Persephone Station; Stina Leicht

I loved the vibes of this book. A sci-fi world with a grungy-cyberpunk feel? A slew of crime families and a corrupt corporatocracy in charge of the one settlement on an inhospitable plant with a secret sentient race? Oh and the vast majority of the cast are women and non-binary characters? Uh, yes please a thousand times over! “Persephone Station” is just on the right side of hard science fiction, meaning that it’s not Andy Weir levels of math and science but more than just a hand wave of “nano technology” to explain things. And while I loved the military-like action of this high-stakes adventure, often times those same action sequences I so enjoyed came at the detriment to character and plot building.

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I couldn’t tell you what the conflict between Rosie and Serrao-Orlov was, or why it was actually happening. At least not until pretty much the last few chapters of the book, at which point things had to get wrapped up really fast because this is a stand-alone, thus lessening the impact of some of the big “ah-ha!” moments that came at the end. I can’t even really tell you about how most of Angel’s crew end up being a type of criminal and forming this mercenary group, or why the big bad was such a mustache-twirling bad guy to the extreme. They just kind of were for vague reasons that always felt… forced to me. Perhaps because the story attempted to do too much with it’s three POV characters. Between discussing colonization between indigenous groups and corporate organizations, to the rights of AI’s, none of the topics really stuck the landing, so to speak. Which is too bad, because on their own, both are really interesting and just needed more focus to pull off in a satisfying way.

That being said, I really loved Lou and her relationship with the ship. Those two had some of my favorite interactions (with each other as well as other characters) in the story. But I never got a good sense of who Rosie was to really have a strong opinion of them, even as a POV character. And while I liked Angel’s arc around a kind of “fall from grace” (ha), I didn’t understand the organization she was kicked out from enough for that yearning Angel had to reclaim her honor to have the impact I think it was meant to. But, again, as an action-packed space western with a fun, diverse cast, this book was great! I just needed more from the characters and the conflict itself to really understand why we were even here to begin with, hence the 3 stars. But I like the author’s style enough to try out some of their other sci-fi work!