Synopsis
When Skyla left the Navy, she thought she would never look back. That’s until a strange virus disables her best friend and bonded ship, stranding them on a space station at the edge of UTA space run by the arrogant Commander Hinata Azai.
Hinata was exiled for his failures, and while he would do anything to regain his honor, he can’t help but bend the rules when it comes to the mysterious woman he has plucked from the stars.
While Hinata works to unravel the mystery of the woman on his station, and Skyla works to restore her ship, neither can fathom the conspiracy they’ve found themselves at the center of until it is too late.
The fate of humanity rests in the hands of a rogue running from her past and a commander exiled for his failures in this action-packed space opera romance with a swoon worthy slow burn set 10,000 years after Earth in a time where pilots are bonded with their sentient starships for life and a signal in the void threatens to destroy everything.
Review
“He wasn’t sure who he could trust and, for now, it worked in his favour to be a ghost.”
I was in the mood for something different and although a few people had recommended this one to me I didn’t know too much about it, picking it up from my reading pile pretty much on a whim. I prefer to go into a book knowing as little as possible about it, and this sci-fi space opera really surprised me. I was pretty much hooked from the start and things stayed that way right until the end.
Umbra is a story set in the far future after Earth became uninhabitable and humanity had to escape into the stars. After millennia living as nomads, humans have now settled once more on various planets and space stations, working together under the United Tribal Axis. However, events are beginning to unfold which places everything they have built at risk.
This is a story with very little fat, whipping along at a great pace with strong action scenes, spectacular space battles and snarky sentient ships bonded with their pilot, all weaved together alongside a politically driven plot. We also have the classic enemies to lovers trope. I’m not someone who picks up a book for romance but I thought this was handled well, since there was plenty going on in the wider story and it was done with enough of a slow burn for it to be credible.
The main characters all have military backgrounds, either as current or former officers of the United Tribal Axis Navy. Skyla has left her illustrious career behind to explore uncharted regions of space, hauling back any ancient technology she might find to sell to the highest bidder. The other points of view are provided my Commander Hinata and Admiral Freyja, longstanding rivals competing against each other for advancement in the navy.
In this world, political ambitions are played out through the military as much as they are in the senate, and high-ranking navy officers tend to come from privileged backgrounds, their status tied to the power of those sponsoring them. Skylar and Hinata are both children of senators, whilst Freyja is the self-styled Empress’ daughter. If I have one criticism of this book it’s that the various parental figures are either perfect and idolised or hateful and feared, with nothing in between. However, the rest of the cast is nicely fleshed out, which also reflects Toro’s attention to detail in the world she has created. There’s a lot of depth here, and Toro displays great skill in slowly revealing the crucial details in a way that doesn’t overwhelm the reader/listener. In this world we experience a cultural melting pot, with fashions and technology very different on the various planets, depending on how remote they are from the central worlds.
I listened to the audiobook version, which has two narrators, Megan Carver and Benjamin Farmer. I liked that creative choice, with Carver performing Skylar and Freyja, whilst Farmer voices Hinata. This extra layer helps keep the story engaging and adds further depth, with both narrators voicing each of the various characters at different times. I can only imagine how hard it must have been for them to perform them all with such remarkable consistency, but they pull it off amazingly well, to the extent I stopped noticing the switch after a while.
This book also has nice short chapters, which keep you listening to ‘just one more’ time and again. I thought the first half of Umbra was good. The second half, when the storylines begin to join up, was absolutely awesome, at which point this novel became unputdownable and I quickly raced through the whole thing. In Umbra Toro makes use of a number of well-established sci-fi and romance tropes. There are lots of elements here that will be familiar to sci-fi fans who enjoy shows like The Expanse or Battlestar Galactica or the writing of Iain M Banks or Gareth L Powell. Yet despite that sense of familiarity, Toro does what all good writers do, making this story her own. I had huge fun with this book and Toro is a writer I plan to read a lot more of in the future.
Leave a Reply