{Book Review} Grimspace by Anne Aguirre

Synopsis:

As the carrier of a rare gene, Sirantha Jax has the ability to jump ships through grimspace-a talent which makes her a highly prized navigator for the Corp. Then a crash landing kills everyone on board, leaving Jax in a jail cell with no memory of the crash. But her fun's not over. A group of rogue fighters frees her...for a price: her help in overthrowing the established order.

Do you like the TV show Firefly?

Of course you do.

You’ll probably enjoy Grimspace then.

Now, I don’t want to be like, oh hey, Grimspace is just as incredible as the immortalized and cut short too soon Firefly.  But I would say it’s got kind of a similar tone. Grimspace is all about Sirantha Jax, headstrong, foul mouthed, stubborn, arrogant, and yet somehow absolutely likable jumper – meaning she can pretty much jack into a space ship and jump the ship from point A to point B. Unfortunately, she’s about to be on trial for killing a bunch of people that she doesn’t remember killing on her last jump. The Corp – the company Jax works for – has her locked up, doing crazy Psych evals to try to glean what she may have repressed in her memory. But then, a group of crazy space pirates (ish) break her out, and Jax discovers that she may not be crazy after all.

I have so much love for this book. It is everything I want in a Sci-Fi Space Opera book: lots of time in a space ship running around fun sci-fi space (not creepy real space, where there’s nothing out there), aliens, made up cuss words, traveling to alien worlds, futuristic tech, and a rag-tag team of heroes trying to stay one step out of reach of a faceless Corporation that has some monopoly on such and such.

Plus, there’s March. I hate to continue the Firefly comparison, but March did remind me a bit of Mal. Likable, smug, arrogant, seems to be able to read Jax’s mind (hmm, how suspicious), and also absolutely likable, just like Jax. I love that the two main characters here are both interesting and colorful, and 100% likable. Their relationship is an interesting and lovely layer on top of the “what the heck happened on Matins IV” mystery they’re trying to solve, all the while working to break the monopoly the Corp has on Jumpers. Plus, the fact that Jax could burn out at any minute (effectively die, in Jumper speak). So there’s a lot of tension here, and March and Jax’s relationship is the breath of fresh air amid the madness.

There’s plenty of action to go around; seeing as they’re rogue fighters, they don’t have a lot of friends. And the friends they do have could be considered more “acquaintances that at one point owed us a favor” or “they hate us less than they hate the Corp”. So there’s a lot of “here’s hoping they don’t blow us out of the sky with their big guns”. Makes for some very exciting reading.

If you’re a fan of sci-fi space opera, I can’t recommend this book enough. It’s sarcastic, action-packed, romantic, and filled with all those sci-fi elements that I can’t get enough of. Bring on book 2!

Content: Heavy Language, sex, violence. Recommended for 18+