Friday, October 18, 2019

Short Book Reviews: Telepathic Kittens, Lustful Alien Emperors, and a Mad Chase Across the Galaxy


Chilling Effect, by Valerie Valdes (Harper Voyager)


In many ways, this delightful, supersonic-paced space adventure reminded me of Amber Royal’s Free Chocolate. Both involve fascinating and occasionally romantic relationships between humans and aliens, resourceful heroines, mad chases through space, and a text liberally sprinkled with Spanish phrases (or in the case of Royal’s book, Spanish and Portuguese) that reflect the protagonist’s fluency and mixed heritage. (And an added benefit to reading both on an ereader is the ability to easily check for a translation.) I hope these two books signal a wave of multicultural, multilingual stories.

That said, Chilling Effect is very much its own story. Eva Innocente (that’s Captain Eva Innocente of  La Sirena Negra) ekes out a living transporting various cargo (including a litter of telepathic kittens the recipient doesn’t want), when her sister is kidnapped by the crime syndicate, The Fridge, and forces Eva into one unsavory job after another in order to gain her sister’s freedom. That description skips over Eva’s wonderfully colorful crew, one of whom – Vakar, her engineer -- communicates his emotions by odors that Eva interprets as things like licorice, roses, and burnt rubber, and the hilarious adventures she has on the way. Very early in the story, she turns down the lecherous advances of the Glorious Apotheosis, a fish-faced Jabba-the-Hutt emperor who then pursues her ship across the galaxy, spouting overblown threats in her general directin. Eventually, Eva turns the tables on The Fridge and discovers the method to their mad schemes, which involves a mysterious, incredibly powerful ancient Proarkhe alien artifact, finding love in unlikely places, getting stuck in cryo for a year, getting double-crossed by her shyster father, finding out her sister isn’t as helpless a victim as she’d been led to believe, and never getting rid of those kittens.

There’s a ton of action and cool details in this story, but for me the best part was the characterization, both of Eva and of the other wonderful beings who inhabit this universe and touch her heart, and, by extension, the reader’s.

The usual disclaimer: I received a review copy of this book, but no one bribed me to praise it. Although chocolates and fine imported tea are always welcome.


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