Under Fortunate Stars

4.7 / 5

i’m normally not a space girlie. i will make exceptions for particularly well-written and exciting space novels, but for the most part i like my plot to happen on a planet thank you very much! UNDER FORTUNATE STARS is the story of two space vessels in two very different timelines - the events of each timeline depend on each other. it’s all very woo woo and theoretical.

in ship one, the jonah, we have a group of rag tag individuals who are dead ringers for the fortunate five… the fortunate five are lauded for brokering the interspecies alliance between the humans and the alien felen: there’s captain eldric leesongronski (worst name in the book, hands down), the voice giver (who creates the telepathic technique used for show more communicating with the felen), the inventor (who makes some really cool energy tech? i don’t know this part escaped me), the negotiator (who brokers the actual truce) and the decipherer (the only living human at the time who could translate felen telepathy). all together, they create a lasting truce that ends a generations long war.

then there’s this other bigass research ship from 152 years in the future. only, history is not quite what it seems! the jonah and this big research ship get stuck together in a time/space warp and the only way out is a bomb. I KNOW ITS SOUNDS LIKE LUNACY! but it’s actually quite satisfying!

i didn’t care for most of the characters - it’s not that i didn’t like them, i just didn’t have a vested interest in them at all. uma for example. her chapters had me snoring. but jereth and shaan’s chapters were fabulous. eldric as a character kind of sucked because he’s such an annoying stick up his ass straightedge, but his chapters from sëgra city were great and really helped to develop jereth’s character. the friendship between jereth and eldric is fRAUGHT, in both the present and the past, but i wish there had been a little bit more oomph there.

i love that jereth is a bisexual slutty KING. he’s easily the heart of this book for me, and if it hadn’t had him in it i straight up wouldn’t have enjoyed it as much as i did. shaan is actually pretty interesting and compelling - she’s emotionally complex (and obviously keeping secrets), vulnerable, but also sharp and cunning. i liked her a lot. the romance is soo natural - it doesn’t have the most satisfying conclusion, but despite this i did squeal. there is sex! i thought for 80% of this book that i would never get to see space sex. but i was wrong ✊.

the tech parts of this book are monstrous and made me want to kill myself. it made 0 sense to me, as someone who doesn’t “get” science (i blame my christian education!). so i skimmed those parts for sure LOL. but overall this was pleasant, had a surprising and satisfying plot twist, and i would recommend it to people who like space odysseys. i don’t have much negative shit to say! i was pleasantly surprised! i think this is a debut novel, which … is incredible. i’m very impressed by REN HUTCHINGS and you should be too. 4.7 / 5! show less

A book club pick :)

My friends, I have just immersed myself in a Star Trek episode that was almost 500 pages long.

(With maybe a bit of Firefly thrown in, but I only ever saw two episodes, so I am not an expert.)

The above is not a bad thing in itself, Star Trek being Star Trek :)

“It’s like the ship is being hammered by some kind of anomalous subspace energy.” Well, of course it is!

“I’m a mathematical genius, not a fucking magician.” (That was the best line in this book!)

I thought I was going to have fun. The story was not very original, but interesting enough to keep me turning the pages. And I did have fun (all these fortunate coincidences ;) ), but only for a while.

The writing keeps you going from chapter to chapter. This is show more not the kind of writing that goes right to your heart, and that’s usually ok for this kind of book. It kept giving me an unpleasant aftertaste, though. Also, there were way too many long, long, long info dump conversations that tried my patience. All of them should have been cut in half (at least).

The Felen and the Voiced are very obviously “inspired by” Ann Leckie’s universe – the Presger and the Presger Translators. I rolled my eyes at that. All the books out there influence each other in some way, but there is borrowing and then there is borrowing. Borrowing done badly is just annoying.

The characters were not done well. I don’t mind flat characters in a “Star Trek book”, the problem was that this book wanted them to have some depth and tragic (oh, so traaaaaaaagic) backstories. It didn’t work.
That feeling of overwhelming second-hand embarrassment when you are watching a badly acted mediocre play? That was me for about two thirds of the book. “Oh, no, I can’t believe the author made character X say this.” The characters broke down in tears a lot, too, falling sobbing to the ground. I looked away, embarrassed. Cringe, cringe, cringe. I don’t think that was the reaction I was supposed to have ;) Oh, and the romance was achingly bad.

While I was still having fun, I thought it was going to be three star read – an entertaining and undemanding book with some flaws to facepalm at. But the bad characterization and ambitions that really have no place in a book of this kind made me so annoyed and impatient to finish that I am giving this two stars. Somebody give me better sci-fi, please! show less

Series Info/Source: This is a stand alone book. I borrowed this on ebook through my library.

Thoughts: I ended up thoroughly enjoying this sci-fi story about time travel and its inevitability. The characters are very well done, and the story is cleverly woven together. The mystery really pulls the reader along, and there are fun twists throughout the story, even up until the very end. This is action packed and hard to put down.

Jereth Keevan's freighter breaks down in a strange rift in deep space during the final days of a war with the Felen. The Gallion (a research ship) finds themselves trapped in the same strange rift. When the two ships discover each other in the rift, they find out that their timelines seem to be 152 years apart. show more Keevan's crew should be from the past, and the Gallion crew should know that past well, however nothing is matching up. Both crews are forced to put aside this mystery to escape this rift alive.

This book jumps back and forth between current time (in the rift) and each of the characters' pasts. This was very well done and really allows us to get to know the individual characters and the reasons behind their actions better. The jumps back in time relate to something happening in present time, so the switches in POV and time worked really well together and didn't seem jarring or hard to follow.

I found this book incredibly engaging, fast-paced, and surprising. I enjoyed every second of reading this and looked forward to picking it up to read. Between this book, "God's Junk Drawer", and "Light from Uncommon Stars", I have been on a bit of a sci-fi kick, I guess. I have read some excellent sci-fi reads this month.

My Summary (5/5): Overall I really loved this. I loved the unique way the story was put together, the characters, the fast-pace, and the constant surprises. This book kept me very engaged and was hard to put down. I loved the way everything came together in the end and enjoyed the twists and turns that were thrown at the reader. I definitely plan on checking out Hutchings' other novels. show less

2022 book #45. 2022. A deep space research ship gets caught in a subspace rift with a fabled ship from the past, the ship and crew that negotiated the end to a war with an alien race some 150 years before. Somehow they have to get free to save history. Good yarn if a little slow.

This is what I call a 'freight train' book. It starts out with intrigue and power, slows a bit while climbing to the top of the pass and then goes like heck down the other side to an amazing conclusion. I'll admit I was tempted to set it aside near the top of that 'climb', but am extremely glad I didn't, because the last hundred pages or so hooked me solidly and the interaction between certain characters became extremely well fleshed out. If you like space opera with complex twists, this is for you.

**.5

The book reads like a mediocre Star Trek: TNG episode, complete with an ill-defined subspace rift and alien ambassador passenger en route to a vital peace ceremony. But it's very slow paced, with lots of flashbacks that disrupt the momentum and don't add all that much. Overall the whole thing could have benefited by some generous editing, there are whole chapters that could easily have been summarized in a page or two, and the whole thing would benefit by streamlining the frequent lengthy exposition.

The entire plot is based upon an improbable sequence of wildly lucky coincidences, with the right people being in the right place at the right time. But that's ok, since it's part of the basic premise (and the very title) so easy to show more accept and move on. Less palatable is the inconsistencies in how the characters behave in order to advance the plot. A meticulous engineer conveniently gets sloppy and doesn't check a sensor reading, an obsessed historian conveniently doesn't recognize obvious connections between events that they've studied in detail, the reckless flyboy suddenly gets cold feet, the uptight conservative suddenly becomes reckless, etc.

The world building is rather generic, again very similar to Star Trek in which a future society with advanced AI, genetic manipulation, FTL, and replicators continues to operate as if they're still in the 21st century. The characters and dialogue are similarly uninspired, making it hard to really care about any of them or what happens.

The audiobook is narrated by two voice actors, and while it makes it easy to differentiate between the present and the flashbacks, their styles are so different that it ends up being rather jarring and further interrupts the flow as they trade off. show less

Considering that this is a first novel, it's a perfectly acceptable slice of modern space opera. Basically, it's a "Beach Read." If there is one thing that I thought was notable, it's that Hutchings, in the context of a time-loop story, uses flashback interludes very effectively.