I'm glad I was never told by my parents that if you can't find something nice to say, say nothing at all because that was really, really awful. The writing is unreadable, being recursive and tedious. The plot is poorly constructed, with all kinds of unnecessary backstory introduced at odd times. The characters are uninteresting and indistinguishable from each other. The attempts to create a near-future setting, weirdly laughable (I'm tempted to introduce "databrick" to my vocabulary I find it so amusing). I weep for the trees that were sacrificed at the altar of this waste of ink.

I recieved a free review copy from the author via Goodreads, and I wish to god I hadn't. ( )

This was kind of good, not much happening till the end but good dialogue and description of the environments I always get bored of sex and romance in books it's not necessary and never believable. The lead did become a strong person and will hopefully develop more. ( )

I did like this book, I just wished that the action that happened in the last few chapters had carried through more through out the whole book. There was more dialect then there was action. Although, I found the author did a good job of describing the environment and the characters as I got images of all of them and the planet Mars and the spacecraft.

The warning explicit language and sex is good as the "f" word was used. However, the sex scenes were brief with not a lot of details. Plus to expand on this it was not always girl and guy, some times it was a threesome. Yet for the way the author wrote it for the story, I was fine with it. This is the first book and so hopefully the second one picks up more steam in the action department. Also, towards the end I thought Janet had grown to become more of a stronger leader. ( )

This is a very well written book.

The glamour of space astronauts is stripped away, leaving them with a very unglamorous job.

Main character Janet has joined up with a space shipping company and pirates have killed everyone on board but her, leaving her with a decision, join them and get ridiculous payout (but have to join them in killing other innocent spacefarers), or die.
How will she get out of this? How will she escape and get back to Earth? ( )

In the last half of the 21st century, Janet Pilgrim has just graduated from high school, and is looking forward to college. That is, until her father, who invests in one get-rich-quick scheme after another, tells her that he is bankrupt. Not wanting to face her friends, and after considering joining the Army, Janet signs on to a cargo ship to Mars. Being a working astronaut is the lowest form of life in the Universe, but one cargo run will fund several years of college.

Somewhere between Earth and Mars, the ship on which Janet is traveling is seized by space pirates, killing the three other members of the crew. Janet is taken prisoner, and given a choice; willingly join the pirates, or get a one-way trip through an airlock. It is not a hard decision. Janet has several moments of doing what she has to do to stay alive.

Mars is sparsely populated, so Janet’s first escape attempt does not get very far. She gets a metal slave collar affixed around her neck, and spends more than one night in a cage. On the way back to Earth, another ship is seized, but, this time, there are casualties among the pirates.

To turn their booty into cash, several members of the crew land in the Central African Empire, your average corrupt African regime. The Emperor makes it clear that if they don’t become leaders of his new space pirate fleet, they can forget about getting any payment for their pirate activities. Back in space, they attack a larger passenger ship, which has the nerve, and the ability, to fight back.

This is a first novel that is actually pretty good. In space, sometimes man is the biggest enemy. It is not a young adult novel, and it is worth reading. ( )