Ancillary Justice by Ann Leckie

Shout out to Book Smugglers for this recommendation.  If I spend too much time on their site I sometimes become overwhelmed by the awesome (so many books, so little time) and decide to never read again. But I was lucky enough to hit on Ancillary Sword's release and thus Ancillary Justice's description before my eyes started to glaze over at all the pretty covers.

I loved this book.  Loved it, I say.  But I recognize (those of you with lesser intellects) not everyone is going to be entranced by the political and military meditation on what it means to be human.  No, seriously, it has an interesting, well constructed plot, but no one is going to accuse this book of being too plot-driven.  It's a character study with some really kickass cultural and technical concepts that are deftly explored and fun to think about.

Perfect example, I encouraged, cajoled, forced my daughter (14) to read the book and she dutifully did but at a much slower pace than she reads 80% of the other books she picks up.  When she finished it she told me that it was very cool, which is high praise, and she was glad she had read it and was looking forward to reading the sequel but I noticed she had another book in hand by the next day.

But seriously this book is so good.  I mean really good.  And I don't typically read a lot of sci-fi -   I'm more of a fantasy girl myself.  Get it now. Be so happy that the sequel is already out. Don't cry too hard when you buzz through the second book and realize you, like me, have to wait an entire year or more before the third book comes out......

Science Fiction 2013: 5 out of 5 Presger vivisections.

Sherrilyn Kenyon "Born of Ice"

Um, well the world building in this sci fi is decent. Captain Kell is a smuggler, running medical supplies and food stuffs to planets that need them. He's surrounded by testosterone laden important friends and testosterone laden evil enemies. Alix is the slave daughter of a small time smuggler and abusive father who gets himself executed by some of Kell's evil enemies. When the enemy notices that she looks almost exactly like Kell's former fiancee, she is put into service to spy on Kell as his new ship's engineer, or her sister and mother will be brutally killed.

So, these two fall into bed with each other and Alix feels really bad about having to betray him, and he defends her to his friends because he can tell she's a good person, until he finally finds out she's a spy. After confronting her, and hearing about her mom and sister, she calls herself worthless property and , well, I'll give you the quote:

He saw the humiliation in her eyes as she said that, and while he might be mad at her for what she had done, he didn't want her to hear those haunting voices. "You're not worthless, Alix. But right now, I have to say that I don't like you as much as I did before I found all of this out. I don't appreciate being toyed with or betrayed."

Wow. What a bad-ass.

I actually enjoyed the repartee between the male characters, call me shallow if you want. But when the secondary characters are more enjoyable and interesting than the protagonists, something ain't right. If most of the main character's soul searching were completely removed from the book, it might actually be fun.

Science Fiction Futuristic Romance 2009: 1 out of 5 "balls to the wall."