Just didn’t get to this one in a timely fashion, but it’s always good to see more sci fi romance out and available!

This was just okay, the author may not be someone I continue to read as her writing does no click with me.

*~~*ARC kindly provided from the publisher/author to me for an honest review *~~*

Full review to come

4 stars

Part of a series I found that I was a little lost as the story started. I suggest that you read book one first. It is a good story with a lot of action.

Lovely book! Great characters with good depth to them and a nice story that kept you interested and engaged through out the story.

This one took me awhile to get into. I finally just sat down and sped read the thing. Even though this is a shorter novel, I felt like it lagged on me. I took me a few minutes to conclude that we are in an alternate reality where there’s still a Soviet Union but humans have achieved some pretty good space travel capabilities. It’s also like (or is) the Cold War.

I may have made a mistake diving into the series, 3rd book in. I found the beginning not at all gripping so I struggled and tried not to roll my eyes when she almost moans over fake coffee and lusts unashamedly over Tomas. I also prefer some build up to the lust part, or at least some back story. But, again, that was probably my bad not reading the first two book to get the set up. Or maybe not, I just looked up the synopsis on the first two books…do Maria and Tomas actually feature?

Yeah, anyhow Maria lusts over someone she calls jackass in her head and is convincing herself she hates. Only she wants to lick him to see if he tastes how he smells…okay.

Of course, no war novel set in space would be complete without some explosions and a narrow get away…only they are forced to get away on a commandeered Soviet vessel, the Tiger Shark. Interesting name for a Soviet spaceship. Insert a minefield in space, being wanted by everyone after being labelled terrorists and you pretty much got this book summed up.

I did like how Maria is self-sufficient, a little bit snarky, and mostly unafraid to tell it how it is. She steps up when she needs to and gets things done. But that was not enough to make me love this book and I really wanted to. The premise was pretty cool.

I enjoyed Relaunch Mission, the first book in Robyn Bachar’s Galactic Cold War series, set in a future in which the Cold War never ended and which follows the adventures of the members of the crew of the privateer ship Mombasa. I somehow missed the second book, Contingency Plan, but decided to pick up this third instalment anyway; although I would probably have benefited from reading the previous book, the author includes enough information about what happened there for me not to have felt too lost.

Because this is the third in a series with an overarching plotline, there will be spoilers for the earlier books in this review.

When End Transmission opens, we find Mombasa’s chief engineer Maria Watson and ship’s surgeon (and the captain’s brother) Tomas Nyota at a small lab at an ex-mining facility attempting to analyse the tiny Project Compliance prototype they managed to get hold of at the end of book two, a mind control device developed by the Soviets that they plan to implant (secretly) among the population. The task is proving frustratingly difficult; there’s to be no way to open it up and it’s resistant to scans – and as it’s the only one they have, they can’t do anything that might risk destroying it. While Tomas and Maria are arguing about different approaches, alarms start blaring out and on contacting the Mombasa are told to get back fast – there’s a fleet of ships from the Soviet Navy about to arrive. Before Maria and Tomas can make a move, there’s an explosion at the facility that sees Tomas injured by falling debris and cuts off their route to the Mombasa. Their only option now is to escape aboard the Tiger Shark, a small ship (formerly property of the Soviets) docked at the opposite end at the base.

Having patched Tomas up as well as she can, the pair make their way to the ship and have to fight their way through enemy ships and a minefield in an edge-of-the-seat sequence that sees them finally get away by the skin of their teeth, but not without damage to the ship. The Tiger Shark needs repairs and for that, they need to find a safe port where they can get what they need and lie-low while Maria fixes the ship as best she can. On the run from the Soviets and the Alliance – which has labelled the Mombasa crew as wanted terrorists – Maria and Tomas have only each other to depend on as they race against time to find out more about Project Compliance and make their way to their rendezvous with the Mombasa.

End Transmission is fast-paced and action packed, and as I’ve said before, has the feel of a TV show with its fast edits and non-stop action. There’s no doubt the author knows how to keep things moving and how to write an action sequence, but the trouble is here that there’s just too much going on. I lost count of the times Maria and Tomas were shot at, blown up, beat up, drugged and had to get themselves out of really tight corners in the first half of the novel alone – and in practically every case, they were saved thanks to Maria’s trusty tablet, Tabby, who, it seemed, was programmed to do everything from analyse a toxin and prepare and administer an antidote to setting off explosions, car alarms and connecting with pretty much any security, navigation, communication, power and other computer network imaginable. Tabby really is a deus ex machina, a device that can do practically anything when our heroes are backed into a corner or need important information.

Reading through our review of Contingency Plan, I note the same issues with the romance as I had in the first book – and I’m going to say the same thing about this one, which is that the romance is very much secondary to the plot and is sadly underdeveloped. Maria and Tomas spend the first two thirds of the story getting on each other’s nerves, and although there’s an undercurrent of attraction between them, it’s fairly slight. Then when they finally get back to the Mombassa, they go from ‘you’re hot but you annoy the crap outta me’ to ‘let’s have sex and get it out of our systems’. It’s a common trope to be sure, but not generally one I like all that much, because of course it never works and I often feel it’s just a way for authors to shoe-horn in some sex scenes their characters aren’t otherwise ready for; they haven’t really built a relationship and can’t (for some reason) say, ‘hey, I like you so let’s shag’ so there has to be all this ‘I want you but can’t admit it, so let’s shag and then I can walk away’ nonsense.

While there’s an attempt at character development at a deeper level, we’re told rather than shown what makes these two tick. Maria comes from a very traditional background and her family thinks she should be getting married and having babies rather than working as an engineer, and Tomas suffers PTSD as a result of horrific wartime experiences and is a recovering addict who screwed up his marriage and still battles his saviour complex. Once they’ve both admitted these hang-ups to each other, they agree to try to do better – or ‘reprogram’ their behaviours as Tomas suggests wryly – but it’s all quite superficial and actually, the vibe they give off is more that of affectionately exasperated siblings than a couple who are romantically involved.

End Transmission ties up the overarching plot of the series – the search for the mind-control weapon and its destruction – neatly, and delivers a quick (if not especially believable) HEA for Tomas and Maria. It’s a fast, easy read, and I liked the worldbuilding and political background to the story but I never got caught up in it or became invested in the characters. The lack of depth I mentioned in my review of Relaunch Mission was more of an issue for me here, I suspect because the characters were pushed from one perilous situation to another so quickly that I didn’t have time to take in what had just happened before the next thing went wrong. I was also annoyed by the frequent use of Tabby the get-out-of-jail-free tablet and had to raise an eyebrow near the end, when a character is critically injured one minute, and able to run, shoot a gun and then man a weapons system aboard ship the next.

If you’ve been following the series and want to know how it all works out then you may want to pick up End Transmission for the sake of completeness, but I can’t really recommend it otherwise.

End Transmission is the conclusion of the Galactic Cold War series, a science fiction romance that blends galaxy-wide conspiracies with strong, complicated characters. This book revolves around the doctor and engineer whose antagonistic relationship has been a source of frustration and amusement for the rest of the crew since the series began. I read the previous books back in 2017 and yet, though there isn’t much of a detailed summary, I recognized characters and remembered circumstances with ease.

Tomas and Maria end up isolated from the Mombasa after the Soviet Navy rains terror down on their supposedly impenetrable hideout. Rather than focus on returning to the rest, Tomas drags the engineer on a dangerous plan to get his ex-wife’s help in uncovering how the stolen Soviet prototype will live up to its scheme of ensuring compliance.

Besides getting too close a look at the hell Tomas had sunk into before joining his sister, captain of the Mombasa, Maria gains more insight into the doctor himself. She finds herself less able to dismiss his sincere, if scrambled, caring side when she experiences it. Whether suffering abuse from his wife or coaching Maria through her own PTSD after the events earlier in the series, he is far from the arrogant, obnoxious playboy she’d taken him for. Not that he doesn’t have all those characteristics still, along with a firm disrespect for her skills, but rather they form only a part of the picture.

Similarly, Tomas has to confront his own issues with Maria’s competence, or excellence depending on your perspective, in her own arena and how he has no view into her world. With them both separated from their domains, they have to work together not just for the mission but for their very survival.

It’s when they work together a little too well that things get complicated. Maria’s plan to relieve the sexual tension between them so they can get on with their lives goes wrong in all the right ways. The transition of their relationship from antagonistic to loving happens on the page in the mix of their desperate mission. Even their attempts to needle each other with more and more creative pet names eases from trying to get a rise out of the other to true affection. They don’t have the chance to grow closer in a slow, controlled environment. Instead, they trip and tumble their way to each other while dodging both Alliance and Soviet attacks and saving the world, battering through defensive walls as much by accident as intent.

Like the second book, I found the emotional and physical relationship well integrated with the overall plot and the characters themselves, helping them grow as people separately and together as a solid couple. There is detailed, on-screen sex to match the rest of the series that neither interferes with nor distracts from the save the world plot except to complicate Maria and Tomas’s pieces of the puzzle with interpersonal conflict.

How they snark at each other is cute and had me see them as a couple-to-be from the first novel under the “fear you doth protest too much” angle. Apparently, neither of them recognized anything more than annoyance beneath their antagonism though. It took working together and recognizing each other’s strengths to open their eyes to the possibility.

While Tomas ended up patched up as much as doing the patching, Maria’s talents shine in this story. I appreciated both the plausibility of her contributions and the creativity with which she undertook to both defend and attack. The twisted and inspired thought necessary to program a carmaggedon script, which activates all nearby vehicles into auto-drive, is just beautiful.

The characters are complicated and struggling with their own issues, the crises are both big and easy to take sides on, and the story has fun and tense twists whether you’re talking about the conspiracy or their love story. It’s a fast-moving adventure that doesn’t skimp on emotional development even after Maria and Tomas fall into bed in a misguided attempt to clear their systems. I found both the adventure and romance came to a satisfying conclusion. The queen of the engine room has to win love, but it’s on the wings of grand explosions and desperate moments.

P.S. I received this title from the publisher through NetGalley in return for an honest review.

3/5 - I’m splitting the difference with my rating. It’s based more on my expectation of the publisher, not the author.

I requested this ARC based on the fact that it’s published by Carina Press. This publisher releases amazing romance titles and I’m a romance reader. I was expecting the same level of romance from my past experiences but sadly I was let down with this story.

It reads enemies to lovers but the chemistry was more on the hate side. They were an ends to a means. And the romance doesn’t happen until well past the 70% mark. I felt like I was reading and skimming a lot of the story waiting for their romance but it took to long.

Major thumbs up for world building and story-telling for a 58k word story.

I can’t fault the author for not doing a great job writing this intriguing world. I just expected romance and it didn’t deliver.

This book is a page turner I wasn't able to put down.
It's fast paced, engaging and entertaining.
The world building is really interesting, the characters are fleshed out and well written.
Even if this is part of series I had no issue with the plot or the characters.
I look forward to reading other books by this author.
Highly recommended!
Many thanks to the publisher and Netgalley for this ARC, all opinions are mine.

I really enjoyed this story and only wish I had started with the others in this series - though this was able to be read as a stand alone. Liked the characters and the plot and hope to see more in space with these people.

What a story this is! The dynamic between Maria and Tomas is often humorous but gets really steamy. The job of stopping the subjugation of everyone by the Russians. Maria is shockingly capable with her tablet. Loved how she protects it from theft. Altogether a very interesting well-written book. I received an advanced copy of this book and freely leave this honest review.

Liked, not loved. Review to come here and on GR (will update NG when I write review). I will crosspost on Amazon on release day.

ARC Copy...I appreciated the sci-fi romance take and the female is far from a damsel in distress but the narrative wasn't speaking/exciting me and felt dragging at times.

Described as "Firefly meets James Bond" I was looking forward to reading End Transmission. Although I enjoyed it, that description isn't accurate in my opinion. I also didn't realize that this was the third book in a series so I'm not sure if reading the first two would have been helpful or not. Working together on various space ships, Chief Engineer Maria and Doctor Tomas have a history of not getting along, and in fact sniping at each other every chance they get. They finally realize they are attracted to each other and start a romantic relationship while trying to survive and to prevent the Soviets from getting technology that would endanger and enslave everyone. Enjoyable sci-fi read.

Maria Watson defied her family to join the Mombasa as Chief Engineer, finding her place among a ragtag fleet of pirates and privateers. Their latest mission left her with a price on her head and a scar on her heart. When I started reading I couldn't put down.Robyn Bachar is magnifysent and amazing writer.I cannot wait to read more of there books.Keep up the great work.You should definitely read this book.Can't wait for the next book.

As a syfy-novella, ‘End Transmission’ works pretty well. As someone who dove straight into this installment without having read the first 2 books in the series, Robyn Bachar’s world-building is intriguing, sort of easy to get into and pretty absorbing considering the alternate-earth direction that this series has taken and extrapolated. Split into 2 factions—the bad Soviets and the supposed not-bad camps—this extreme form of rivalry has extended into the space age where the initial Cold War rift had snowballed into something way, way bigger than anyone living in the present can imagine.

Still, the political tenets remain the same: conspiracy, espionage and undercutting, with a huge emphasis on intrigue and intelligence…issues that hardcore syfy books tend to reimagine, comment on, criticise and re-write. ‘End Transmission’ might revolve around a particular prototype designed for mind and behaviour-control coupled with several great inserts like a fake honeymoon, getting stuck in confined spaces with a so-called rival, but Bachar’s other books (as inferred) had already padded out so much that I was wondering just how much I’d missed out with some info-dump happening midway through.

I took an extraordinary long time to finish this nonetheless, skimming at times, caught between the perfunctory romance and the very detailed world that Bachar has written in this short novella.

As a syfy-story, ‘End Transmission’ is great, though as a romance, not so. Maria and Tomas seemed more at loggerheads (or simply, characters who just didn’t see eye to eye) minus the sizzling chemistry of an enemies-to-lovers vibe, with a switch suddenly flipping between them at the 3/4 mark that had me befuddled because I just couldn’t see it coming. In fact, I wasn’t entirely sure they even liked each other despite the love declarations at the end—that much of a negative dynamic Maria/Tomas had that didn’t even have me rooting for their HEA or HFN.

In short, a middling read for me at least, though I wish I could have been more enthusiastic about their story.

Let me start by saying I'm not much of a science fiction reader. However, I actually enjoyed this book. I didn't realize it was the third in its series. Even though it can definitely be read as a standalone, if you do not know the characters, it may start out slow for you as it did for me. It doesn't take long to really feel like you know Maria and Tomas as they go on their journey to make it back to their team and stop the Soviets from creating a device to control behaviors. If you like science fiction, I suggest you give this one a read.