Name: Starship Repo
ISBN: 9781250302717

Patrick S. Tomlinson

Firstname Lastname is a no one with nowhere to go. With a name that is the result of an unfortnate clerical error and destined to be one of the only humans on an alien space station. That is until she sneaks aboard a ship and joins up with a crew of repomen (they are definitely not pirates). Now she's traveling the galaxy "recovering" ships. What could go wrong?

Starship Repo

Alexia Cambaling

I received a free copy of this book in exchange for an honest review. Many thanks to NetGalley and Tor Books!

Starship Repo is the story of a girl, who due to an unfortunate data entry error, is given the name Firstname Lastname. In an unfamiliar location. First thrives by doing a variety of odd jobs (or let’s just say cons) and she succeeds until she gets the attention of a repossession team whose job is to recover spaceships.

The book is told in a mostly episodic form revolving around all sorts of shenanigans the crew gets into and for the most part, it remains light-hearted and comedic in tone. However, there are moments wherein the differences between the crew can lead to some tension. By tension, I mean that there are hostile alien races and a first contact gone wrong scenario which happened off-screen and years prior to this book. I believe the details are in a book prior to this one which I haven’t read.

Still, I really enjoyed how the crew interacts with one another and how they grow to care for one another throughout the course of their adventures. It’s genuinely heartwarming seeing their characters evolve throughout the book and become like a real crew of people who aren’t just work colleagues, but also friends.

I also liked First as a character. Throughout the story, she goes on a lot of adventures- some with the crew, some on her own. One of the highlights of this is when she crashes into a concert by an Earth band who covers centuries-old song, which just happens to be late 20th century music. Scenes like this helps give a sense of time and progression in the world-building, while also helping build First’s character as a reckless but cunning teenaged girl.

As for the negatives, the world-building can be sometimes confusing. A lot of terms and names were thrown about, which leads to a lot of head-scratching. I will admit some of it can get hilarious, but for the most part, I wish we could have learned more about this world. There are also some pop culture references thrown about, both about human culture and alien culture. Personally, I’d love to learn about the alien culture more and I felt like it was kind of lacking there.

Besides that, the side characters also weren’t as fleshed out as I hoped they would be. The story really does primarily revolve around First and as such, she’s the most developed and well-rounded character.

Overall, I can recommend this book. I really enjoyed it and if you’re in the mood for some light-hearted, fast-paced sci-fi with no high stakes, then this book is for you.

This review is also on  The Bookworm Daydreamer