Reckless Space Pirates

A rushed out, error riddled, sub par, railroaded mess. There are numerous pronoun errors that have supposedly female characters suddenly being male. EX: "...to overlook his shady..." then directly followed by "She often poses..." The dialogue and characters zip around too fast to keep track of at times. It has this weird minigame with logic puzzels and math that take away from the narrative elements to an insane degree and grind the flow to a screeching halt. There are extremely limited choices that lead to an extreme feeling of contrivicy that left me wondering how any of this story was greenlit. The character interactions are shallow even for a CYOA game boiling down to "do I want ally" "do I want love interest" Truly a mess of a story, a hackneyed writing attempt, poor editing, and meaningless choices. Not quite as repetative as Kendrickstone, but as engaging and coherent as a drug trip.

This is more of a 'maybe' recommendation, but when you come down to it that's essentially a 'no'. First, the good: The parts of this book that are like an ordinary Choice of Games book (which is, in terms of volume, most of it), are decent. Allying/betraying the pirates, getting to know the crew, inscrutable aliens, and building up a powerbase: all good. But, several times throughout the book, you'll be asked a brainteaser. E.g. one of those "what number comes next in this series" questions. And then you, personally, have to figure it out and answer. It doesn't matter that your character's a world-class hacker whose brain could run circles around anyone else on board, you have to do these problems yourself (or, for some of them, use google). These segments are mostly toward the beginning and end, but every time they come up it completely kills the momentum of the story. It pulled me out of the "enjoying the experience" groove and into "oh goody math homework". And toward the end you'll be enduring four or five in a row as the aliens seek to test your knowledge (and again, not that of your character's). In short, it's a decent book made worse by some very jarring distractions.

This was a really good story. I would say that my only real complaint was that it seemed a bit rushed. It honestly seemed like right after beginning, it was over. Other that that though, I loved it. I'd give it an 8/10.

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