Perdition
The prison ship Perdition, a floating city where the Conglomerate’s most dangerous criminals are confined for life, orbits endlessly around a barren asteroid.
Life inside is even more bleak. Hailed as the Dread Queen, inmate Dresdemona “Dred” Devos controls one of Perdition’s six territories, bordered on both sides by would-be kings eager to challenge her claim. Keeping them at bay requires constant vigilance, as well as a steady influx of new recruits to replace the fallen. Survival is a constant battle, and death is the only escape.
Of the newest convicts, only one is worth Dred’s attention. The mercenary Jael, with his deadly gaze and attitude, may be the most dangerous criminal onboard. His combat skill could give her the edge she needs, if he doesn’t betray her first. Unfortunately, that’s what he does best. Winning Jael’s allegiance will be a challenge, but failure could be worse than death…
What happened?! I loved the Sirantha Jax Series, as in I read all 6 books in the series in just a few weeks type of love. So when I heard Ann Aguirre was starting another series in the same universe as the Sirantha Jax books, I was thrilled. I couldn’t wait for the release.
The release date came, I bought it, and started reading it immediately. The first few chapters were fine and I was intrigued to read on, but then it got bad. Real bad. The writing became odd. I kept finding all sorts of weird sentences, bad word choices, and repetition of certain sayings (ex: “like a hawk” – way, way over used). And that was just the writing.
The story plummeted into scuzzville. I wanted to shower after reading it. The scenes became increasingly violent, something I wasn’t expecting since the Sirantha Jax series was not violent. There was fighting but I wouldn’t consider it R rated. Perdition was the equivalent of a B rated movie. Perhaps I should have known better, it is a story about the worst criminals in the universe on a ship in space with no guards. I started to skim over the bloody scenes because I didn’t care to read about it, those scenes didn’t make the story any better. Then two of the characters had these odd sexual encounters. No romance, at least not what I call romance.
I didn’t care about the characters either. Dred, the main character, is sold to the reader as a killer with a heart of gold. She’s really good at killing people, with no explanation of why. She has special abilities that allow her to see a person’s true nature. When she looks into a person’s mind and sees they do terrible things, then she kills them. One she got caught and they threw her in jail. On the ship, she wears chains for protection and they are considered her weapon of choice. She didn’t grow or improve, she just kept killing people to assert position on the shop. I couldn’t get into her character and I just stopped caring after awhile.
Jael is a character from one of the Sirantha Jax books. In book 3, he betrays the main characters (Jax and March), gets thrown in a terrible inescapable prison, and is never heard from again. Since he is a bad guy in that series and I was really surprised to see him show up here as the ‘romantic’ interest. I didn’t like him in the Jax series but I can say I liked him a little more in this series. His character improves, somewhat, throughout the book. He starts off as the selfish guy I knew from the other series, and then grows into someone with a little more honor. However, his character development is not enough to carry this book to anything above a 1 star rating.
When I finished, I was just grateful it was over. I probably would have stopped reading it if I didn’t care about meeting a book goal for the year. I have no plans to read the next book.
