Review Tuesday: Escapee by Edward Hoornaert - #ReviewTuesday #ScienceFiction #Romance

Escapee by Edward Hoornaert

Amazon KDP, 2018

Catt Sayer’s battered airship – won in a poker game - is all she owns. Keeping it running so she can deliver supplies to the miners on desolate Banff takes all the resourcefulness she and her android pilot Lance can muster. Still she’s grateful to have escaped from the colonial overlords on her home planet, where she’d been forced into the role of mistress to a cruel and overbearing member of the aristocracy. Catt’s business isn’t strictly legal, but there’s nobody else crazy enough – or skillful enough – to pilot a fragile airship through Banff’s ferocious storms and unpredictable volcanic eruptions. Most important, as captain of the Escapee, she’s free to chart her own course through life.

Hector Dukelsky hates the military, but family loyalty made it impossible for him to avoid that despised career. As an officer, he’s responsible for the well-being the soldiers under his command. When every one of his men is slaughtered in a vicious Proxie invasion of Banff, he’s almost ready to take his own life. The only thing that keeps him going is the prospect of avenging them. He’s determined to use whatever resources he can muster to do just that – including Catt and her ship – despite the fact that they both know an attack on the enemy base is essentially a suicide mission.

Escapee has all the familiar elements that make a book by Ed Hoornaert fun: a clever, courageous heroine; a gallant but damaged hero; humorous, sometimes snarky, dialogue; extraterrestrial pets; danger and suspense; and of course a gradually developing romance with plenty of erotic heat, which the author somehow manages to convey without resorting to any sort of sexually explicit language. However, Escapee stands out for me as one of Mr. Hoornaert’s most creative works (among the tales that I’ve read), largely because of the vividly imagined and masterfully described setting. Banff, a planetoid in the process of falling into its sun, is literally being torn apart by gravitational forces. It offers such an incredibly harsh and inimical environment that only greed for its mineral resources could possibly justify human occupation.

A significant part of the story is devoted to Catt’s and Hector’s desperate journey across Banff’s ravaged planet-scape, in a crippled ship, with non-functioning sensors, a deteriorating robot pilot and worst of all (from my perspective), a dwindling supply of water. Mr. Hoornaert brings this epic trip to awful life – to the point that I couldn’t read the book without feeling horribly thirsty!

Another high point of this novel is the character of the android Lance. Somehow the author manages to make him believable as both a machine and a person. Catt’s subtle relationship with him – and his with her – provide a surprising emotional depth. When Lance sacrifices himself for the sake of the mission, I almost got weepy

 

Finally, the tale includes a simultaneously funny and threatening antagonist, in the form of the Proxie fighter pilot that Catt and Hector rescue from his crashed ship. I don’t want to spoil the story by telling you more, but their prisoner of war adds significant complexity to the tale.

Overall, I really enjoyed Escapee. It has flashes of creative brilliance even as it follows the typical pattern of Hoornaert’s sci fi romance. Certainly if you’ve liked other books by Edward Hoornaert, you’ll love this one.