not about Rose and Dav.
I'm not 100% sure if I'll continue with this series. The books are included for "free" on the audible plus catalogue and the narrator was good, and I guess there's always a chance I'll connect more with the next pairing so I'm not ruling it out entirely. We'll see. Until then... Onto my next read!
3.5 Stars ★★★1/2
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