Monday, June 29, 2015

Mini-Review: Heaven’s Queen by Rachel Bach

Heaven’s Queen by Rachel Bach is the final book in the Paradox trilogy which falls somewhere in the area of new space opera or military science fiction, or whatever – really it doesn’t matter how you choose to (or not to) shelve these books. What does matter is that they are so much fun and such a pleasure to read1.

In my review of the first book in the series, Fortune’s Pawn, I get into a bit of discussion on entry-level SF and even the similarities of Fortune’s Pawn to urban fantasy. I think that all was an interesting discussion, but series has long-since moved forward and so should we. Heaven’s Queen takes us from the cliffhanger of an ending to Honor’s Knight and wraps up the trilogy in a very satisfying way.

So far in the series, Devi has spent a lot of time reacting to the situation she’s found herself thrown into – in Heaven’s Queen, she raises a rather giant middle finger to the entire galaxy and makes them play by her terms. Now it wouldn’t be a very fun book if everything went as planned, but it was a necessary shift in the narrative for her to get the chance to take charge of the big picture rather than just the tactical incidents of the past. This of course has been building through the series, but it’s great to see it truly play out.

As I had come to expect from the series, loyalties are challenged and unclear. Who is good and bad and ugly? What is the right thing to do? And let’s not forget the romance, because there is a rather beautiful romance underlying everything else.

As with the previous books in the series, it adds up to a great conclusion. Call it a beach read, an escape read, or what you read on Tuesday night – it has that feel. It’s complex and ‘deep’ enough to not feel cheap, but it’s still got plenty of explosions, violent encounters with aliens, lovely moments of romance, and a prison-break worthy of the Death Star2. All in all, this is a great conclusion to the series, right down to the neatly wrapped end of the end.

Heaven’s Queen (Indiebound, Book Depository, Amazon)


1  This is basically word for word out of my review of Honor’s Knight. I don’t care, I liked what I wrote then and I like it now – it applies. And I can plagiarize from myself as much as I please. In fact, this whole review is parasitic plagiarism at its best.


2  Ok, this is a poor analogy, because the prison break arc is well done and Star Wars never could actually explain the ease of their escape. Even if they did let them go. 

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