Make sure you read the footnotes at the end…
It feels a bit odd to be saying “make sure you read the footnotes” when talking about a space opera, since I, at least, tend to think of footnotes as dull comments, usually in print that is too small to read, found at the end of textbooks or technical papers. But Full Speed to a Crash Landing is anything but dull, and neither are its footnotes. (At the same time, though, DON’T skip to the end to read the footnotes first – you probably won’t understand them, and if you do, they’ll be very spoilery…)
I mostly review mysteries, but I do read some science-fiction and fantasy as well. So when a review copy of Full Speed, by Beth Revis, showed up in my recommendation feed, it looked like fun, and I grabbed it. And I’m very glad I did. Like all good space operas, it starts off with a bang. Quite literally, since protagonist Ada Lamarr’s spaceship has had a huge hole blown in its side while she’s salvaging a nearby wreck, and she’s quickly running out of air. After ignoring her emergency call for far too long, a government-operated ship that’s in the area, the Halifax, finally picks her up in the nick of time, but something is off.
More accurately, several somethings are off. The Halifax’s crew clearly doesn’t want her there, and the government agent on board, Rian White, appears to have a lot more authority than he should. At the same time, those same crew-members are taking a lot of risk to retrieve a mysterious package from the wreck, more than seems either warranted or wise. The wreck itself seems odd: how and why did it really crash? And, if we’re truly honest with ourselves, even our heroine, Ada, is hiding a few things too, while doing a masterful – and very funny – job of distraction to cover up.
Eighteen quick and (mostly) laugh-out-loud chapters follow. However, although the ending does wrap up the immediate storyline, it is also quite obviously a big hook for the second book in the series, How to Steal a Galaxy, due out this December. Luckily, there are still some nuggets to chew over in the intervening months. Because THIS is the point at which you don’t want to miss reading Rian’s reports on the whole incident, included at the very end, after the last chapter – and of course, those aforementioned footnotes.
I, for one, will be waiting impatiently for a chance to read the next book. And then, since the author’s website mentions that this is a planned trilogy, I have a feeling I’ll end up waiting equally impatiently for the third book too. And if you follow my recommendation to read Full Speed to a Crash Landing, I suspect you’ll be waiting impatiently right along with me!
And finally, my thanks to the publisher, DAW, and to NetGalley for the review copy.
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