Trouble Dog is a warship, one of a pack. But after a brutal war, her conscience forces her to resign her commission and join Space International Rescue the House of Reclamation to try and rescue those in distress in the depths of space. As she and her misfit crew race to the aid of a downed cruise ship, an intelligence agent is also heading there, to find a poet who was on the liner, and who isn’t what she appears.
I really liked the premise of this book. A lot of space opera is set around conflict and I liked the idea of a book set in the aftermath of the conflict when trying to win the peace. In saying that, there’s still a lot of shooting going on here, despite the best efforts of Trouble Dog and her crew.
I liked pretty much all of the characters here: Trouble Dog – one of a pack who’s now exiled from from her siblings; her captain, Sal Konstanz – who’s anguished about decisions she made both in the war and in her time in the House; the alien engineer Nod – who just wants to get on with fixing things and sleeping
While being complete and satisfying in and of itself, I liked the setup for future stories – hints that Something is coming and that the House of Reclamation may have to do more than just pick up the pieces when it gets here.
