The highly entertaining romp continues…
At the end of the first book in Beth Revis’ Chaotic Orbits series, Full Speed to a Crash Landing, we find out that protagonist Ada Lamarr is a galaxy-level expert in misdirection and dissimulation. And Ada’s somewhat illicit skills continue to get a mad – and highly entertaining – workout in the next book, How to Steal a Galaxy. Because it seems that, after a bit of back-and-forth with her clients from Crash Landing, she’s been hired again – this time to steal something at a high-society charity fundraiser hosted by the Museum of Intergalactic History on Rigel-Earth.
But what is she after? Is it the prized centerpiece of the benefit auction, the canopic chest made for the Pharaoh Tutankhamun, somehow still intact after thousands of years? A brick from the long-gone Great Wall of China? Feathers from the now-extinct North American bluebird? Even the supposedly not-for-sale original telephone from the Mission Control room for Apollo 11? Ava’s foe-in-chief and principal foil, the gorgeous and incorruptible (but slightly too naïve for his own good) Rian White, would dearly love to know. And he also would dearly like another kiss.
Of course, How to Steal a Galaxy wouldn’t be a true space opera without a villain, and the big baddie from Crash Landing, Storm Fetor, is suitably creepy and nasty. The evil Jarra have something going on too, which threatens to put paid to Ava’s plans before she even gets started. But eighteen rollicking chapters later, events at the Museum and in the book come to an end, and we get to find out what Ava was truly after. But perhaps not why she was after it, which seems to have been left for the final book in the series, Last Chance to Save the World, due out in April, 2025. And that is too many months away!
Finally, as always, my thanks to the publishers, DAW, and to NetGalley for the review copy. Oh yeah, and just as with Crash Landing, don’t forget to read the footnotes at the end…
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