Review – Chilling Effect by by Valerie Valdes (4/5 stars)
Reading Level: Adult
Genre: Science Fiction
Length: 460 pages
Publisher: Harper Voyager
Release Date: September 17, 2019
ASIN: B007H4YJ6DN
Stand Alone or Series: 1st book in the Chilling Effect series
Source: Borrowed ebook from Library
Rating: 4/5 stars
“Captain Eva Innocente and the crew of La Sirena Negra cruise the galaxy delivering small cargo for even smaller profits. When her sister Mari is kidnapped by The Fridge, a shadowy syndicate that holds people hostage in cryostasis, Eva must undergo a series of unpleasant, dangerous missions to pay the ransom.
But Eva may lose her mind before she can raise the money. The ship’s hold is full of psychic cats, an amorous fish-faced emperor wants her dead after she rejects his advances, and her sweet engineer is giving her a pesky case of feelings. The worse things get, the more she lies, raising suspicions and testing her loyalty to her found family.
To free her sister, Eva will risk everything: her crew, her ship, and the life she’s built on the ashes of her past misdeeds. But when the dominoes start to fall and she finds the real threat is greater than she imagined, she must decide whether to play it cool or burn it all down.”
Series Info/Source: This is the first book in the Chilling Effect series. I borrowed this on ebook from the library.
Thoughts: I really enjoyed this. It is a fast-paced, action-packed sci fi full of adventure and humor. The characters are a lot of fun, and I enjoyed the strange situations they got themselves in to.
Eva doesn’t do illegal things anymore, she is ekeing a living out with her crew delivering cargo across the galaxy. That is until she gets a call that her sister, Mari, is being held hostage by an evil organization called The Fridge. They have some jobs they want Eva to do…illegal jobs, in exchange for freeing her sister.
I loved all the wonderful adventuring between different planets and the fast-paced action. Eva gets herself into one sticky situation after another but always manages to wiggle her way out. The crew of Eva’s ship is amazing and fun to spend time with. The story is fast-paced, almost frantic at times, but I enjoyed it.
I did struggle with all the Spanish in this book, which is on me because I don’t speak Spanish. Eva swears and comments a lot in Spanish. I was reading this on my Kindle so I was able to translate a lot of it via Kindle, however, that got very cumbersome so about half way through I stopped doing that and just kind of went with the gist of the story. Be aware if you don’t speak Spanish, you are going to miss some phrasing in the story. It would have been nice to have English footnotes, a glossary in the back, or the translation in parenthesis…just some way internal to the book to learn and understand these Spanish phrases.
The writing was okay, but at times didn’t flow all that well. There were portions that I had to re-read because my mind would start skipping over the intricate descriptions or dense action scenes. It wasn’t bad enough to make me want to set the book aside because I loved so much else about this book. However, this definitely wasn’t a book that “read itself”, so to speak.
My Summary (4/5): Overall I really enjoyed this. This was a fun and action-packed space adventure. There is an excellent blend of wonderful characters, amazing action, new worlds, evil organizations, and even a dash of romance. I just started listening to the second book in the series, “Prime Deceptions”, on audiobook. I would recommend to those who enjoy fast-paced science fiction reads with space travel, humor, and lots of action.
