Disclaimer: I ‘read’ this via AudioBook so please forgive me for any misspellings of names or places.
My review for this series so far is simple. If you don’t like Hull Scrappers, then you can frag off!
If you know; you know. All joking aside the “Liminal Marches” is another great addition to an already strong series that started with “Shattered Diaspora.” In that novel, which I reviewed separately, we were introduced to Captain Kril Grainger, a sort of space cowboy vigilante with a bleeding heart. That rather empathetic lad is beaming around the galaxy with his augmented cyborg-sister Trin, and, together, they are out to save the galaxy doing a job labelled as scrapping. Although they are essentially mercenaries, it is pretty apparent that they have an agenda that is stewed in good intentions, and at times I think Kril and Trin hide the truth from not only the galaxy but themselves. Without giving away the plot or spoiling the story of that novel or this one let’s just leave it at this: It was phenomenal! We met some very strong and well-rounded characters to round out Captain Kril’s crew, and along the way we had a lot of fun.
To get to the meat of “Liminal Marches” let’s start with the, as they like to proclaim—maybe too often— the bad news. There are some storytelling elements the writer repeats quite often like the one I alluded to above. This might pull you out of the story like it did for me, but it wasn’t necessarily egregious. My other critique would be one that is admittedly rather subjective. So, take it with a grain of salt. In this book, we are given 1st person POV’s of each member of Captain Kril’s crew, whereas in the previous book it was told entirely, or mostly, in 3rd person limited perspective from Kril’s POV. This shifting of POV’s was rather abrasive to the story in my opinion, and though I can applaud what the writer was going for, I don’t think it did them any favors. Maybe if it were static in a third person POV but still switched whose POV it wouldn’t be so abrupt, but as it stands it is the weakest part of this work.
Now the good news! The story was fun and easy to follow. Andrew Seiple does a great job crafting the imaginary space of Hull Scrappers and I found myself following along in my mind’s eye full of vivid details. Truly, it’s delightful to read Seiple’s writing. I also love, and I mean, I LOVE some of the twists and…shall we say…references that are used within this novel. There is one in particular that had me clapping—that is not a joke I physically stopped what I was doing in order to applaud—aloud at the sheer beauty of it. I won’t give it away but let’s just say that fans of the classics will get a kick out of it.
I also was enthralled by some of the characters within the story, though, as I mentioned earlier, I am not sure that diving into their heads in the first-person scenes helped that. Lysanda, a rat-laden doctor, is an extremely strong and well-developed character that rocked the first book. If you were like me and craved more of Lysanda’s particular brand of person, then you will not be disappointed here! They are still just as weird, and just as awesome, as they ever were.
Some other stand outs are Bosque—at least I think that’s how his name is spelled—who is the self-proclaimed a**hole of the crew and boy does he deliver! But not in the way that I find to be off-putting. No, it’s more in the grouchy old man that warms up to the sassy granddaughter from the city that wants to learn how to disassemble an engine kind of way. There is also Erid who, like Lysanda, provokes some thought-provoking concepts of what people could become in a future in which galactic travel is as easy as firing up a giant flashlight. Though Erid is a rather monochrome character, for reasons that can’t be explained here, their character is enjoyable and quite fascinating to explore. I guess you will just have to read the story to understand what I mean there. Saying too much here would spoil it, and I don’t want to ruin such a fun adventure 😊!
Unfortunately, we don’t get as much development on Captain Kril’s sister, Trin. This augmented super pilot is always one to add little quips and barbs that ground the rather heroic Kril from becoming too much of a paladin. Her contributions within the first novel are, although not entirely absent, much less frequent and I think in the attempt to broaden the scope of the story, Seiple leaves some of the charm of Trin behind. I also was not a huge fan of their gilled-friend Fernie, but she wasn’t entirely unlikable. She just didn’t feel particularly…strong. Instead, we were given a rather stereotypical rogue who loves money and pretends to like people but secretly is just misunderstood.
Since I did listen to this via AudioBook, I will need to address the performance and production of that as well. The voice actor Ryan Burke did an excellent job, and I was able to know exactly who was talking just by the varying voices he gave the characters. I think that, although they lean towards stereotypes, the voices for everyone are unique and fit with the personality that Seiple intended. My only complaint about the AudioBook was more on the production side. There were some moments in which the audio got very quiet. I think they didn’t equalize the volume for when Burke was trying to whisper or affect a quieter tone for dramatic effect. With that said, there were times I had to rewind and crank up the volume to hear it. Other than that, it was a good performance and a solid production.
All told, I am very glad I picked up the Hull Scrappers series and I can’t wait to read the next installment. Especially since it was left on one hell of a cliffhanger—damn you Seiple! Using my own words as my rubric and from my gut feeling I would give this book a 4.2 out of 5. I rated the first a 4.5 but I do think it was a stronger story than this one and honestly the production quality of the AudioBook was slightly better. Anyways, thank you all for your time, and check out this book, it’s a great read and a great series!
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