Review: Blue Galaxy by Diane Dooley

Synopsis (Goodreads):

Javan Rhodes, the hard-drinking, disreputable captain of space freighter The Kypris, took a mission to save himself from hitting the bottom of the food chain. Transporting Sola, a beautiful young aristocrat, from Earth to an unknown destination on the outer rim of the colonies is lucrative, but also highly illegal.

As tough as it is to evade both the law and the lawless, the hardest part of the job is not falling in love with his irresistible cargo. Just as he decides that he will never be able to hand her over to the warlord she must marry, he discovers that Sola has been playing a very dangerous game—one that could not only cost them their lives, but could also affect the balance of power in an increasingly dangerous universe.

My Thoughts: I'm going to be honest here, I don't really know how I feel about this one.  On one hand, the idea behind it sounds cool - down on his luck space captain takes on a beautiful passenger who ends up being not as innocent as she seems.  On the other hand, the story felt like it was all over the place.  I never really got to know the characters enough to connect with them.  I almost think this was too much story for the length of book we were given.  Does that make sense?  I think this idea would have worked well as a full length novel where the characters could have been fleshed out a bit more and the action didn't move in fits and starts.

My biggest problem, character-wise, was that Sola went from a seemingly innocent young woman who was slowly falling in love with her escort to a ... well person who was completely opposite of that.  It was jarring to get to know her in one incarnation and then have her suddenly flip into this other side of herself.  Metaphorically speaking.  She's not suffering from multiple personality disorder or anything.  The point I'm trying to make is that I never really got a handle on her.  She simply changed too radically over the course of the story.

Javan was interesting but he fell in love with Sola too hard and fast.  That's not unheard of in short stories by any means but frankly I didn't feel the instantaneous attraction that makes the whole love at first sight thing work.

I didn't love the story but I didn't hate it.  It was okay.

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