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I’ve been in a ships-in-space mood for quite a while, leading me to different corners of the galaxy. I gave a shot to the mystery spacefarers, then the romantic ones, and even the occasional dash of horror. Fearless sounded like it would fit more into the horror–an emergency ship responds to a distress signal from a freighter with unknown cargo, and enroute to the distressed ship, a crew member is murdered (I mean, with a title like Fearless, one expects something to be fearful of, right?)

“Automated distress signal from a freighter just outside our navigation plot. It’s the Hercules. She’s three days out of Phobos Station.”

Alas; great set up, choppy execution. Multiple point of views for unclear reasons, limited character depth, and a wild sequence of escalation events all contribute to the uneven experience.

“This is how we work. Most of our time is spent moving between spaces, operating computer systems, making decisions… There’re six vessels like ours, patrolling the trade lanes, too few to make space safe, but enough to make a difference.”

The captain of the ship, Captain Shann, is a woman born without legs, who long ago realized that zero-gravity and space suits fit her physical being well. I was interested in her perspective on living with an obvious physical disability, but her first-person narrative is periodically interrupted with single chapters from her ambitious officer, April Johansson; the notably less ambitious crewmember, Engineer Sellis; and occasional historical missives. The primary narrative interspersed with two other snapshot viewpoints isn’t my favorite device, and here I found myself wondering why they were included. Johansson doesn’t achieve much difference between Shann (the heavy mantle of command) and Johansson (rising the ranks). Sellis, on the other hand, is likely supposed to add to the plot tension and humanize the opposition.

Well, things continue to happen; there are lots of twists: perhaps too many for this story. The Captain and crew are terrible at running any kind of murder investigation (or was it an accident?). Suspicion falls easily and early on one individual, and at one point, when a different person confesses with self-justification, the Captain easily accepts their story. In fact, her response is, “You’ve taken a life,” I say. “That’s a hard thing to deal with,” before letting them go about their job duties.

This highly-trained crew of twenty-five also struggle when they are fired upon:

“Fleet’s ships are equipped with weapons, but all the scenarios in which they’ve been deployed have involved encounters with asteroids, or stray debris. In those situations, we’d fire a guided rocket at range, or in close quarters we’d warm up the ship’s laser. Any situation we’ve dealt with has involved an adversary that doesn’t fire back.”

I mean, I guess? Back in the day, rescuers used to run into emergency response scenes without due diligence for scene safety, but somehow, I feel after numerous ambush situations, anyone professionally equipped with weapons gets some sort of tactical training. It just felt contrived, which sums up most of my reaction to the story. ‘The solution is this’ one crew member says, only to have something happen why that won’t work. ‘Now we’ll do this’ another person says, only to be reminded that they only have so much fuel for getting to safety. Some of the ‘twists’ rely on information that is only revealed with then twist happens, so a major plot point becomes diluted with explanation. Emotionally, it leaves the reader reeling as we are supposed to be reacting to dead bodies, a derelict hip, fuel issues, oxygen issues, and universe politics with the same urgency. Instead of ratcheting up tension, it just defuses it.

“There is a power in blind ignorance. A power of possibility that we feed with our imaginations, our speculation and our fear. Planning, strategising, preparing, anticipating.”

Um, yeah. The language tends to be matter-of-fact, often dialogue oriented. The inner musings are diffuse and prone to general ruminations on the universe and the nature of man. There are some flashbacks, but really, not a lot of description. In fact, there is a remarkable absence of fear for a story called ‘Fearless.’ Perhaps it’s a joke?  Maybe fearful of initiative? Command?

“They said war never leaves you. Once you’ve been there, forced to choose your life over someone else’s, your life changes. There’s a clarity that comes with making that kind of choice, a framing in your mind that makes everything binary – good and evil, right or wrong.”

Except I can’t recall where we were at war? It’s an awkward rumination that doesn’t land under the parameters of the story.

Many readers protest a cliff-hanger ending. Technically, I suppose it is a cliffhanger, but since there were so many situations and twists, most of the immediate plots were resolved with who did what (although not always why). I might have just been relieve to have finished the book. The good news is that all three books of the trilogy are out. The bad news is that with under a hundred ratings each, most of those reviews will be enthusiasts or friends of the author. Well, fortune favors the bold, right into the abyss.