Inscrutably transparent

When we first meet Ada Lamarr she is alone on her ship Glory with less than an hour of oxygen left. Ada makes her living by salvaging abandoned spaceships. She is ostensibly here to salvage valuable metal from a ship that crashed on a nearby planet. But as a result of an explosion, Glory now has a three-meter hole in her hull, and almost all systems are down. That includes life support, but not communications. Ada knows that there is another ship in the vicinity and has sent out a distress call.

Ada is straight as a corkscrew and trustworthy as a seven-dollar bill. I have no hesitation in mentioning Ada's dodginess, because it is (1) Extremely obvious from page 1, and (2) Intentionally obvious. That is, in my judgment Beth Revis fully intends to make it obvious that Ada is up to something.

In fact, this is the thing I don't get about Full Speed to a Crash Landing. It is transparently obvious what Ada is about, and you will work out in some detail how she intends to do it. You don't need to be particularly clever to do so -- Ada tells you. She's the first-person narrator of this story -- you're in her head and you know what she's thinking for most of the book. (I say "most" because a few chapters are ostensibly documents written by and to government agent Rian White.) Ada doesn't exactly blurt out her detailed plans, but honestly, not much is left to the imagination.

The upshot was that nothing surprised me. Well, I take that back -- one thing did surprise me. I was surprised that Revis wrote a book whose plot twists were so transparently revealed in advance by the narrator. I suspect that she intended something sophisticated, and that it flew right over my head.

But it DID fly over my head.

Full Speed to a Crash Landing is the first book in a planned trilogy. I probably won't read the sequels.

I thank NetGalley and Simon and Schuster Canada for an advance reader copy of Full Speed to a Crash Landing. This review expresses my honest opinion. Release date 6-Aug-2024.

thank you to DAW for an ebook arc in exchange for an honest review. all thoughts an opinions are my own.

it came across as a rushed, off-brand Illuminae Files.

my main complaints are that this should never have been a novella, and what we were given was released prematurely and severely undercooked.

the world building, especially in regards to the different earth colonies, should have been reworked. I understand due to the limit on length it could not be incredible complex, but what the author created was a bit cringy and cheap. in terms of the romance, it barely existed, but what did exist fell incredible flat to me. I found the female main character's behavior and mannerisms incredibly annoying, and the male main character had the right ingredients to be an interesting love interest, but I found myself not caring about him in the slightest, at the fault of the author's execution. overall, I found myself incredibly unengaged and disinterested in the way in which the story unfolded.

I would only recommend if you're in the mood for a relatively quick and digestible sci fi palate cleanser, but even then go in with low expectations.

✧ 2.5 stars

Thank you to NetGalley and DAW for the ARC of Full Speed to a Crash Landing by Beth Revis.

I am always hunting for new space opera romance stories and Revis definitely fits the bill - I'm adding her to my list with Jessie Mihalik, Jennifer Estep, Ilona Andrews, T.A. White, and Constance Fay. I love this genre and these authors and I am glad to add Revis to my "must" read list for this category.

Ada Lamarr is a spaceship wreck looter in a version of our future universe where only small habitable pockets of Earth remain due to pollution and damage and where new Earth colony plants are generations into existence and far enough along to have their own cultures/views of life/etc. Space exploration and travel is possible and normal. As a looter, Ada finds and sells materials from these crafts, and, this time, she is the first ship to find a recent wreck that has not been reported as off-limits. While returning from transporting metal scraps, Ada's ship is breached and she has to make an emergency signal. A government contracted crew recognizes her in the knick of time. Now onboard their ship Ada is a refugee, but she's also a willing scavenger for whatever the crew needs on their confidential mission. From there, things evolve...(too many risks of spoilers to go further).

Because of how much we learn about Ada in this book, including things she is not illuminating for the reader, it's hard to say much about her at this time -- she is strong, capable, knowledgeable, and has a strong sense of humor and a lackadaisical demeanor.

Rian, the covert operative in charge of the mission, is easy to talk to, a listener, and always looking to check all the boxes and avenues any operative needs to be watching out for. He and Ada seem to have an immediate connection but (see flaw below) I think part of their banter and flirtation is a little bit rushed - I would have loved to see a bit more layers here.

The rest of the crew seem like a good lot - the information about their varying earth home worlds gave an interesting range to each of them, and gave some good context of the universe/political & societal implications.

My only criticism, I would say it suffers from the same slight flaw that Mihalik's Rogue Queen series does - novellas are short and compact and there is so much more authors want to write and readers want to read so sometimes things feel a bit rushed in a smaller package. It makes me very happy more books are coming - but it meant this one was over too fast. I would have loved more time for the attraction between Ada and Rian to burn as well as a bit more background on the state of the universe - but it's obvious those will come with the next release which I am greatly anticipating.