Publisher - Angry Robot

Published - Out Now

Price - £9.99 paperback £4.19 Kindle eBook

Lesbian gunslinger fights spies in space! Three factions vie for control of the galaxy. Rig, a gunslinging, thieving, rebel with a cause, doesn't give a damn about them and she hasn't looked back since abandoning her faction three years ago. That is, until her former faction sends her a message: return what she stole from them, or they'll kill her twin sister. Rig embarks on a journey across the galaxy to save her sister - but for once she's not alone. She has help from her network of resistance contacts, her taser-wielding librarian girlfriend, and a mysterious bounty hunter. If Rig fails and her former faction finds what she stole from them, trillions of lives will be lost--including her sister's. But if she succeeds, she might just pull the whole damn faction system down around their ears. Either way, she's going to do it with panache and pizzazz.

Genre is really always a spectrum contains multitudes of stories. Science Fiction can cover tales of horror, romance, politics and just good old adventure. You can even find tales that do all of the above. I think the mistake sone critics of genre think is they assume one facet of the genre jewel is the entirety of the subject. It’s much wider and stranger than many know - that’s why I love to read and blog about it. Looking at Bluebird by Ciel Pierlot I have a book I end up looking at with two pairs of eyes and I got a frustratingly mixed response to it from both.

In the far future the galaxy is struggling with three factions (and really empires) and they care little upon the impact on peopel leading to huge refugee problems. Rig a former weapons designer has turned people smuggler rescuing people and taking them to safe harbours and also on the run with powerful weapon schematics. On one errand she meets the enigmatic but skilled warrior Glinka and very soon they’re facing secret intelligent agents and a lot of weapons. Rig, her librarian girlfriend June and Glinka are in trouble magnified when then find Rig’s estranged sister is hostage and now need to face down three empires to win.

Now the good news is this is very much a quick fun read. Pierlot is an engaging writer who understands how to keep a story moving. The action scenes are well constructed and the characters and banter are made to make you smile. You do care that they survive. It’s great to see a true stable sapphic relationship between Rig and June - the little snippets we see of them off mission are heartwarming. This is very much a book when you just want a solid pick me up you can get into a comfy chair and have fun for a few hours. I think any readers who enjoy good action adventures will have a smile on their face.

But this is where I start to look at it as someone who reads a lot in this genre and I can see a lot of influences being worn on their sleeve. This has lots of touches of shows like Farscape, Firefly and Final Fantasy in the mix it’s very much a tale coming out of those influences and I here I struggle to not see the joins. That’s never a bad thing no story is never without an influence - I’m a Doctor Who fan and that shows steals from everything! But the main issue for me is I never found much originality in this story. The world feels shallow; the storyline is very much one we have seen before and even the banter feels paying homage to many other such dysfunctional crews. Bluebird never really made me feel what itself has to offer. Reading it in a category for best SF I am struggling to see what it has brought to the table that I could not find in many other similar books each year.

So on that basis. If you’re looking for a light and engaging story then Bluebird will work very neatly for you. I just suspect it will not stand out over the months after you read it. For me it’s a hope that having been able to pay tribute to the past that this story does that Pierlot is now ready to bring a little bit more to the next story to be told; but from a Subjective Chaos point of view this tale never gets out of third gear for me and so not going to likely get my vote.