Review of NETGALLEY arc Termination Shock – Book 1 of the Interstellar Enforcement Agency by Gillian Andrews #Brainfluffbookreview #TerminationShockbookreview

That lovely sci fi cover caught my eye and so did the blurb, so despite the fact that this book has already been released, I requested an arc and was pleased to be approved.

BLURB: Ryler Mallivan’s comfortable life as an upstanding young freighter captain has just imploded. Avaraks are storming the training ship he is on and the bullets being fired are not blanks. Interstellar war has broken out and unless he moves fast they will all be as stone dead as the instructor lying at his feet. But this is one conflict they can never escape. The cause of the trouble is far closer than they know and will bring Mallivan and his ragbag fledgling crew under ferocious attack from all sides. They are going to need all their wits about them if they are to stay alive. And they have to, because there is nobody else to save all their worlds from a doomsday weapon which is set to obliterate the entire universe.

This one starts with a bang and simply doesn’t let up. Mallivan tells the story in first person viewpoint (I), which works well as he and the small group of random folks who didn’t immediately die around him, struggle to survive. This sets the pattern for the whole tenor of the book as he and his team find themselves constantly on the back foot and in the middle of an interstellar crisis. This entertaining, action-packed space opera adventure is set in a universe where humanity has split into Flatlanders and Spacelanders. Neither like or trust each other and Mallivan is definitely a Spacelander, who doesn’t feel any kinship at all with the Flatlanders who are making a grab for a huge chunk of space that doesn’t belong to them, thus destabilising the fragile peace with the various alien species also sharing the space.

I enjoyed Mallivan as a main character – he is entertaining and vulnerable, yet still capable enough that he didn’t become overly irritating. Though the small alien girl, Zenzie, who he initially rescues quickly becomes a little pain. If I have a grizzle with this book, it’s that she becomes insufferably annoying and I like the fact that Mallivan also feels that way about her. I also think her character journey unbalances the story – I’m hoping that she will find herself away at boarding school during the next slice of the adventure, Interdicted Space which I’m definitely going to be getting hold of, as I want to know what happens next. Overall, this was a great deal of escapist fun with plenty of action, thrills and fights. Recommended for fans of space opera action stories. The ebook arc copy of Termination Shock was provided by the publisher through NetGalley in return for an honest opinion of the book.
8/10