Synopsis
Mission: Impossible meets The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet in this fun and fast-paced spy-fi adventure series featuring a tough yet conflicted secret agent, cloak and dagger intrigue, and a charming cast of alien characters.
When galactic danger calls, Agent Lilline Renault answers.
Strange signals pulse from an icy planet in a remote star system. Enter Lilline Renault, GAM-OPs secret agent extraordinaire. To ordinary citizens she’s Keely Larkin, an adventure company guide with a flair for the daring and a penchant for writing trite poetry.
When a terrifying link between high-tech entertainment and ancient cosmic forces rises, Lilline leaps into action. Verses flow as she rockets through space, dons cunning disguises, and infiltrates enemy territory with an arsenal of secret gadgets. To solve the mystery behind a dastardly plan means beating a mastermind at his own game. Lilline will need her best weapon to stand a fighting chance: her instinct.
Each Agent Renault Adventure is a standalone story – start anywhere in this award-winning series.
Review
This was a reread for me because I slacked about writing a review the first time around and because I thought it’d be fun to start over again before continuing the series. I do have to say that I switched from the audiobook to the ebook towards the end and am glad to have done so, because the narrator’s voice for the general narration of the story wasn’t my favorite. She is very monotone, which led to me being easily distracted by other things and sometimes missing some of the details. Her voices are great though. That part I really enjoyed! I just wish some of the emotions I heard in them had been reflected in the narration of the story itself too.
I’m a sucker for world building in scifi books and that was really fun here. Lately, I’ve especially liked stories that feature digital entertainment and worlds to live in recently, so this book fit into that as well and used it in a cool way. I liked the variety of races, the various strengths and weaknesses that were used in different ways throughout the story, though I would’ve liked to dive a little more deeply into learning about them.
The characters were interesting and I enjoyed learning about them. While poetry isn’t really my thing and I didn’t care too much for those aspects on their own (thought I do wonder if part of that was the narrator’s lack of emotion for some of the poems?), I did like that the MC had something unrelated to her job that was so important to her. It definitely added another layer to her character so she wasn’t just this super spy that was only passionate about her job.
I can’t always comment on writing style when I listen to a book because I admit that it just doesn’t stand out to me as much then, but since I switched to the ebook here, I’m happy to say that it felt really smooth and easy to read. While the plot did feel a little predictable here and there, overall I enjoyed it and the pages at the end just melted away. I was done in no time because I was so glued to the story then. The only thing that stood out was the use of second person in some of the chapters. I’m not 100% sure I understand the need for it and it threw me off a bit sometimes. Nevertheless though, I enjoyed myself and am looking forward to continuing with the series.
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