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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