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.
