Read Time: 2 Minutes
After finishing Gateway, I was in the mood for more space adventures. Scrolling through my wish list on Audible, I found “ShipCore” tucked away and decided to jump into it. This was so good! The story starts with Alex, who wakes up in space with no memory and is guided by a snarky AI. Typical “core” type stuff follows, where Alex needs to start rebuilding the ship’s defenses, beginning research on upgrades, basic resource management, and the like.
Alex is the avatar of the system, a human-like body with freedom of movement and thought, bolstered by nanobots and an uplink to the system core. She’s not slaved to it, though, so even though born from the system, Alex becomes more human as time goes on.
Alone in what appears to be the final stand of a great space-based battle, her busted ship is surrounded by debris and wrecked ships that can be pillaged for resources. On one ship, she finds a survivor, Elis, who Alex revives. Elis fought on the side against the AIs and nanobots, so doesn’t take kindly to waking up and finding she’s now on a ship controlled by one.
This was such a fun, clean story. Lots of tension between the characters, interesting technology, space battles, and a universe of lore to catch up on. Given where the story ends up going about 80-ish percent in and looking back on it now that I have finished, it does feel like it’s mostly backstory. I don’t think that’s a bad thing, and I think even describing it as such doesn’t do it justice.
Reba Buhr did a fantastic job, as expected. I love her voice as it’s easy to listen to, and the production is always excellent. No obvious retakes or background noises or the like.
I’ve already got the second book in my library, so I’m really keen to keep going with this series. I see book three is available on Kindle, so that’ll no doubt get one of my Audible credits when it comes out too!
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