Skip to main content

Blue Shift (SF) - Jane O'Reilly ****

Blue Shift, published by Piatkus, is the first novel in O’Reilly’s The Second Species Trilogy. It’s a fast paced, page-turning, planet-hopping space adventure set at the end of the Twenty-Second Century as the Earth is in the final stages of decline. It also blends erotic romance with science fiction, so may not be the first choice of some hard-core tech-geek science fiction fans. If, however, you’re not adverse to a bit of cross-genre writing and some intimately detailed sex scenes, then look no further.

 Blue Shift introduces us to Jinnifer Blue, a poor little rich girl on the run and an expert pilot with some interesting and illegal genetic modifications. When a particularly dangerous job goes wrong she ends up stranded on an all-male prison ship with a notorious and dangerous space pirate, who turns out to have some modifications of his own. If that’s not bad enough, the pair of them discover an horrific secret on board the prison ship that is destined to have serious repercussions for them both and humankind as a whole.

 There is lots of action, including seat of the pants flying, explosions, betrayals and blaster-fights, as well as the romantic and physical attraction you might expect from a more mainstream erotic romance. I’m not a science writer, so can’t really comment meaningfully on the science behind the story, but the future universe the book creates seemed credible and I wasn’t distracted by any gaping logic-holes in its structure. It is inhabited by an interesting mixture of stratified humans, droids and aliens and a senate full of politicians as trust-worthy as any in the Twenty-First Century. There are also some nice touches such as the terminal global-freezing of the Earth, caused by humankind’s botched attempt at dealing with global-warming.

 The writing is smooth and polished and the story hurtles along at a pace that kept me both wanting more and delivering it. This is not cutting edge or profound and thought-provoking science fiction, but it is vastly entertaining. 

 Jinnifer Blue is a strong and potentially complex female lead character and I hope those complexities will be played out and explored a little further over the trilogy.  Blue Shift is all about the ride, as it were, but there are enough high-charged dramatic storylines to keep the series evolving meaningfully over the following two books. It is worth repeating that this is the first book in a planned trilogy. Readers expecting a satisfying ending tied up neatly in a bow (or even leather bondage straps) are going to be disappointed. The story is set to continue into book two, Deep Blue, and, I suspect, won’t achieve a satisfying climax until the end of book three.

Paperback:  

Kindle:  
Using these links earns us commission at no cost to you
Review by J. S. Watts
J.S.Watts is a UK novelist and poet. Her poetry and short stories appear in a diversity of publications in Britain, Canada, Australia, New Zealand and the States. Her poetry collections, “Cats and Other Myths”, “Years Ago You Coloured Me” and a multi-award nominated SF poetry pamphlet, “Songs of Steelyard Sue”, are published by Lapwing Publications. Her latest poetry pamphlet, “The Submerged Sea”, is published by Dempsey and Windle.  Her novels, “A Darker Moon” and “Witchlight” are published in the UK and the US by Vagabondage Press. Her new paranormal novel, “Old Light” is due out in summer 2019. You can find her on Facebook at  or on her website
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Mathematics with Love – Mary Stopes-Roe *****

Admittedly it’s early days (this review is written in January), but this, for me, is the surprise hit of the year so far! I approached this book with trepidation, but found it absolutely delightful. It is described on the cover as the “courtship correspondence of Barnes Wallis, inventor of the bouncing bomb”, and contains a series of letters between Wallis and his cousin and eventual wife Molly Bloxham, along with some useful annotation by their daughter, Mary. The courtship itself is not without difficulties, as Wallis was 18 years older than the 17-year-old Molly at the start of the correspondence, and her father, not surprisingly, wasn’t too pleased about the interest of such an elderly suitor, but that isn’t the only reason the letters are interesting – it’s also because of maths, and Wallis’s position in the UK as the engineering hero of the Second World War. (Incidentally, it seemed very strange to see letters addressed to “Barnes” – I had always assumed Barnes Wallis was a ...
Post a Comment
Read more

Andrew Jaffe - Five way interview

Andrew Jaffe is professor of astrophysics and cosmology at Imperial College, London and director of the Imperial Centre for Inference and Cosmology. His new book is The Random Universe. Why science? I’ve always been interested in science, in particular in  astronomy, astrophysics, and space. One of my earliest memories - back in nursery school in New Jersey, I think - was watching one of the moon launches. I wanted that excitement to be part of my life! I never got to be an astronaut, but I did get to be part of the Planck Satellite team, and was privileged to be able to travel to the ESA Spaceport in French Guiana to watch the launch.  In between, I was lucky enough to have a supportive family, get a good education, and find inspiring teachers, mentors, and collaborators. They helped me model the universe, and helped me learn how to refine those models in the face of experimental and observational evidence. That is, they taught me to be a scientist. Why this book? The Random...
Post a Comment
Read more

Why Nobody Understands Quantum Physics - Frank Verstraete and Céline Broeckaert **

It's with a heavy heart that I have to say that I could not get on with this book. The structure is all over the place, while the content veers from childish remarks to unexplained jargon. Frank Versraete is a highly regarded physicist and knows what he’s talking about - but unfortunately, physics professors are not always the best people to explain physics to a general audience and, possibly contributed to by this being a translation, I thought this book simply doesn’t work. A small issue is that there are few historical inaccuracies, but that’s often the case when scientists write history of science, and that’s not the main part of the book so I would have overlooked it. As an example, we are told that Newton's apple story originated with Voltaire. Yet Newton himself mentioned the apple story to William Stukeley in 1726. He may have made it up - but he certainly originated it, not Voltaire. We are also told that ‘Galileo discovered the counterintuitive law behind a swinging o...
Post a Comment
Read more