Review: Grimspace by Ann Aguirre

Title: Grimspace
Author: Ann Aguirre
Genre: science Fiction romance
Grade: A-
Reason for Reading: I’ve been reading and lurking on Ann’s blog for some time now, and after Dear Author reviewed Grimspace last month, I knew this was a book I was going to have to read.

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.

My Thoughts: I’m not terribly easy to please. (Shut up! allow me this moment, OK?). And I’ll read just about anything, although when I got into grown up books, my first love was science fiction and fantasy. I loved the idea of exploring interstellar space, of people with unusual abilities dealing with new lifeforms, and imagining what cultures we’d develop in the far future. In fact, as I’ve mentioned before, if anything, I’m still a romance newbie. So I really like it when my two loves are brought together–a good science fiction romance will make my day.

Ann Aguirre’s Grimspace is a good science fiction romance. I admit to not having read too widely in this particular subgenre yet, but I would have to say that the balance between the romance and the sci-fi elements is pretty much flawless. There are a few science fiction cliches–the resemblance to Firefly is hard to miss, but hey, I like Firefly. (Mmm… Jayne and his guns… Oops, I digress.) I have a few other guesses about Aguirre’s influences, but hey, we’ll be having an interview with her posted up next week, so we’ll see if I’m right then.

So what specifically did I like about the SF elements, since that’s what I was talking about? Well, I liked that Aguirre created several believable alien races that struck me as sufficiently other than human. I liked that she’s obviously thought a lot about how stuff works in her world, and she manages to articulate it without going into clunky technobabble. In fact, I really would love to explore this universe further, and I’m excited to find out that apparently there is a sequel planned, because there are so many possibilities that she could take the story.

As for the romance, it’s wonderful! Both Jax and March, our hero, are very broken individuals. They’re not all clean and perfect by the time the book is finished either, and there was no healing magical sexx0ring for either of them. They’ve still got some working through of stuff to do, but I get the sense that they will manage it.

I loved Jax. She’s my favorite type of heroine–competent, smart, and tortured. She doesn’t start out as a very sympathetic character, and there were times I wanted to smack her, but I loved her snarky voice, and she really had been through hell, since the corporation was literally trying to break her down and they were doing a good job of it. I wanted to weep for her at times, laugh with her at others, and shake herk, so I guess that means the character’s good.

March is great, too. Since the book is told in first person from Jax’s point of view, I was kind of expecting him to end up a slightly more murky figure, perhaps even a cliche from Romancelandia Central Casting. Thankfully, Aguirre does a good job of showing what March is really thinking and feeling in ways that worked for me.

The POV is a bit difficult to get used to. I’m not terribly averse to reading books in first person, but present tense often comes off as being a bit too pretentious for my taste. I thought the fact that I got both first person and present tense would distract and annoy me the same way multiple first-person PoV does, but Aguirre’s such a good storyteller that I didn’t notice after a while.

I loved this book and cannot wait to see what else Aguirre has to offer. And I say that in all sincerity, despite the fact that she gave me an ARC and is going to be coming over to pimp herself some more next week.

Grimspace will be available on February 26. Closer to the release date, if not on the actual release date, Ann Aguirre will be joining us over here, and you could win your very own shiny copy, signed by the author herself. So watch this space and click on that Amazon link to preorder.