Hunt the Stars
The Starlight's Shadow series, Book 1
Jessie Mihalik
Harper Voyager
Fiction, Romance/Sci-Fi
Themes: Aliens, Cross-Genre, Diversity, Girl Power, Psionics, Soldier Stories, Space Stories
****
Description
In the wars between the Federated Human Planets and the telepathic Valoffs, Octavia "Tavi" Zarola became a war hero for all the wrong reasons, in a mission that was anything but the glorious victory her superiors declared it to be. She and her surviving squadmates have been bearing the burden of that lie ever since, even years into a fragile peace. Aboard their private ship Starlight's Shadow, they pick up odd jobs across the settled galaxy, barely scraping by... but, even desperate as their finances are, Tavi hesitates when a man wants her to find a stolen family heirloom. The reason? The man is the infamous Valovian general Torran Fletcher. No human who fought them can feel anything but hatred for his kind, and the feeling is clearly mutual, especially when her "war hero" status precedes her. There's an active bounty for her head on his homeworld of Valovia - where she'll have to go if she's fool enough to take the job, even if it's not a trap. But something about him is hard to dismiss out of hand, and not just because of his devastating good looks. His story and his desperation ring true, and the money he's offering is all too tempting. Despite her better judgement, Tavi agrees to Torran's terms - plunging herself and her crew into a job where nothing is as it seems, and where one wrong move could shatter the fragile peace and plunge the galaxy into all-out war again.
Review
A jaded warrior fallen on hard times, a rough ship with a ragtag and eccentric crew, a galaxy on the brink of interstellar war, aliens conveniently human enough to enable interspecies carnal relations that don't tip into bestiality... If I'm being fully honest, this audiobook came close to losing half a star for sheer familiarity. Hunt the Stars isn't exactly built with stunningly original parts or with particular depth or intricacy in worldbuilding or characters, on the romance end or the space opera end. But it's not trying to be stunningly original or particularly deep. It's trying to be an interstellar romance with devastatingly handsome and beautiful leads (both of whom have the requisite wounded pasts and trust issues to overcome) and a plot with enough action and complications and heated encounters to keep things interesting between their first encounter and the end of the book. At that, I must say it succeeds, with a solid, if not necessarily memorable, tale. Tavi's heart is immediately smitten by Torran, but her head is smart enough to recognize the danger he represents, and the holes in his story. Torran does indeed have secrets, but not the ones she expects. There's some personal and cultural clashes as the two struggle to navigate their new working relationship, both dancing around the edge of their attraction. Given their respective histories in the war, I'd almost have expected a little more hesitancy in that on both ends, but, well, it is a romance, so certain developments are inevitable. (I will say, though, that I found the relationship finale a bit drawn out, especially given that the non-romance plot had already concluded; it felt like Mihalik was just drawing out word count at that point before setting up the sequel. It seemed like something must've been out of balance between the general action/space opera arc and the relationship arc, when the conclusion of one sapped my interest in the conclusion of the other...) In any event, while I doubt I'll bother with the next book in the series, Hunt the Stars is a perfectly competent, somewhat steamy story of interstellar romance and intrigue, enough so that I went ahead and gave it the full fourth star of a Good rating despite some minor quibbles.