This book was an absolute blast.
There’s a lot of Firefly in this. The main character is Temperance Reed, exiled daughter of one of the wealthy, powerful capital-f Families that control everything. She’s in command of the rather battered scout ship Quest after the captain/her lover runs off with the intern, deeply in dept, and desperate to keep her ship and crew together. She gets an offer for a job that pays very well from another of the Families, though there’s a catch. The head of the family is sending his son Arcadio along to oversee security on the mission, and to protect their investment.
Of course there is more to the mission than they were expecting. They were looking for a very rare, very valuable mineral that initial scans suggested might be on a remote nigh-uninhabited planet. They did not expect to run into religious cultists, or forces from another of the Families up to something nefarious.
Temperance - and the reader - certainly did expect trouble to come from just how attractive she found the boss’s son.
This is, as I said, an absolute blast of a book. It’s fun and exciting, with lots of action. The banter is spectacular. Temperance herself is a mix of cynical, snarky, and sarcastic that fits my sense of humor perfectly. And this book is, in a word, scorching. Every single scene between Arcadio and Temperance simply crackles.
There’s a sequel coming out soon - I read this specifically because I got an ARC of the sequel - and I’m greatly looking forward to it. From the blurb, it centers on a few of the side characters from this book, which means I am comfortable saying this book works just fine as a standalone.
Strongly recommended.