Michael R. Underwood.
Annihilation Aria.
Parvus. 2019
rating : 4 : passes the time
review : 1 June 2022
A woman who can wield a weapon like a song. A man who can out-think ancient death traps. A pilot who flies her ship like a second skin. To keep the Kettle out of hock, Lahra, Max, and Wheel flout border patrols, salvaging artifacts from dangerous galactic ruins.
But the power in those artifacts threatens the iron-fisted rule of the galaxy’s imperialist overlords, the Vsenk. To protect their dominion, the Vsenk have humbled entire civilizations. They eat ships like the Kettle and her found family for breakfast.
Lahra, Max, and Wheel are each just trying to get home to the lives they lost, but they’ll have to evade space fascists, kick-start a rebellion, and save the galaxy first.
Board the Kettle for a space opera like none you’ve ever read before: an adventure of galactic subterfuge, ancient alien lore, a secret resistance force, lost civilizations, and giant space turtles.
Three crewmates are just trying to make a living with their salvage ship in a universe ruled over by the cruel Vsenk. But their livelihoods are threatened by that oppression; pushed to the limits, their last desperate salvage run may just prove the undoing of the Vsenk and their history.
This is a fast-paced romp of a space opera, with three disparate crew working together to scrape a living, finding themselves pulled into something larger than they could realise. It’s a fun page turner, with some interesting world building, particularly the background of the Vsenk. But don’t look too closely at the world unbuilding: there is a planet that was annihilated a century ago, just leaving pieces behind, yet it appears that it is possible to leap from piece to piece.