Review: Nightchaser

Nightchaser by Amanda Bouchet
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

In a better world - one in which thousands of terrible books didn't drag the average down - this would be an average book. It's not bad. It's OK.

It's written to a template that a lot of books are being written to these days, which is a practice that tends to produce an undistinguished result. A plucky young woman with a traumatic past leads a band of ragtag rebels (or other people on the edge of the law) in space-operatic adventures.

Its debt to popular franchises is fairly obvious. Rebels vs evil empire, and a key player in the evil empire is closely related to the protagonist: Star Wars. Phasers: Star Trek. Yes, they're actually called "phasers".

The worldbuilding, such as it is, is very space-opera-standard-issue. Any time it goes anywhere near science, it gets it wrong. There are magical healing lasers; bullets don't work in space because they need oxygen for the sparks (that's actually built into the propellant, or it can be); a few days of charging via the ship's solar cells on a planet is enough to bring it to full charge, which is all it needs to get out of the gravity well of the planet (by some mysterious mechanism not explored) as well as hyperjump long distances; a small two-person craft can be used as an aircar and can also get out of the gravity well and perform hyperjumps; neither of these appear to use fuel or reaction mass; an increase in white cell count gives you, not leukemia, but a superior immune system so you never get sick (and your blood cures others); "purifying herbs" are used for "detox". The mention of floating cargo pallets suggests that there's antigravity, and that this also provides artificial gravity in the spacecraft and perhaps has something to do with the propulsion, but it's never explored at all, even in a passing mention.

There's a "midsummer festival" celebrated, seemingly at the same time, across multiple planets. In reality, it isn't even midsummer at the same time all over one planet.

There's a quotation from a famous (fictional) poet. The poetry is awful.

It's technically dystopian, which nearly made me quit it a couple of pages in, but I thought I'd give it a chance. It's also technically postapocalyptic, since Earth has been destroyed by nuclear war - the only evidence of anything nuclear; all power appears to be solar. Both of these would normally be an automatic "no" from me.

It's crammed absolutely full of misuses of the coordinate comma rule. Apart from that, and a few typos, the copy editing is mostly clean.

So why did I finish it? Well, the actual story, the adventure with a bit of romance thrown in, is well done. We start with a motivated protagonist in a dynamic situation. The stakes are personal, the action scenes are engaging, the tension escalates, the characters (at least the viewpoint characters) are more than cardboard cutouts, the conflicts are, if somewhat obviously set up, strong and compelling. If you mainly care about storytelling - and most readers do - this is a competent, even capable book. It's entertaining.

There are dozens like it, though, and I don't often read those kind of clone-army books because I'm usually disappointed at the missed opportunities to go beyond the template. Sometimes I'm pleasantly surprised. This time... eh, it was OK.

I received a copy via Netgalley for purposes of review.

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