Do you like sci fi swashbuckling, a relationship built on respect, and smoking hot space fugitives? Then Polaris Rising by Jessie Mihalik will get you all fired up.
I went looking specifically for steamy space shenanigans with a female protagonist who stays capable and in control throughout, and Polaris Rising didn’t disappoint.
Ada is a character who is capable in the spheres that make sense for her background (i.e. space princess who has been taught space espionage to be useful to her family), and realistic about her abilities in other areas. That is to say, any time that she does whoop arse, it’s because of tech she has her hands on, knowledge, or tactics.
Loch, the space fugitive, takes care of the more hands-on stuff. In more ways than one.
What I particularly liked about this book was how the respect and admiration between the characters develops gradually and believably. They earn a place in each other’s lives bit by bit, via their actions.
My only gripe is that the end of the book implied to me that books 2 and 3 would continue with these same characters because the story did not feel fully tied up. Instead, the blurbs indicate that the next two books have different character pairs. That’s not to say that Polaris Rising doesn’t have a HEA — it does, I assure you. It just feels like a few threads were thrown out there at the end that presumably will have to be tied up in a non-POV way. I would have preferred to see these threads continued in Ada’s POV. But it’s a small gripe, particularly when the story has set up Ada and Loch to be important secondary characters going forward.
I’ve seen some grumbling that the secondary characters are a bit flat in this book, but I think any distance we have from those secondary characters is within genre-appropriate limits, if you are expecting the genre to be romance. I think a fair bit of that grumbling must have come from sci fi readers who are not as used to the tropes of romance as us seasoned romance readers are.
A space princess on the run and a notorious outlaw soldier become unlikely allies in this imaginative, sexy space opera adventure—the first in an exciting science fiction trilogy.
In the far distant future, the universe is officially ruled by the Royal Consortium, but the High Councillors, the heads of the three High Houses, wield the true power. As the fifth of six children, Ada von Hasenberg has no authority; her only value to her High House is as a pawn in a political marriage. When her father arranges for her to wed a noble from House Rockhurst, a man she neither wants nor loves, Ada seizes control of her own destiny. The spirited princess flees before the betrothal ceremony and disappears among the stars
Ada eluded her father’s forces for two years, but now her luck has run out. To ensure she cannot escape again, the fiery princess is thrown into a prison cell with Marcus Loch. Known as the Devil of Fornax Zero, Loch is rumored to have killed his entire chain of command during the Fornax Rebellion, and the Consortium wants his head
When the ship returning them to Earth is attacked by a battle cruiser from rival House Rockhurst, Ada realizes that if her jilted fiancé captures her, she’ll become a political prisoner and a liability to her House. Her only hope is to strike a deal with the dangerous fugitive: a fortune if he helps her escape.
But when you make a deal with an irresistibly attractive Devil, you may lose more than you bargained for . . .
