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swordsandsapphics 's review for:
Starflight
by Melissa Landers
What a pleasant surprise!
Starflight wasn't on my TBR at all, but I picked it up on a whim and it ended up being a lot of fun. Like other reviews say, it's reminiscent of Firefly in a lot of good ways -- it just has a little more romance. It centers around two protagonists, Solara Brooks and Doran Spaulding. Solara is a young woman with a criminal past, desperate for a new life -- so much that she's willing to become an indentured servant to Doran, her rival from school. But then crazy hijinks ensue, Solara ends up roping Doran onto a spaceship of dubious repute, and then he also gets framed for a crime he didn't commit. Solara and Doran are subsequently forced to work together in order to both get what they want.
The two protagonists are both good characters. Solara's tough and resilient, but not in a way that's shoved in the reader's face. She doesn't pull any punches when it comes to getting what she wants, as evidenced by her willingness to literally become a servant. But between the two, I love Doran more. I literally despised Doran at the beginning of the book, but then Landers did such a good job with Doran's character development that I went from "ugh what a douche" to "DORAN IS MY SON AND I WILL PROTECT HIM WITH MY LIFE."
The best part of this book is definitely the relationship between Solara and Doran. They're a pretty good example of an enemies to lovers relationship; their strong-willed personalities clash with each other, and both of them have legitimate reasons for hating each other (mainly Solara hates Doran at the beginning, but later on Doran definitely has good reasons to be upset with Solara, too). But then they work together, understand each other, and realize there's more to the other than they originally thought. The progression is realistic and it's just everything I like, okay?
I also made the Firefly comparison because there's a surprisingly strong (and good) found family aspect to the book. The ship Solara and Doran wind up on -- the Banshee -- has a wonderful crew, and they all make for strong side characters. They're all reluctant allies at first, but in the end, they're always there for each other.
One thing that did pull me out of my enjoyment of the book was the worldbuilding. The worldbuilding was rather light -- that itself doesn't bother me, it was what was good for the book -- but it also felt weirdly inconsistent at times. While the world is introduced as a future version of our own, the worldbuilding seems far enough removed from our world that it was jarring to hear whenever football or Disney was brought up.
My other gripe was with the way certain things in the plot was resolved. It was mostly tied up nicely, but there were one or two things that were pretty disappointing.
Overall, Starflight's a fun sci-fi flick, and I'd definitely recommend it for anyone looking for that sort of thing.
Starflight wasn't on my TBR at all, but I picked it up on a whim and it ended up being a lot of fun. Like other reviews say, it's reminiscent of Firefly in a lot of good ways -- it just has a little more romance. It centers around two protagonists, Solara Brooks and Doran Spaulding. Solara is a young woman with a criminal past, desperate for a new life -- so much that she's willing to become an indentured servant to Doran, her rival from school. But then crazy hijinks ensue, Solara ends up roping Doran onto a spaceship of dubious repute, and then he also gets framed for a crime he didn't commit. Solara and Doran are subsequently forced to work together in order to both get what they want.
The two protagonists are both good characters. Solara's tough and resilient, but not in a way that's shoved in the reader's face. She doesn't pull any punches when it comes to getting what she wants, as evidenced by her willingness to literally become a servant. But between the two, I love Doran more. I literally despised Doran at the beginning of the book, but then Landers did such a good job with Doran's character development that I went from "ugh what a douche" to "DORAN IS MY SON AND I WILL PROTECT HIM WITH MY LIFE."
The best part of this book is definitely the relationship between Solara and Doran. They're a pretty good example of an enemies to lovers relationship; their strong-willed personalities clash with each other, and both of them have legitimate reasons for hating each other (mainly Solara hates Doran at the beginning, but later on Doran definitely has good reasons to be upset with Solara, too). But then they work together, understand each other, and realize there's more to the other than they originally thought. The progression is realistic and it's just everything I like, okay?
I also made the Firefly comparison because there's a surprisingly strong (and good) found family aspect to the book. The ship Solara and Doran wind up on -- the Banshee -- has a wonderful crew, and they all make for strong side characters. They're all reluctant allies at first, but in the end, they're always there for each other.
One thing that did pull me out of my enjoyment of the book was the worldbuilding. The worldbuilding was rather light -- that itself doesn't bother me, it was what was good for the book -- but it also felt weirdly inconsistent at times. While the world is introduced as a future version of our own, the worldbuilding seems far enough removed from our world that it was jarring to hear whenever football or Disney was brought up.
My other gripe was with the way certain things in the plot was resolved. It was mostly tied up nicely, but there were one or two things that were pretty disappointing.
Spoiler
Doran and his brother come to peace with each other a little too quickly, and it was disappointing that Doran never got his name cleared. Yeah, it's cool that he decided to stay on the Banshee with Solara, and I agree that it's a good progression of his character development, going from the one who never gets his hands dirty to someone who willingly stays in this criminal lifestyle. But after they spent the book trying to clear his name, I wish that they'd been, you know, successful in that.Overall, Starflight's a fun sci-fi flick, and I'd definitely recommend it for anyone looking for that sort of thing.