Review of Elizabeth Bonesteel’s Cold Between…
(Elizabeth Bonesteel, Cold Between, Harper Collins, 2016)
Romance? Hard Sci-Fi? Space Opera? Mystery? Thriller? Many genre tags are possible for this novel. It has some of the quirkiness I put into my own sci-fi (but maybe not enough?). Forget the bad title and the romance novel cover (bodice ripper in space?). Chief Mechanic Elena from the Central Corps battleship Galileo meets pirate Trey in a bar…. Yes, that sounds a bit like a bad joke and also a bit trite. The Corps has a Shadow Ops division, and the pirate is a retired captain from another nomad (?) fleet, the Psi.
The story works best when the author focuses on chain-of-command human relationships between the crew of Galileo, whether ship-based or planet bound; it’s awful when she focuses on the romantic ones. In fact, the characters, including the main character Elena, aren’t very believable, and the author could have used better content editors because the plot flow is jumpy. All those possible genre tags imply that readers will be jerked around, which can be disconcerting at times. But let’s analyze some of those possible categories.
Romance? Actually, there’s not much—thank you for minimizing my pain, Ms. Bonesteel! After that bar scene, there’s a lengthy and steamy orgy, an animalistic bonding between Elena and Trey. That’s the raciest part of the book, but there are sappy parts sprinkled throughout, and especially at the end (the author doesn’t seem to know how to end her novel after blathering on and on for 500+ equivalent pages).
Elena’s relationships, especially the one with Trey, diminishes this main character. She acts all too often like a pubescent rock star fan instead of a mature crewmember. The author should have built up the relationship with Trey slowly in the plot—the novel is long enough to do that.
All relationships in this novel seem to be based on lust, though, which will maybe make romance readers happy but few sci-fi readers (to be fair, The Time Traveler’s Wife has the same problem mixing romance and sci-fi, so maybe this tale is marketable). Initial chemistry can lead to love in real life; it doesn’t in Bonesteel’s universe. I skipped most of the long narrative describing the mechanic+pirate orgy and went on to the rest of the story. I’m glad I did, because it gets better.
Hard sci-fi? Not much of this either. I laughed at that mysterious material “dilennium” for two reasons. First, it’s the name of a website for deviant art (cute stuff, as far as I know, not porn). Second, it’s used in the novel like Star Trek’s dilithium, although it’s a refined product produced by an evil corporation (yes, there’s one of those too, working in conjunction with Central Corps’ Shadow Ops). To avoid giving too much of the plot away, I’ll not say much more. Admittedly, finding some way to produce FTL travel isn’t easy, but Bonesteel makes a mess of it by postulating a haphazard development of the same.
Given the technology portrayed here, it’s impossible that Elena or anyone else could possess all her skills. Much is made of her mechanical abilities, but she’s also a fearsome warrior and expert pilot, not to mention a desirable beauty that has men lusting after her. I expected everyone on Galileo would be super-specialized; even Star Trek got that right, except for James Kirk and the later Counselor Cleavage. Bottom line: I don’t think Ms. Bonesteel knows much about military ships or technology in general.
And who are the Psi? We get only hints. They’re not humans with psychic powers, that’s for sure. They seem to be nomads, not bound to any planet, and dedicated to cleaning up the Corps’ messes among the human colonies (there seem to be a lot of them). They’re certainly not pirates. There’s a lot of world-building lacking here, which is surprising, considering the length of the novel. Moreover, nothing’s really resolved, so this long novel is nothing more than the first episode in a futuristic soap opera (yes, there are now other books in the series).
What about the other genre tags? Yes, this soap opera is a space opera. Take out the sappy parts (doing that wouldn’t shorten the book much), the plot moves along well enough, as well as any space opera does, or even better, reminding me of some old sci-fi classics. There’s mystery too—about people’s pasts, the political structure binding the human colonies together, the Shadow Ops, and the disappearance of the ship of the mother of Elena’s captain into a wormhole (dare I call it “loss of the mother ship”?). The novel has enough thriller aspects too, from planet-bound skirmishes to impossible maneuvers of starships battling it out near that wormhole (don’t get sucked down the drain, fellows).
I can make light of the plot, characters, dialogue, and settings, but I have a problem: I actually enjoyed reading the story except for the caveats about the romantic relationships. Excepting the latter, it was entertaining. There are no uplifting or troubling themes to burden the reader, so you don’t have to stop and think too much—simply good guys against bad guys, although you might not know who the latter are—and you can fly through those many pages and just be entertained for a few hours. Maybe the author will settle down and improve with time.
(One more comment: I purchased this book at $1.99, a common enough ploy to get a reader hooked on a series, but I’m surprised a major publisher uses it. I think the other ebooks in the series are around $10, not a surprising price for a Big Five publisher like Harper Collins. Sorry, Harper Collins, I’m not hooked on this series, so I’ll wait for the other soap-operatic episodes to be more reasonably priced. Maybe they’ll explain who the Psi are?)
***
[This review first appeared in abbreviated form on Goodreads.]
Great Spring Thaw Sale. Every two weeks, with one week overlap, starting April 1, one of my books will be on sale at Smashwords (the overlap means that there are usually two books on sale). (Yes, it’s been going on…sorry about that, but it was announced on my Home page and elsewhere.) Take advantage of this to download some entertaining spring reading. Each ebook will be on sale for $1.99, regardless of the normal retail price. Access my author page for the entire list of ebooks. (Remember, Smashwords offers ALL ebook formats, including mobi format for Kindles.) Use the coupon code for the ebook on checkout.
In libris libertas!
