Crownchasers
The Crownchasers series, Book 1
Rebecca Coffindaffer
HarperTeen
Fiction, YA Sci-Fi
**** (Good)
DESCRIPTION: Alyssa Farshot may be heir to the throne of one thousand and one worlds by blood, but she has no interest in the crown. She's much happier aboard the Vagabond Quick with her engineer/sometimes lover, a man who goes by the name Hell Monkey, pushing herself and her ship to the limits in the name of science for the Explorers Society. Besides, her uncle has decades of life ahead of him to find a more suitable successor, one who doesn't mind being stuck in the Kingship surrounded by the most terrifying and devious beasts in all the known galaxy: politicians.
When the emperor falls ill and dies of a rare blood disease, she is devastated. And when his last act is to declare a crownchase - a cross-system scavenger hunt by chosen scions of the Prime houses, the winner taking the royal seal and the crown - she is both terrified and angered that her family names her as their representitive.
She never wanted the crown. She doesn't even want to win. She can barely keep herself together half the time, let alone an interplanetary empire. The other participants were her childhood friends (well, most of them); now they're essentially enemies. But she doesn't seem to have a choice. The whole quadrant is watching, and she can't let her uncle down. It soon becomes clear that a mere contest for a new emperor is the least of the civilized galaxy's worries: new threats from within and without seem to be meddling with the chase and the succession. If Alyssa fails her family, she might well be dooming everyone, and every world, to an unimaginable fate...
REVIEW: This was another relatively random pick from the available audiobooks on Overdrive. It looked like a fun, active space opera with a gutsy, somewhat snarky heroine and a plot with little to no down time, and that's precisely what it delivers. True, the "gutsy, somewhat snarky heroine" isn't exactly new territory these days, but Alyssa Farshot pulls off the role admirably, managing to thread the needle between rebellious, devil-may-care space jockey and empathetic heir growing into her responsibilities despite herself, unable to look away from the many injustices and dangers she encounters. Her victories, and even her moments of weakness, all feel authentic and earned, not just granted or forced due to her status as main character. Likewise, the characters around her, the friends and enemies and frenemies, take on a little more depth as the crownchase challenges test them, while flashbacks show the roots of their old bonds and rivalries. Things move fast, but not too fast to follow or to develop emotions and relationships, creating a wild and complex and interesting quadrant full of adventures and dangers and real people facing real problems. Yes, there are several familiar space opera tropes in play, particularly the more fantastical end of space opera - numerous interbreeding humanoid races, wondrous and dangerous alien worlds for the exploring (and exploitation), casual planetary system hopping, captains perpetually pushing the limits of the law and physics, engineers who can pull off miracles at the last second with the right tools and lots of fancy typing (and a little technobabble) - but for this story it all works fairly well. The whole comes together like an exciting thrill ride whose main drawback is the cliffhanger ending.
I see the sequel audiobook is currently available on my libary's Overdrive, so that might solve both the "left on a cliffhanger" problem and the "what do I listen to at work tomorrow" problem...
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