I found the first part of the book
to be the most interesting, in how the protagonist dealt with the abusive
relationship. After agonizing about the decision to go with a registered
captain, she ends up betraying herself, and pays dearly for it. The
second part, where she meets the other rigger was fun, but not as
interesting, and the final part, where they interfere with the evil in
the dragon’s realm, was very simplistic. Except for Jael’s unique
solution, that was the least interesting to me.
Spoiler review:
This book is
almost two independent stories connected by a bridge story. In the first
part, we get the fragile but determined Jael trying to get back into
space, defying her father’s reputation as an abusive captain, then
entering into an abusive relationship until she gets to her destination.
The second story is a rescue of a dragon from an evil that has taken
over the realm. It doesn’t take a lot of thought, and it’s mostly
agonizing rather than action, but it works in the end. The bridge allows
Jael to recover from the situation from the first story, and wonder if
the dragons are real, before being thrust back into their realm.
I liked Jael, and the way she agonized about whether she should take an
uncertified job as a rigger for a spaceship, or not. She’s being shut
out, presumably because of the way her father treated employees, so her
chances of getting back into space through a certified contract are
almost nothing Her uncertainties even spill over into the shared
net-space that her cousin uses to try and show her how good it felt to
be in space with another rigger. It seems that her life is at an
all-time low.
So when she confronts the person assigning riggers
to spaceships, he finds her an uncertified captain, though it’s never
explicitly stated that it’s uncertified. Captain Moburn is a
manipulative and mean man, who immediately addicts Jael to the palisp,
an alien device that manipulates pleasurable emotions. Jael knows it’s
wrong, but one session with the palisp puts her directly under its
influence, probably for the rest of her life. She spends as much time as
she can in the flux, where she cannot be interrupted, and where Moburn
has no control over her. He resents the time she spends in the flux, and
gets mad when she doesn’t come out when he commands her to. I felt that
her resentment and defiance built up very naturally, until she defies
his commands to stay away from the mountains in the flux. This is a
region where ships have been lost, though nobody believes the stories of
actual dragons being present there.
I think the entire dragon
realm is undeveloped. Even the first time, when Highwing confronts Jael
about dueling riggers and is surprised that she gives her name, it made
me wonder how she could possibly be the first to ever not want to duel
with the dragons. Maybe it was just the combination of her self-doubt
and Highwing’s contemplation, and the fact that he had lost his mate and
evil was taking hold in the realm, though we didn’t know it at the time.
Although Highwing took charge and basically subjected Jael to his own
form of master-servant relationship, it feels different from the one she
has with Moburn, and it’s necessary to start the healing process between
her and her father. It also allows her to grow enough to confront her
addiction, and even resist the palisp.
Finally, Moburn forces
the palisp on her for her defiance. Although she enjoys the pleasure it
brings, she manages to overcome it to throw it against the wall and
destroy it. Moburn then tries to take her body sexually, and she manages
to overwhelm him in the low gravity and evade him until they are locked
together in the airlock, where she pushes him out into the flux, and he
dematerializes. She flies the ship all alone to her destination.
The second part of the book deals with the investigation into losing her
captain, and her meetings with Ar, an alien rigger, and a digital parrot
Ed that lives in an artificial entertainment environment. I liked Ar, as
sedate as he was, and the way his disbelief of her encounter with the
dragons turned to understanding and acceptance once they were sent to
that realm again. I found Ed to be annoying, in the way his
parrot-speech was depicted, but he grew on me a bit as the story
progressed. When they find that Ed is about to be discontinued, Jael and
Ar steal him to bring on their next job together. He causes some trouble
in the flux, but eventually gets them out of it, doing things the
experienced riggers didn’t know was possible.
Eventually, out on
their own, they encounter an anomaly in the flux, where they are torn
from their route and land in the dragon realm again. It looks like the
author wanted to invoke some sort of fantasy in this science fiction
setting, because there’s talk of spells, evil beings that can take
control of the realm using his fire, and so on. I suppose it works
because everything takes place in the flux, which can form its own
representations. A spell of magic in the flux might appear as something
else in the normal universe.
Immediately Jael and Ar encounter
the sons of Highwing, four of whom have turned to the dark side, but
Windrush accepts them. Even by the end of the book, we don’t get the big
picture of what happened (which I think is a good thing, as it leaves
room for expansion), but we can surmise that some evil being from a
realm even lower than the flux has taken over, and turned the dragons to
darkness. Highwing’s garden has been destroyed, and the dragons have
sentences him to death. Windrush takes them to his cave, where they are
visited by another mysterious alien presence, and Jael decides she needs
to rescue Highwing, even if it seems like suicide.
I really liked
the way the author used the flux and its relationship to our normal
space in the rescue. When Highwing is sent to normal space, Jael follows
him by exiting the flux, and finds him attached to an asteroid about to
enter the corona of a star. She extends the flux envelope (the way
they’d do it with shields or a warp bubble on Star Trek) to encompass
him, and pulls him back into the flux. This stresses the ship almost to
the breaking point, and Ar is nervous and objectionable, but at this
point, he’s helpless. Jael takes complete control of the situation, and
even takes advantage of his paralysis, relying on his training to get
them through the crisis.
While they rescue Highwing, the dragon
dies. Yet Windrush and his brothers (except for one) are broken of the
evil spell, and are ready to fight the evil. Presumably we’ll see more
of them in the second book of the series.
I really liked the
concept of the flux, where the riggers enter another domain and guide
the ship between destinations, a sort of hyperspace. It’s up to the
rigger’s imagination to determine what the route will look like. The
flux has currents, so the concept has to match the flow, but sometimes
Jael used a boat on a river, a hot-air balloon, herself soaring through
the wind, and more. Ar set the ship as a bubble, especially when they
were floating through ice. The representation of the route comes from
whatever makes it easier for the rigger to concentrate, and was
definitely the best concept in the book.
Jael and Ar return to
normal space, where they have a lot to contemplate. The world that Ar
thought he knows has been turned upside down, but they agree that it
sounds too incredible to believe, so they can’t yet tell others. I doubt
their secret can hold for long, though, as riggers might avoid the area
due to superstition, but some do make it there.
