December 1, 2024
This story follows Johnny Gomez, an employee of Astro-Suds Services, as he falls in with smugglers and is chased across the solar system by gangs and pirates after finding a valuable data slide while scrubbing a restroom. Johnny sets off for Luna, and his space travel feels like an interstate road trip, with detours to a pleasure moon and a sci-fi trucker stop, Hogger's. Johnny meets smugglers with hearts of gold at the point when he needs them and happens to have an extremely well-connected cyborg roommate who is the deus ex machina solution to multiple problems. The novel attempts to be a fun ride, but, unfortunately, the plot and character development are rather shallow and the writing can be clunky at times. The story is told from Johnny's first-person perspective, but he often seems chronically ignorant of how the world around him works, which is somewhat overused as a device to have other characters explain the universe to readers. VERDICT Rodriguez (Stone Feather Fang) makes his adult debut with a space adventure that is light on plot and heavy on coincidences.--Zachariah Motts
Copyright 2024 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.
February 1, 2025
Johnny Gomez is a sanitation contractor for AstroSuds aboard Kilgore Station at the end of the solar system. He's prone to daydreaming of adventures, savoring the beauty of his dreams as he cleans up after a variety of species from beyond Kilgore. When he gets a particularly messy assignment, he is surprised to find a seemingly innocuous data slide amongst the debris. Almost immediately after he finds the slide, he is assaulted. Lucky for Johnny, though, he is rescued by Hooper and Leilani, who bring Johnny to Lisette, the girl from his daydreams, who happens to be a hacker with the connections to try and find a buyer for the data slide and the treasure on it. This entails smuggling the four of them off the station, which leads to more complications and more underworld factions chasing the windfall on the slide. Readers can expect audacious gambits, more pain, and timely rescues for Johnny. For fans of sf tales featuring far-flung adventures across the solar system.
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