Darkship Thieves by Sarah A. Hoyt

This is my first DNF of the year.

Plot summary as follows :- Athena Sinistra has to leave her father's space cruiser in a hurry when she wakes up in the middle of a mutiny. Taking refuge in a lifepod she is picked up by a Darkship - one of many that steal the power pods needed by Earth. The pilot of the ship - Kit - cannot return Athena to Earth, he has no choice but to take her to his home. However, Athena hasn't given up hope that she'll be able to get away and that's the one thing that Kit can't let her do.

I read a review of this on someone's blog, can't remember which one as it was quite a while ago now. And it sounded really good. Unfortunately when I came to read it I just couldn't get into it.

I think the main problem being that I didn't like the heroine and when a book is written in first person, that's a big problem. She's spoiled, arrogant and selfish and after 200 pages I just didn't want to read about her any more. Kit was a slightly more interesting character and I wish we'd been able to get into his head a little more.

It also felt like there was a slight disparity between the ages of the characters and what they'd accomplished. Athena was 19 (which might have explained some of her behaviour and immaturity) but she'd also packed an awful lot into her short life. I felt as if parts of the characters didn't quite match up. Hopefully there would have been some character growth and development after the point at which I stopped reading. I'm assuming that by having the characters start at an "unattractive" point, there is the suggestion that they will develop and grow by the end of the book.

But basically it didn't work for me. Maybe because one of my favourite books is Stardoc by S. L. Viehl which covers some similar themes and I couldn't help compare it unfavourably to that.

So, not one for me, but I'm sure there are plenty of people out there who'd enjoy it. A quick word on the cover - I think it's meant to be the scene from the beginning of the book when Athena is rescued from the powerpod fields by Kit. I will point out that in the story she was in a lifepod at the time and not half naked in the vacuum of space.