Fortune's Pawn

I read this book several years because I love military science fiction and thought that this would be a good one to jump into.

It honestly wasn't. The premise was interesting, though I thought it weird that no one was questioning why a cargo ship always seemed to be getting into all sorts of peril and deadly danger. Of course, the book reveals why - Because the captain is secretly working for the government and doing missions under the guise of being but a humble trader, selling his cabbages or whatever. - but it's just weird that nobody like “WTF?”.

What really bugged me is how under-armed the main character is. Her whole goal with serving on The Glorious Fool is to rack up the required years of experience so she can apply to join an elite special forces unit. But despite the Fool's rep, Devi only shows up with three weapons:

1. A plasma shotgun that can only fire a few shots before it's battery is drained (though it does double duty as a club)
2. A handgun that fires big armor piercing bullets, but with massive recoil (that can break arms if you're not wearing powered armor when shooting it).
3. And a blade coated in white phosphorus...that can only be used for 180 seconds before the fire has to be extinguished, less the phosphorus turns the blade brittle.

I know that it's probably dumb to criticize a book because of that, but I mean...come on. Devi is serving on a ship with a rep like the Fool's and she's only packing three weapons, two of them basically worthless?

For a character that's supposed to be a kicker of ass, Devi sure ends up on the wrong end of the ass whoopings. Almost every fight scene ends with her getting wrecked (or rekted, as the internet likes to say) and having to be rescued. I don't think her chances getting into that elite unit are looking good.

As for the romance, it was rather bland from what I remember of it. A Hallmark Christmas movie does romance better than what this book did. I didn't realize that there even was a romance element when I started reading and still wasn't 100% sure mid-way through.

I don't know, I might re-read this book soon and see if my opinion has changed in the six years since. As of right now, Fortune's Pawn is sitting somewhere between a 2.5 and a 3 stars.