The first book in the science fantasy series Black Ocean: Mercy for hire.
Format: Audio
Length: 5 hours 49 minutes
Publication year: 2018
Narrated by: Mikael Naramore
Esper Richfield is a wizard and a bounty hunter/mercenary. However, she's not the ruthless or money-hungry type. Instead, she wants to make the galaxy a better place. Her partner Kubu agrees. Kubu is an alien who looks like a dog. He's also quite young and sometimes naive about humans. He's also constantly hungry.
Her current mission is to find a runaway teenage girl, Tiffany St. Cloud. Her parents are separated. Her mother sent Esper and her father, a gangster, his right-hand man. Tiffany doesn't want to return to either of them. In fact, she runs away from Esper, as well. Soon, Esper realizes that the mother isn't a saint, either (sorry, couldn't resist), so Esper has difficult choices to make.
The setting is a science fiction with spaceships and blasters. Esper was born on Mars. The setting has also several intelligent alien species but we only get to know Kubu. Interestingly enough, the setting doesn't seem to have a universal translator. Instead, the characters speak different languages.
Esper's magical abilities make her a formidable close-combat fighter. She can also persuade the universe to see things her way, for example, by opening locks or changing material from one to another. She has a traumatic past and Tiffany's situation forces Esper to confront her feelings about her abusive mother. She's not good with tech but this brings mostly humor to the story.
Kubu also brings humor to the story. He has sometimes difficulty understanding what people say, is hungry, and smells things a lot better than humans. Humans mistake him for a dog all the time and Esper even keeps him on a leash in cities.
This was a good series opening. I enjoyed both Esper and Kubu. Tiffany got a bit on my nerves at first but later we got to understand her more.
Apparently, the two main characters are from Morin's other series. I didn't have a problem understanding them, but there are, of course, some references to Esper's previous experiences. I bought an omnibus edition that has 16 missions. I'm already listening to the next one.
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