Chilling Effect

A Novel

By: Valerie Valdes

Narrated by: Almarie Guerra

A hilarious, offbeat debut space opera that skewers everything from pop culture to video games and features an irresistible foul-mouthed captain and her motley crew, strange life forms, exciting twists, and a galaxy full of fun and adventure.

Captain Eva Innocente and the crew of La Sirena Negra cruise the galaxy delivering small cargo for even smaller profits. When her sister Mari is kidnapped by The Fridge, a shadowy syndicate that holds people hostage in cryostasis, Eva must undergo a series of unpleasant, 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 after she rejects his advances, and her sweet 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.

©2019 Valerie Valdes (P)2019 HarperAudio

I think I'm being generous 🤔

Wish I could say I loved it , and really wanted to .... but .... a little too much cursing in English and in Spanish 😕 and not pleased with the sexual exploits " kinda freaky " NOT AT ALL WHAT I'D EXPECTED FROM THE COVER AND THE SAMPLE ! The narration was done well and going to give it more of a chance because of it .. I'm half way through ... but really don't think my rating will change ..

Slow start that picks up

I originally started this book because I was excited to see a latinx presence in sci-fi. I was not disapointed with the representation in the book, and there is not so much spanish used that you can't figure out by tone and context what is being said. The story does meander a bit at the start, but it does eventually take off and is very engaging once it does. I wanted to know what happened to the captain, her family, the crew, the cats, etc. It's worth the read if you're okay with a slower start to the real story.

Favorite

Biased, the author is a friend. That said, I loved the story and the narration. I've listened to this audiobook up there with Prisoner of Azkaban. excited for second book coming out next month. : )

decent story just know draw

it's a fun story, interesting take but it was hard for me to get through. not enough character build up to actually get me engaged but like I said decent story.

No real point

Despite 14 hours of audio, there’s really no concerted plot. It goes from one quest to another but nothing that really motivates you to keep listening. It’s much like a transformers movie: lots of action but no real point. At no time did I get invested in any of the characters enough to care what happened. The quests are all shallow and contrived and only result in another quest that’s barely related. Finally, the dialogue is mostly one liners and sarcasm without much thought. It’s not the worst I’ve listened to but barely average.

Love it!

Super fun space opera with excellent characters and crazy plot twists. This would be a good movie. The reader rocks this gig!

Pretty Solid listen

Overall this book is pretty good. You can find a bunch of parallels to other Sci-Fi influences in the story so it's pretty easy to relate to the world and the characters. My biggest issue is you could tell some story beats are coming and how they would play out and the end seemed to drag for me a bit. Not a game changer but its there. As for the other reviewer that was pointing out "Some foreign language", Clearly this character is speaking Spanish. I've never spoken it in my life but I was able to gather what was going on and what the gist was. I chock that up to the Awesome Narration.

Hilarious!

I saw previous reviews questioning the humor - I found it hilarious! What people find funny is often subjective so I suggest listening to the sample and purchasing it if you find it amusing. Solid story and great character building - I like the characters and am invested in their fates. I read mass amounts of Sci-Fi and it was great to hear a different voice in this genre. Narrator is perfect! I continued the series and am eagerly waiting for the next installment.

Couldn’t finish

The characters should’ve been interesting, but they just fell flat and didn’t develop. Talked to a friend who read the whole thing, and she said it didn’t get better. I gave up.

basic fun

It was alright. I tend to prefer my sci fi either much meatier, or much funnier. This was a cute, light adventure, with aliens that look/smell whacky, but basically all behave like humans, and humans that behave predictably but entertainingly.

*vague spoiler* I was a little disappointed by the ending--the main character's conflict with a major criminal organization was never really resolved, so I guess this means sequel? Jury is still out on whether I will be picking that up.