A review by sonofthunder
Fortuna by Kristyn Merbeth

3.0

A quick-paced, action packed space opera here! This is a pretty recently written book and I enjoyed it for the most part. The world-building was very fascinating and I loved slowly discovering the origin of the system of planets that makes up the stage of this tale. The author does a great job of slowly unveiling the history and characteristics of the various planets and I really appreciated the obvious effort she put in creating these worlds and these characters. And the characters! The Kaiser family (Corvus, Scorpia, Lyre, Andromeda, Apollo) is beautifully drawn and pretty soon into the book, you know exactly who is who and what they're like. The characters are distinct and have their own voices, and though at first they may seem a bit one-note, they are slowly revealed to have layers and depth of personality. The writing is a bit broad (but part of that is the affect of reading Scorpia's POV...as she is a rather broad character herself!) I guess that may be my one complaint - the prose, while functional, isn't exactly top-level. And the profanity. Oh boy is there a lot of it. Yes, I suppose it may be realistic (no reason for a smuggler family to be polite in their language!) but it does grate after a while. I did push through though, mainly because the plot was so engaging and I was curious to see how the author resolved some fairly serious dilemmas that were faced by the main characters! There's tragedy in this tale and I appreciate that it's not quickly resolved and swept under the rug. Corvus having to deal with what happened on Titan was very believable. Less believable was how quickly Corvus and Scorpia reconnected, but I was so happy when the family finally, finally started working together near the end of this book! Even Drom came through! Scorpia is such a mess of a character and one that I probably would have a lot of trouble with if she was my friend in real life...but she is very vivid and most well-drawn. All in all, I enjoyed this as a quick read. Great worldbuilding and good characters. I'm not a fan of the writing style, but admittedly first-person is very challenging to do well. I rarely enjoy reading it though. Still, all in all, a good read and I am interested enough in the story I want to read the second book now!