I picked up Hearing the Ankou’s Cart from the Amazon KDP list.

Description from Goodreads:
Is a second chance to live merely a second chance to die?

Pilot First Class Sybilla Koenraad believes so. During a disastrous rescue operation on Venus, she had been killed by the planet’s brutally hostile atmosphere, but Commander Galatin Forbes refused to let death keep her. Now her life has veered off onto a course she never chose, taking her to places she never thought of going. From her bizarre ‘captivity’ in a Russian dacha, to a frontier star system, and beyond to the farthest reach of Human exploration, she feels fate itself plotting to throw her back into death’s hungry grip. This time, however, she doubts even the resourceful and unconventional Commander Forbes will be able to save her.

For the message rings clear, over and over, within her nightmares turned strange by forces she does not understand: “Turn back from the star. Death awaits”.

Review:

Hearing the Ankou’s Cart is an awesome read if you like futuristic, space-based Sci-Fi. It is full of bright, full-blooded characters, human drama, Machiavellian corporate governments, mysterious enemies with questionable intents, and well thought out tech. I especially enjoyed this last aspect. It was easy to visualise how things worked. 

Galant’s puppy-dog style over protectiveness was only improved by his ceaseless bravery. My heart went out to him more times than I could count. I also share a bit of his fear/respect of Murphy and could readily relate to this facet of his personality. The last thing I want is for my life to get too interesting. This is actually a bit of a mantra in my household. 

Sybilla, on the other hand, often berated herself for cowardice I never saw. While she had almost no people skills she had enough courage and dogged determination to get things done…no matter how many times, or how badly she screwed them up the first time. I completely respect that. Her mangled English gave her a definite character trait, but it also left her feeling a little child-like. 

I did feel like the book wrapped up a little too quickly and left a little too much opening in the end. I could easily see there being a follow-up in some distant future, though it is certainly a stand alone book. I highly recommend it. 

I read it in ebook format and had a lot of trouble with the book itself. Roughly every third page (sometimes more frequently) it jumped to the end of the book or to some random future page. It was a lot like having someone constantly loosing your place for you. It got really frustrating. Unsure if the problem was with the book, Amazon, or my actual device I went to far as to cold boot my kindle and twice delete the book and downloaded it fresh from Amazon in an attempt to fix the problem. I never managed for revolve the issue. I just made a point to always know my page/location. This definitely detracted from the reading experience. But the fact that I persevered despite the challenge of constantly having to relocate my page speaks volumes for the quality of the story. I wanted to know what happened no matter what. I even went to far as to track down a prequel short story (Hellblazer) to garner a little more insight into the characters and story.