Only Bad Options by Jennifer Estep: review

5/5 stars on Goodreads

 

Only Bad Options by Jennifer Estep

 

Jennifer Estep is a prolific writer of fantasy and urban fantasy, but Only Bad Options, Galactic Bonds 1, is her first sci-fi novel. It has action and some romance, but mostly it’s about the trauma of being abandoned and maybe finding someone to ease the loneliness with.

The world is a combination of science and magic, a collection of psionic abilities, where the latter complements the first, like in making new technological innovations. Humanity has spread all over the galaxy, there’s faster than light travel, and no non-human people. Everything is clean and technologically advanced, and if there’s suffering, it isn’t shown. Much of the world is derivative, but everything works within the framework of the book.

There is a constant war going on between aristocratic Regals who mostly have psionic abilities, a technological alliance no one knows anything about, and a third faction that mostly control the raw material like minerals. All the technological advancements are in the service of the war.

Vesper Quill is a developmental engineer working for a Regal family that manufactures weapons and spaceships for the ruler of the galaxy. She has some magic that helps her see how tech works, which she has put to a good use, only to have others steal her designs.

A spaceship has crashed and she’s the only one who knows it was because of a technical flaw in the design. When she tells the leader of the family the truth, she suddenly finds her neck deep in trouble on a war zone. Her only options are to die or to find an ally that is likeliest to survive.

Kyrion Coldren is a Regal and the leader of Arrows, the ruler’s special forces who fight with a combination of weapons and psionic abilities. He’s feared throughout the galaxy as the ruler’s assassin. When he’s injured in a battle, he finds himself being saved by Vesper, which forms a galactic bond between them—a connection between two people, romantic and non-romantic, both metaphysical and physical—a much desired but incredibly rare occurrence. And he instantly wants to break it, by killing Vesper if nothing else works.

Little by little, they form a truce and then alliance. She’ll help him figure out who tried to kill him, and he’ll help her to reveal the truth about the design flaw in the spaceships. After that, they’ll break the bond and go their separate ways. But nothing is ever as easy as that.

This was a great book with mature characters who had believable backstories and a lot of baggage. The romance was very slow, taking all the steps from enemies to neutrals and then friends, without quite reaching the lovers stage. That will hopefully happen in the latter books. The narrative was first person from the point of view of both Vesper and Kyrion, which gave a deeper insight into them. I liked both, separately and together.

There weren’t all that many side characters and only a couple of them had a meaningful role in the story. Bad guys were thoroughly bad, but there were a few characters that might have been either way, making them a bit more interesting.

The book was full of action, intrigue, and betrayals, some healing and a lot of self-discovery. It didn’t quite have the emotional impact that the best of Estep’s books have, but I’m sure that’ll change in the upcoming books. The ending was satisfying, but open enough for me to look forward to reading what happens next.