Skyjacked

I thoroughly enjoyed this story. The characters had great depth and interaction with enough of my type of humour.
It a great adventure and cannot wait to read the next in the series.

Corvis Ranger has let almost everyone in his life down. Now after promising to be at his sons birthday party in a week he is skyjacked by a group of convicts and has to fly to the other side of the galaxy. No matter what he does he cannot make it back in time. This is fun space opera with a twist at the end. Pick it up for a fun read.

“SELLING LIKE HOTCAKES on a cold Chicago morning,” someone tweeted. I took the bait. What was so hot that day in May? Debut novels from Urbane Publications, namely “Skyjacked” by Shirley Golden, a factory worker who became a psychologist and an award-winning short-story writer.

Okay. Golden passed muster with a publisher dedicated to “finding new voices, defining new genres” with “hip, contemporary, groundbreaking fiction and non-fiction designed to entertain, excite, and engage”—but would she pass the ultimate test, a nod or a favorable review from the “Perihelion” Book Critic?

Yes.

The year is 2154, and Corvus Ranger, captain of the Soliton, uses his starship to ferry questionable cargo around the galaxy, no questions asked. Hey, he’s always strapped for cash, but enterprising and resourceful. On a hasty penal run to Jupiter’s prison moon, Europa, Corvus is confident he can make this routine drop, then hurry home to Earth in time for his son’s birthday—yeah, the son whose birth he missed out on while making one of those space runs, and the boy’s mom just won’t let him forget it, but Corvus is known for delivering the goods, not keeping promises to loved ones. For once, he’ll have a good excuse, but it doesn’t look like he’ll ever get to deliver it: a motley crew of escaped convicts hijacks his ship and forces him on a journey through the galaxy.

Danger looms at every stop. Betrayals, disasters, second chances, risking one’s life for an adversary, forging unexpected alliances—and not too much of the obligatory space battle with aliens—make this more than just an entertaining romp through the stars.

We feel Corvus’ pain when his world is upended. “The ship was his haven; a place where paying passengers came aboard only on his say-so. He could see no way out, no way of regaining control. The prison run had turned his haven into an entombment.”

Even worse, “He’d not get back for his boy’s birthday ... that much was sure, and perhaps not ever ... His son had lost a father and would never know the true reason why.”

Once I got past the unorthodox lack of commas and assorted typos, I came to love a certain “Wizard of Oz” vibe, and the dialogue. Corvus is on the adventure of a lifetime but he just wants to go home. He’s kind of a jerk, but he’s a good guy overall, and he takes great pride in his ship. I love the way he modifies it on the cheap, not knowing for sure if the upgrades will work as promised—a teleporter, for one. “I’ve never tested it,” he explains when the hijackers could really use this sort of tech right about now—“Hey, no need to look like that; can I help it that it’s my most recent modification? Chap who installed it, swore it was good to go.”

Spoiler alert: nobody is injured by the teleporter. Let us pass over in silence some of the other tricks Corvus has up his sleeve. “There are enough dangers out here without worrying what’s inside the ship,” is an idea that gets reinforced as trust is earned, then betrayed, time and again.

All the skyjackers get their own point of view in alternating chapters. Bryce is the translator for Josh, a mute boy who’d been kidnapped for his ability to “read” people, then dumped on the prison moon for failing to come through for his captors. Janelle is stuck with husband Warren, who worked for a dreaded entity known as “the Core.” Shai is an Aspie-like pilot who refers to herself in the third person. Isidore is the ringleader who sends Corvus twenty light years away toward the constellation of Libra.

But she won’t tell him why. “It was one thing to be snatched from his home,” Corvus thinks, but harder “to feel that everything was beyond your control and that you weren’t trusted enough to be told the truth.”

Trudi, his girlfriend and mother of their son, has never put much faith in Corvus, so why should Isidore, the skyjacker? “You always bury your head in the sand,” Trudi would say. “Never face up to what is really going on around you.”

Isidore stings him with the same kind of assessments, e.g., “You give away nothing, act as if nothing is important or just one big joke when it’s all bottled up and then, bang, you explode.”

Corvus delivers a classic retort: “Since the day you skyjacked my ship and ripped me away from my world, yeah, now you mention it, it’s been kinda brewing.”

The dynamics, the tenuous relationships between these characters, unfold with fascinating authenticity.

Corvus tells Isidore. “I feel as if I’m stumbling around in the dark without a light or any sign that daybreak will ever come again. If it’s not too much to ask, just tell me what’s going on here.”

She refuses. “I don’t plan to explain it to you. You would have to see it or experience it for yourself in order to believe it—that’s the sort of person I think you are. You wouldn’t believe it and then you’d amuse yourself by joking about it.”

That sounds like the Corvus we know and love.

Isidore’s destination is Gliese 581d, the mythical planet full of “super-evolved people” that, she informs Corvus, isn’t mythical after all.

Other adventures and mishaps follow.

“I’ve seen things in the past few months, things I wouldn’t have believed ... things I don’t want to believe. Things that make me scared to be human—or any other race,” Corvus says.

In stories where strangers and enemies are forced to team up and trust each other, it’s a sure bet that just when friendships are forged, someone’s skyjackedgonna die. I was furious with Rhett Bruno and Elena Giorgi for the deaths of certain characters I love, but here, Shirley Golden pulls it off—yes, it hurts, but not to the point that I am filled with rage for having come to care about someone who gets bumped off.

On the bright side, no post-apocalyptic dystopian regime stands in the hero’s way, just that oldest of adversaries, time. Better yet, the ending is one of the most surprising and gratifying I’ve ever seen. It makes up for any typos, formatting glitches, or poignant sacrifices of characters I’d come to know and love.

Women who write science fiction are rare birds. Women who win awards for it are even more unusual. The Telegraph’s “Best Sci-fi and Fantasy Novels of All Time” includes a whopping nine percent written by females. Not that I pay attention to statistics, but Shirley Golden blogged about it. (Hey, I do my research before trusting a publisher who’s hawking the latest debut novel.)

Golden’s love of science fiction “began with TV shows such as Blake’s 7 and V,” she blogs and “is rooted in the desire to indulge in an escape from reality ... I hope my book will appeal to readers of both sexes, who enjoy colourful characters in a fast-paced, action-packed, adventure story, whose main aim is entertainment.” Mission accomplished.

“Skyjacked” eBook was published in 2016 and was written by Shirley Golden (http://www.shirleygolden.net). This is Ms. Golden’s first novel.

I categorize this novel as ‘PG’ because it contains scenes of Violence and Mature Situations. This novel is set in 2154 when humanity has spread to the stars. The primary character is Corvus Ranger, a pilot with his own ship that operates just on the line between the law and being a criminal.

On a legal run transporting prisoners to the Europa prison colony, Ranger and his ship are taken over by escaping convicts. He is forced to pilot them far from Earth on a mission he does not understand. In addition to Ranger, there are Isidore, Shai, Josh and Bryce, inmates on Europa who are escaping. Warren and Janelle are among those Ranger had been transporting. Now the seven are on the run together.

Ranger is not happy at having his ship taken, but most importantly he is mad at Isidore and the others for keeping him from seeing his 10 year old son on his birthday. He had promised to be there and, for once, he had intended to keep his promise to see his son and estranged girlfriend.

As they encounter a few dangerous situations along their journey, secrets about the various passengers come out. Not all are as they first appeared to be. They also discover secrets that the “Core” (government) has been keeping from its citizens.

I enjoyed the 8+ hour I spent reading this 265 page Science Fiction novel. The characters were an interesting mix that made me think of the crew of “Firefly”. I liked the plot, but was surprised when the authored wrapped it up rather than laying an obvious path to a sequel. The Ranger character was not one of my favorite heroic characters. He would not be a person I would choose to befriend. I give this novel a 4 out of 5.

My book reviews are also published on Goodreads (https://www.goodreads.com/user/show/31181778-john-purvis).