Chilling Effect, the blurb:
Captain Eva Innocente and the crew of La Sirena Negra cruise the galaxy delivering small cargo for even smaller profits. When her sister is kidnapped, Eva must undergo a series of dangerous missions to pay the ransom. But Eva may lose her mind before she can raise the money. The ship’s hold is full of psychic cats, an amorous fish-faced emperor wants her dead, and her engineer is giving her a pesky case of feelings. The worse things get, the more she lies, raising suspicions and testing her loyalty to her found family.
To free her sister, Eva will risk everything: her crew, her ship, and the life she’s built on the ashes of her past misdeeds. But when the dominoes start to fall and she finds the real threat is greater than she imagined, she must decide whether to play it cool or burn it all down.
Chilling Effect, the Review
I was sold on Chilling Effect pretty much solely on the following two words: psychic cats.
Psychic cats sound all sorts of awesome. They’re are on the cover, too, with cute mini space helmets and everything. The story kicks off with these cats getting up to some mischief in the first chapter. And then… they suddenly stop being relevant?
So okay, yeah. I was a little disappointed at the shortage of the promised psychic cats. But there are plenty of other things that can make a book enjoyable, right? Chilling Effect is a space opera, so there’s a whole universe of fun and exciting possibilities it can take advantage of. And it does, to some extent.
Captain Eva Innocente of the La Sirena Negra is foul-mouthed, impulsive, aggressive, and prone to fits of sudden, ill-advised violence. She’s fun, even if she’s a bit of an asshole to her friends. But hey, her sister was just kidnapped, so let’s cut her some slack. There’s also an alien emperor who is pissed that Eva knocked back his offer of a position in his harem. Naturally, he therefore has to dedicate all of his resources to killing her. These intergalactic warlords are so sensitive.
All of the above combines to form an eclectic, chaotic cocktail of a story. It begins a little episodically, with chapter-length adventures that introduce us to the crew of La Sirena Negra. These early chapters also show that Eva is lying to her crew in order to try and rescue her sister. This is the main emotional note that this story tries to hit, but I have to admit it fell a little flat for me. We’re told that the crew are like family to Eva, but we never really see much of that. What we see is Eva lying to her subordinates a lot and occasionally feeling bad about it. Particularly if it’s that one cute alien crewmate she secretly wants to bang.
The kidnapping of Eva’s sister never really held much weight for me, either. We have no idea who her sister is as a person or what their relationship is like, so I personally found it a little hard to become invested. There are a few plot points like this. A source of conflict is introduced, explored at surface level, and then the story sorta has to rely on the inherent sympathy of the concept to get the reader invested. It can feel a little shallow at times, and I couldn’t help feeling that I’d have cared a lot more if we had more context. If we had a more personal understanding of what these consequences would mean to Eva.
But hey, then again, Eva isn’t the kind of person to dwell on her feelings, so why should her book? She’s the kind of person who shoots first, rhymes off a pithy Spanish one-liner, then shoots again. And her book reflects that. There are a lot of action scenes in Chilling Effect. A lot of grappling, some shooting, and a few grav boots to the face.
There are flashes of really interesting worldbuilding, too. On one adventure, Eva visits a planet that is home to cult-y parasites that make excellent booze. On another, she is issued an (easily misplaced) ID card that serves the purpose of telling the native population that she has “people” status, and so can’t be hunted for food. There’s a bunch of fun stuff like this, with some comedic moments thrown in and a few pop culture references.
So yeah. If the idea of a gunfire-filled sweary space adventure sounds good to you, then Chilling Effect may be the book you’re looking for. However, it just wasn’t the right book for me. I prefer more character development, things that play more heavily on the emotional notes, and a lot more psychic cats.
I received a copy of this book from the publisher in exchange for a fair and honest review. Thank you to Orbit Books for the review copy.
