📚’A lightning-fast character-driven plot’ @barbtaub Reviews #SciFi Making Waves by @ThorneMoore for Rosie’s #Bookreview Team #RBRT #TuesdayBookBlog

Today’s team review is from Barb

Barb blogs here https://barbtaub.com/

Rosie’s Book Review Team

Barb has been reading Making Waves by Thorne Moore

Making Waves by Thorne Moore

My Review:  5 out of 5 Stars for Making Waves (Salvage, Book 2) by Thorne Moore

I started my review of the first book in this series with, “I can make this a very short review by saying you really should just go buy Inside Out. You’ll thank me.” This time, I would say you really should just go buy both books in Thorne Moore’s Salvage series. You’ll thank me even more.

Still reading? Okay, here goes.

Once upon a time, there was a family. Like most families, it was pretty dysfunctional. Okay, it was a WAY dysfunctional collection of criminals and losers who boarded the Heloise, a spaceship bound for a year-long trip to deliver them to seven years service on Titan, a nightmare planet at the edge of the universe. If they survive the unsurvivable, they will be rich.

But on the voyage out to Titan, a strange thing happens. The group of antisocial liars, thieves, and deviants are taken under the wing of Heloise’s enigmatic captain, Tod Foxe. By the time he leaves them on Titan, Foxe’s cubs have become two things. Survivors, and family.

Against all odds, when Captain Fox gathers his cubs seven years later, each carries mental, emotional, and physical scars. But their family by choice survives, and returns to the Heloise. 

Abigail got up, smiling. ‘It’s like old times. A journey on the Heloise teaching us to confront ourselves.’

‘That is always a useful lesson,’ said Gabriel.

Of course, the universe has been going to hell around them, and the little family discovers they hold some of the keys to saving the world(s). They know who the bad guys are, and what they want.

But they have each been through the crucible, seen nightmares made reality, and emerged ready to kick evil capitalist butt. And sure, the villains are paper-thin, simplistic greedy suits: 

Where would our profits be, if all production had to observe Inner Circle constraints – health and safety, labour regulations, tax inspections, accident enquiries, monopoly limitations?

But the point of the plot, the characters, and the world-building is not the villains or even the triumph of good over evil. At its core, I think this is a book about what makes a family.

There are plenty of beloved science fiction tropes that find their way into this tale, although the action races through at such breakneck speed that it’s hard to stop and track them all. There are also nods to familiar shorthands for evil, from Nazi echoes of genocide against space-induced mutations, to Star Wars-style stormtroopers.

And of course, there are what I’m starting to see as author Thorne Moore’s trademark little pokes of humor. The ship’s cat is named Macavity, a nod perhaps to T.S.Eliot’s 1939 Old Possum’s book of Practical Cats, to the long-running Broadway musical, to the Macavity Awards for mystery writers, or to all of the above. I also loved the ‘death’ scene that one character is overacting for all he’s worth, even though it’s unlikely any of his audience will get his reference to Mrs. Lincoln.

‘He’s trying to say something,’ said Major Addo, leaning over them. ‘What is it, son?’

Mica looked up. ‘He’s saying “Apart from that, how did you enjoy the play?”’

My point is that this is a group of unrelated people who would not, in the general course of events, even meet. But they do meet, become family by choice, and save the universe — all the while snarking, teasing, and bickering as only siblings can.

If you enjoy a masterfully-created world, a lightning-fast character-driven plot, and — another Thorne Moore trademark— the Afterward that illuminates the main motivator of the story, then I highly recommend Making Waves. (But only if you’ve read the first book in the series, Inside Out, first, of course.)

Book description

Two hundred years in the future, with the Solar System in the hands of mega-corporations…
Tod Fox, commander of the Heloise, has delivered six rash volunteers to Triton, control centre of Ragnox Inc. But then he took one away again.
Now volunteers and crew face a new chapter in their lives, as human resources at the mercy of Ragnox Director, Jordan Pascal, or as allies of Pan, under Benedict Darke, the relentless enemy of the Triton regime.
Where will their allegiance lie? There is no middle ground in Arkadia. It is war. No mercy. Victory at any price.
Volume II of Salvage. Sequel to Inside Out.

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