Jitterbug

I feel like I’ve read all of the books that informed the writing of this book. It has the plucky, quirky pilot, the handsome male owner of the spacecraft who has feelings for someone he shouldn't, pirates, the AI of the ship externalized in the form of an animal, etc., but the writing of this isn’t especially good.

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I stood by the forward viewscreen with my arm around Amber’s shoulders, and watched the stars wheel around us as Lanzo sent a detailed final report back to the inner solar system via Kowalski’s relay beacon. It would be hours before anyone received it. There certainly wouldn’t be time for anyone to reach us before our emergency batteries died and we lost heat, power, and air circulation.

In lieu of a miracle, the remaining hours of our lives could be counted on the fingers of one badly damaged hand.

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This novel starts out strong. We understand something major is happening to the solar system and the idea put forth is compelling. But as the story progresses, it’s as if the author lost steam. The last quarter of the book seems like it was thrown together in haste, and it makes no sense.

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There is time travel on an absurd scale (a thousand years in one direction, seven hundred years in another direction), people meeting their grandchildren, etc. etc. It’s as if the author drew ideas of a hat and said yes to all of them.

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The universe was a dark and dangerous place, filled with voracious civilisations driven by a need for endless expansion. But in between those waves of conquest and plunder, there were backwaters where a few well-protected species might tread a different path.

Instead of ballooning outwards to engulf the galaxy, they could choose instead to prosper inside their impregnable spheres, making the most of their resources instead of indulging in a headlong rush to accumulate more.

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The characters are loosely defined by cheap stereotypes, and because the narration switches perspective from chapter to chapter, we don’t get to know any of them very deeply. So we don’t really care when an armada of alien ships hops through dozens of instantly appearing wormholes to raid our solar system. Not recommended.

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