Synopsis
Sci-Fi Adventure with a sense of humor!
A smuggler, a stowaway slave, and a pirate find themselves on a collision course deep in the no-man’s-land of space, tracking a mystery that’s centuries old.
Maurice “Moss” Foote is down to his last hundred credits, which he needs to get his old ship back and start over. Again. But then, Moss is so familiar with rock bottom he has his mail forwarded there.
Hel was born a slave, or maybe she wasn’t. It’s confusing, just like the compulsion that keeps her building… something. When she sees an opportunity to escape aboard a ship, she takes it, not realizing the trouble she’s in for.
Roy “Hellno” Herzog is a pirate who prefers to work alone. Now he’s got a lead on a prize so big it could set him up for life, if he can stomach working with other people. All he has to do is track down one runaway slave.
“An action-packed space romp with a dry sense of humor that will appeal to fans of The Orville who wish that show was more like Firefly.”—Marcus Alexander Hart of the Galaxy Cruise series
Review
LOST SOULS by Noah Chinn is a fantastic cozy space opera that manages to thread the needle between comedy and adventure fiction. I think far too much science fiction takes itself way too seriously and we don’t get to appreciate the smaller storylines. In this case, Lost Souls avoids the usual huge mile-long ships and epic plots for something much smaller scale and works for it.
The peculiarly named Maurice “Moss” Foote is a roguish trader who lives in the far future. A former corporate mascott, he tanked his career after growing sick of being used to promote misinformation about both the frontier as well as space travel. Traveling with his ship AI, Violet, he struggles to make ends meet even as he digs himself deeper with crime lords as well as other less than reputable figures. He’s less Han Solo than Wonder Man of all people, being the sort of guy who is as much failed actor as intrepid space explorer.
Moss’ life takes a different turn when he encounters a runaway slave named Hel that is deep in debt but possessed of surprising mechanical skill. Forming a peculiar found family, they soon find themselves searching for a lost generation ship and afoul of a powerful transhuman military junta called the Protectorate. In the future, natural born humans or Freeborn are enslaved to the genetically engineered supersoldier elite who blame them for the destruction of Earth.
Wackiness ensues.
I love the world that Noah Chinn has created as it is well-developed with a lot of interesting concepts but also simple enough that you’ll never be lost with its politics or geography. There’s the Protectorate, outside the Protectorate, space pirates, and the Order (more of them later). Too many books get bogged down in the details that they lose the appeal of a Star Wars opening crawl’s worth of simplicity (Empire bad, Rebellion good).
Lost Souls is not afraid to take itself less than seriously with some space opera tropes being played straight despite its somewhat harder science fiction than most. For example, one funny bit is Moss making fun of pre-space travel science fiction concept of aliens looking human. Then commenting that the vast majority of aliens looked human despite it making no sense.
Overall, Lost Souls is a fun book and I think if you’re looking for an easy afternoon’s read then you could do a lot worse. It is bound to appeal to fans of things like Firefly, Farscape, or Killjoys. I also give the author props for utilizing the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy method of including encyclopedia entries at the start of each chapter, usually with some sardonic observation about the galaxy.
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