Cascade Failure

Review time! Cascade Failure, by @lmsagas, is one of the best things I've read in the last few years. This book has absolutely destroyed me in the best possible way. Scifi action? Check! Misfit found family? Check! Witty banter? Check! I laughed, I cheered, I sobbed so hard I nearly vomited... It's like if Becky Chambers wrote Firefly, but amped everything up times 100. More tension! More tragic back stories! More corporate greed! Basically, this book is everything I've ever wanted and more besides. I can't remember the last time I fell so damn hard for a book (25 floors hard). It's a queer chaos goblin dream, and I insist you all read it.

Thanks to Netgalley for the digital ARC.

Damn.

What a rollercoaster of a read.

Astonishing depth of the characters that kept getting deeper.

This book is everything you’ve wanted Firefly to have become if it had been more than one truncated season.

The worldbuilding via characters and tech and social situations had only slightly less depth than the main characters themselves.

Sonuvabitch but I’ll be reading everything L.M. Sagas writes if it’s this is how her FIRST novel is!

Pros: fun and interesting characters, tight plot, some thought provoking moments, good fight scenes

Cons:

The characters are so much fun. They’re all neurotic in complementary ways. Surly and snipey at times, talkative and playful at others. Eoan’s curiosity about everything was a real joy. Despite their arguments it’s clear Nash and Saint are a tight knit crew. Seeing Jal and Anke dropped into the crew’s dynamic made for some great interactions.

The plot is tight with enough down time to get to know all of the characters between chase scenes and fights. There are some real tense moments.

The politics of this future are suitably complex without taking over the story. There are a few decent questions about morality and whether it’s show more better to focus on the needs of society at large vs saving your personal friends and family. And who should make the necessary sacrifices.

It’s a book about the choices we make and how we deal with the consequences of the bad decisions of our past. Of working as a team to complete a goal. Of betrayal and redemption.

It’s a delightful story that, though it dealt with heavy issues at times, left me feeling hopeful about the future.

[Review copy provided by Netgalley, opinions my own] show less

Cascade Failure, the first novel by L. M. Sagas, describes a space-faring culture with a tripartite power structure. A greedy corporate Trust opposes an equally rapacious labor Union and a moderating Guild and its Rangers. Genetically modified Jal, wanted as a deserter from the Guild, takes refuge aboard the Ambit, only to discover that it is crewed by people who knew him in the Rangers and hold his desertion against him. At least one of the crew also has a strong emotional attraction to him. The Ambit is captained by an AI that is practicing at being more human. Along the way, they pick up a refugee with hacking skills that she may be using for nefarious purposes. This found-family story is often compared with Firefly, Murderbot, the show more Expanse, and the space operas of Becky Chambers. I could use more of the snarky dialogue of the working crew and less of their moody navel-gazing, but Cascade Failure has engaging characters, a well-paced story arc, and a plausible world. show less

A ragtag crew of lovable and incredibly talented misfits and hard-asses, a brilliant AI who’s captain of a beat-up, weathered, but always reliable bag-of-bolts ship. Evil Corp and battling political factions. Explosions! Shoot-outs! Narrow escapes! Brilliant hackers racing against the clock! Witty banter!

This was entertaining enough, and the characters were lovable enough, but I felt like my nose kept getting rubbed in how the hard-asses really had hearts of gold, how the crew was found family, and the banter wasn’t very witty and really started to grate. A lot of dramatic events should have made this an exciting adventure, but every detail was overexplained—for instance, a disaster with a minutes-long literal countdown took about show more 30 pages to unfold—a real suspense killer. The point of view switched at least every chapter among five characters, often ending at what presumably was intended to be a cliffhanger, but instead the switch in perspective more often simply deflated whatever suspense the narrative had going.

A space opera that was too formulaic and not well enough told for me to recommend it. show less

Going into this novel I had expectations, and they were basically met, barely; this book almost didn't pass the "50-page rule" for me.

Let's start with the cover. The front, with its hot colors and "sketchy" cityscape, promises a certain level of, if not fun, at least excitement. However, it also really doesn't have much to do with the plot, and the implied antagonists of our gallant band remain ciphers for far too long. Going to the back cover of the book, there's a catalog of the author's influences, which only makes you start judging whether the novel is up to those same standards, but, even cutting Ms. Sagas some slack for her first novel, she has a way to go yet. A lot of this comes down to pacing, as the characters, themes, and show more basic plot are all acceptable for an adventure story.

The more I think about it the more my issue might boil down to my finding Sagas' main character, Jalsen Red, to be not that intriguing. He's really kind of a "red shirt" who is born to lose, just like Johnny Miner and Billy Budd. While he might be meant to be quasi-tragic, my reaction to him is more like, son, it's not too late to grab a clue; Red is trying in more ways than one.

So going forward, and having been pretty critical, you might be surprised to learn that I'm actually looking forward to the forthcoming follow-up book. My thought is that, having done her world-building and character development, I'll get a better sense of what this author is really about. show less

https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/6252819285

Thanks to Tor and the Goodreads Giveaways for an ARC of this book.

This new novel, from debut author L.M. Sagas, is billed as “fast, brash, and wickedly fun” by Dayton Ward. On the inside, author J.S. Dewes says it has “earned its place among my favorite found family tales, alongside Killjoys, Mass Effect, and Battlestar Galactica.”

I couldn’t stop thinking about Mass Effect the whole way through. Mass Effect is one of my all-time favorite video game series. There are big chunks of this book that read a bit like ME fan fiction. I don’t know whether that is good or bad. Though I love Mass Effect, my joy here is less than full. I think it’s because the story is so oriented around show more the “found family” and writing has a style tries to emphasize the ‘fun’ and ‘gritty space crew’ over everything else.

I kept thinking to myself, “I think other people would find this very fun.” I wish I did, but what I find fun in a video game is distinctly different from what I enjoy in a book. I have been reflecting on my reading (especially relating to my book club books, of which this is one), and I realize that I don’t enjoy fun books very much. I had to work to finish the book. The way the author writes characters and dialogue is so far removed from what I like - every single emotion and motive is spelled out, sometimes over and over. There is so much telling, so little showing. Think words repeated, words in italics, words emphasized with “fucking” and other expletives (which does not offend, just doesn’t work for me).

I also don’t enjoy found family stories. There is a scene where the crew has a brief reprieve from the action and so they’re dancing with one another. I had to skip pages to get past all of this, I couldn’t take it.

If you’re a reader that enjoys *really* light fiction with no thought required, where everything is explained, this would be a good pickup. If you want to read the novelization of a Mass Effect DLC that never was, I think this would be a good pickup. It’s not reflective, contemplative, or serious in almost any way. That means it wasn’t a good fit for me.

I felt obligated to finish this because it’s a debut. I won’t be picking up the novel’s sequel, but I will check-in in a few years to see what sort of thing the author is writing at that time. This feels like an author finding their legs and using a very firm structure to manage that. show less