Fluency

This was ok. But not great.

It needs an editor to fix some of the sloppy language. People simply speak in a way that's unbelievable in their circumstances. Or the author intrudes with a pop culture reference we didn't need.

We start by having the story fed to us as present-day interspersed with backstory. Then this style gets dropped.

There's a lot that happens in these pages, but nothing really grabbed my attention or made me care too much about the characters. Out of the 6 or 7 characters (see, I forget) only two are realised, the rest are wallpaper, which is a shame. And the author spends a lot of time making other people remind us of how brave and good the main character is (or was) without actually showing it in anything she does.

The middle section is a little muddled with action too. The ship is huge (aren't they all?) but aside from descriptions of rooms being a bit big I didn't really feel it. The fight scene feels a bit like it takes place in a cupboard, and I had a hard time following who was supposed to be in danger. I never felt any concern for the characters.

What lets it down most is the lack of originality. Everything here is something I've read before. Especially the final act.

I'm pretty sure there's going to be a sequel, and I'll probably pick it up, because I'm a big fan of the people-find-an-abandonned-spaceship genre, which is what lead me here to this book in the first place. But I won't expect it to blow me away: I'll expect it to help me pass a day by the pool.