Tag Archives: Rebecca Tran

Neutral Space

Book Review of Neutral Space, by Rebecca Tran

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I won a copy of Rebecca Tran‘s Neutral Space through Goodreads. This was especially exciting for me because she turns out to be a local author and I have been trying to read more books by authors who live in my region.

Description from Goodreads:
Lieutenant Jackson Peterson thought he knew who the enemy was. A bitter war with the Kelsairans made it abundantly clear. When Jackson saves a Kelsairan woman from a wrecked ship, the line is suddenly blurred. The enemy isn’t what the government said they were and he can no longer blindly follow orders. A shocking discovery leads Jackson down a sinister path of intrigue that could change the fate of two races. But, both the Kelsairan and the Human governments will kill him to keep their secrets. Jackson will risk everything to stop them. Will it be enough? Or will he die in the process?

Review:
This wasn’t bad, just simple. Simple in it’s writing and narration style and simple in it’s plotting. By this I mean the writing is readable, but not elaborate (and it REALLY needs another editing pass, especially to look a punctuation), the narration is a straight forward first person, past tense monologue and the plotting is….well, here’s where it all falls apart really. It’s simple and not deeply thought out.

For example, in all the universe the two characters get put in the same single prison. The male lead is already there and anticipates the female lead will be placed there when he hears she’s to be jailed. (Is there only one such prison in all the universe?) There was no mention of other women (except for a single staff nurse), so I don’t know if this was a co-ed prison. But when she arrived, she seemed able to wander at will and sleep wherever she wanted. She was never actually locked up at any point. That doesn’t seem very prison-like to me, but it sure was convenient for the plot.

Most of the book is a romance in space, which I don’t mind. I like those. But the plot is basically them running around talking to people that they already knew and somehow, miraculously uncovering, in some small amount of time, a secret that had gone undiscovered for 200 years. One of the clues they find is a copy of the original treaty, the breach of which started the war. You guys, if a war starts because someone is said to have broken a treaty, I really think someone would have thought to look at the darned thing before 200 years passed.

That war is basically just a background prop. You never feel the tension of it. The characters met ON VACATION. Yes, I know it’s the space-fairing equivalent of shore leave. But it’s hard to be concerned about a war when the main character trots off to go fishing and throughout the whole book they go wherever they want, including to their families, and no one ever stops them, there is never a battle, or a front, or any evidence of war.

While I appreciate that female lead was meant to be the more elite soldier, she spent the whole book being girly—changing clothes, putting on perfume, angsting about her virginity, and eventually marrying and having babies. She could have been a baker or a politician and been far more believable. Her character was too shallow and simple to actually carry what it was supposed to.

Lastly, there’s the humans and kelsairans, who were less different from one another than the Americans are from the Chinese. They shared the same mores and values. Their languages must not have even been that different, because the characters learned to speak alien languages in months, in one case without anyone to even teach him. He picked it up from listening to the guards talk to one another. So again, the cultures and universe are simple and not as diverse as they need to be. 

I know I sound like I’ve trashed this book. I was admittedly disappointed to find it as flat as it is. But it is entertaining in it’s own ways, has a lovely theme, and I wouldn’t discourage anyone from reading it. I’d even be willing to read another of Tran’s books.

The Oddly Satisfying Exercise in Futility Challenge

Renamed: The Oddly Satisfying Exercise in Futility Challenge

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Every now and again, out of boredom or necessity or pure whimsy, I set myself odd little reading challenges. That’s part of the joy of having a book blog; I can do that. And I’ve done it again.

I have a book-hoarding problem. I just do. Usually, I can limit it to ebooks so that it’s not too disruptive. But at the moment, my physical bookshelves are stacked two deep and literally overflowing. My office is becoming a bit of a death trap. So, I have to read some of them.

The problem is that my Kindle is so easy to schlep around. Plus, I’ve promised myself that once a book is read, I won’t keep it unless it is signed or an absolute favorite. So, though I always want to read, I sometimes don’t want to do the thing that means I have to give the book away afterward. I know, it’s weird. But I keep bringing books into the house, so now I have to set some free.

I mean, that was part of the point of building a Little Free Library in my front yard. Well, that and it’s just cool. I have no excuse not to fill it with finished books.

This brings me to my challenge. I went through and pulled out all the itty-bitty books. I don’t usually pick up novellas, but I have several. And I know reading them won’t clear as much space as reading some bigger books. But I figure each of them should only take a couple of hours to read, so it’s a good way to do a bit of a clear-out without committing weeks to the task. (Nope, I’m not rationalizing this at all.)

There are 18 little books there. Most, though not all, I won, and it’s a pretty diverse pile. There’s some Bizzaro in there, as well as some inspirational stuff, a memoir, some non-fiction, humor, short story collections, horror, poetry, lit fic, political satire, and even a freakin’ play. I figure I can finish one a day for the next few weeks, along with my normal reading, and feel like I’ve accomplished something significant. (Hush, that’s what I’m going with.)

In case you can’t read all the titles, the stack includes:

Anyhow, between these, the book bundle I’m currently reading (Carole Cumming’s Wolf’s-Own), the bundle I’m listening to (Sarah Noffke’s Vagabond Circus), and the Netgalley books I’ve committed to for the next couple of months, not to mention I need to read review request book, I ought to be kept busy in the near future.

I think I’ll start with B. R. Sanders’s book because I’ve loved everything I’ve read by them so far. But beyond that, I’m open to suggestions on what I should move up or down the pile.

Not pictured, but added to the challenge after the fact (because I keep getting more books):

Edit May 5, 2018: I set this challenge, and then it quickly fell off my radar. If anything, the stack has grown, as I’ve added to it. (See the 8 unpictured books.) So, I’m starting again, recommitting to finishing it. Below is the new stack (what’s left of the first and what I’ve added to it since, but not read before the second picture). The vertical ones, I’ve pulled out because it turns out that they’re all poetry.

I won’t re-list anything above, and the few that I read before taking this second picture will have to do without visual evidence of their existence. But here are the additions.

Edit July 22, 2019: Don’t laugh, but in a marked departure from what I’d intended to do (and, in fact, have been doing), I’m updating this again. Several books I’ve bought or won, read, and reviewed recently (such as Take a Chance on Me, Kill Me Now,  The 5th Gender, Silver Moon, Persepolis, Spring, The Nose from Jupiter, The Long Walk to Water, and Diamond Fire) would have fit this challenge, and I could have added them. But after the third edit, I told myself I wasn’t allowed to add to the stack anymore, or it really would never ever get done. However, I ordered new bookshelves, which will be delivered today. 

This means that I’ll finally have more room for my books. The shelves, most of which are double-lined, will finally be reduced to a single row. I’ll actually be able to see what I own. So, in preparation for the larger task of reorganizing my books (I have wanted to do this for SO LONG), I’ve started pulling and categorizing books. And in and amongst all of this, I decided I might as well grab all the new smallish books out and add them to the existing small-book stack (which may become a small-book shelf. (I mean, giving this challenge up might be easier, but I’m a stubborn cow when I want to be.)

So, here’s the new list of small books. The left-hand pile is the carryover, the middle is poetry, and the right-hand stack is what I just added.

As mentioned above, I won’t re-list anything that already is, and I can’t guarantee that once I really get into the meat of moving books, I won’t add more. But as of right now, this is it. 

Several of these are actually sequels in series. So, I imagine I’ll have to find and read the first books before I get to them. But, as has been the case for about two years now, these are the lists of books I intend to read. If you remember, I initially set them aside because I thought I could get them read quickly. That had turned out to be a joke. But I’m committed now. Wish me luck