Book 14 of 2024: You Sexy Thing (The Disco Space Opera, 1)

You Sexy Thing (The Disco Space Opera Book 1) by Cat Rambo.

Quick synopsis: Once a war ends, a military captain and her troop retire and open a restaurant. All too soon, the whole space station it's located on blows up.

Plot: Set in space and far enough in the future that whole races of aliens have lived, died, and been forgotten, Captain Niko (who had been an admiral for all of ten hours before getting demoted back to captain) escaped the literal hive mind military (called The Holy Hive Mind) to start a restaurant with those people (mostly aliens) who had been bonded to her mind through the war.

Then one day a crate arrives containing a human* girl in stasis, and soon after the whole space station explodes and the captain and her group lost everything. [*All through the book I assumed she was a human girl, but she came from an alien planet, so I guess she was really an alien? If she had any non-human characteristics though, I missed mention of them. Maybe humans had settled on that planet long long ago.]

Enter the space pirates and a "bio ship" (living ship) named You Sexy Thing. (One of the passwords in the story was "I believe in miracles". It was a bit of a stretch to believe that, after all that time, the song could still be known well enough to have multiple references to it.)

Unfortunately with the space pirates came the big bad guy of the story. A man rich enough that money meant nothing to him anymore. A man petty enough that anyone who has ever wronged him in his entire life (even the most minor thing) was now dead. Except Captain Niko.

He captured her group and might as well have been twirling his mustache as he talked about killing all of them and torturing Captain Niko for all eternity. Literally all eternity. He had a way to keep her alive forever so he could torture her forever. (yawn)

Since there's already a book #2 out and #3 is coming out later this year, you can guess how this one ends.

Writing/editing: In a book full of aliens, it's no surprise that there were some that aren't male/female. This lead me to realize I have (yet another) issue with the English language: There should be separate words for "gender neutral" and "plural". Using "they/them" for both lead to me stumbling as I read. "Captain Niko looked at them." Is the captain looking at the gender neutral character or the whole crew?

Anyway, that's not the author's fault. The writing was good (I really enjoyed how she wrote one of the alien character's style of speaking). The editing was good as well.

What I Liked/What I Didn’t Like: There were two large, related problems I had with the story (and one minor one).

The bad guy was so unbelievable as a realistic person. I just was endlessly rolling my eyes at him. (He killed one person using carnivorous butterflies...)

Related to that, I never felt even once that the crew had been in actual danger from him. Which is really too bad, because I liked the first part of the book (before everything exploded) a lot.

The minor issue is the book's title/ship's name. That darned song has been stuck in my head for days now...

I really liked all the worldbuilding in the book. Most of the aliens were so interesting and really alien. Plus there were bits of magic too, which fit in the worldbuilding. And ghosts! (Sort of ghosts, humans would consider them as ghosts.)

Rating: 1-Hated / 2-Disliked / 3-Okay / 4-Liked / 5-Loved: 3.75. I liked the found family aspect of this book a lot, but the mustache-twirling bad guy just didn't work and much of the plot centered around him.