Chilling Effect

by Valerie Valdes

ISBN 978-0-06-2877239

Disclaimer: I received a free review copy of this title from the publisher.

 “I’m not working for you filthy bastards. I won’t even work for my own father, and he’s a saint compared to you.”

As captain of La Sirena Negra, Eva Innocente does her best to find honest work for her crew of misfits, human and alien alike. After finally getting out from under the thumb of her dishonest father, and her manipulative first employer due to a job gone disastrously wrong, she finally has a chance to deal fairly, on her own terms. But when Eva’s sister, Mari, is kidnapped by a mysterious crime syndicate known as The Fridge, she has no choice but to take on some shady deals. Can someone as rash and accident prone as Eva really pull off a rescue, especially when she is trying to keep it a secret from her crew? And if that wasn’t bad enough, Eva has attracted the ire of an egomaniacal alien emperor by refusing his amorous advances. Plus, she has a cargo hold full of troublesome psychic cats, and no buyer in sight.

In many space operas, the ship is as much a character as any of the people or aliens. This is certainly how Eva feels about La Sirena Negra, a ship she got from her father after a job gone particularly badly, and the vehicle for her new life where she can set her own rules. However, La Sirena Negra is part and parcel with Min, the pilot who is so jacked into the ship’s systems that she regards it as an extension of her own body. Also on board are the ship’s medic, and Eva’s long-time best friend, Pink, and Leroy, a damaged ex-merc who was used as “meat puppet” in a remotely controlled army. The engineer, and Eva’s love interest, is the charmingly literal Vakar, a quennian with a mysterious past who can’t help but share his emotions through his ever-shifting scent signals. Eva herself is a pretty salty character, fully of punchy dialogue in both English and Spanish. The unitalicized, untranslated Spanish is peppered throughout, and while it isn’t necessary to translate to get the gist, pop a few words into your favourite translator if you want to learn some interesting new insults.

Valerie Valdes clearly likes to play with tropes, of which women in refrigerators is the most central. Usually, this refers to a male protagonist’s female love interest being murdered to serve as motivation for a revenge storyline. In Chilling Effect, the woman in a refrigerator is Eva’s sister, Mari, except that Mari isn’t dead; she’s being held in cryostasis to ensure that Eva submits to the demands of the shadowy crime syndicate that has taken her sister hostage. While Eva’s found family is comprised of a compelling cast of characters, her biological family is a little less likeable. Unfortunately, we don’t meet Mari, or know much about their sibling relationship before her sister is turned into leverage.

I was a bit disappointed that the cats didn’t play a more central role in the story, because everyone knows that if you introduce psychic space cats in act one, you should make good use of them by act three. But they do add to the atmosphere of La Sirena Negra, and I can hope that they will feature more prominently as the series continues. The trade paperback includes a preview chapter for the next installment, Prime Deception, which will deal with the fall out of Eva’s misadventures in Chilling Effect.

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