One of our faithful readers and a fellow blogger, Shannon C, has also reviewed Grimspace by Ann Aguirre, released by Ace 26 Feb 08.  Shannon also has an author interview, with PRIZES.

Here’s an excerpt of Shannon’s review:

My Thoughts: I’m not terribly easy to please. (Shut up! allow me this moment, OK?). And I’ll read just about anything, although when I got into grown up books, my first love was science fiction and fantasy. I loved the idea of exploring interstellar space, of people with unusual abilities dealing with new lifeforms, and imagining what cultures we’d develop in the far future. In fact, as I’ve mentioned before, if anything, I’m still a romance newbie. So I really like it when my two loves are brought together–a good science fiction romance will make my day.

Ann Aguirre’s Grimspace is a good science fiction romance. I admit to not having read too widely in this particular subgenre yet, but I would have to say that the balance between the romance and the sci-fi elements is pretty much flawless. There are a few science fiction cliches–the resemblance to Firefly is hard to miss, but hey, I like Firefly. (Mmm… Jayne and his guns… Oops, I digress.) I have a few other guesses about Aguirre’s influences, but hey, we’ll be having an interview with her posted up next week, so we’ll see if I’m right then.

So what specifically did I like about the SF elements, since that’s what I was talking about? Well, I liked that Aguirre created several believable alien races that struck me as sufficiently other than human. I liked that she’s obviously thought a lot about how stuff works in her world, and she manages to articulate it without going into clunky technobabble. In fact, I really would love to explore this universe further, and I’m excited to find out that apparently there is a sequel planned, because there are so many possibilities that she could take the story.

As for the romance, it’s wonderful! Both Jax and March, our hero, are very broken individuals. They’re not all clean and perfect by the time the book is finished either, and there was no healing magical sexx0ring for either of them. They’ve still got some working through of stuff to do, but I get the sense that they will manage it.

I loved Jax. She’s my favorite type of…

Go here to read the rest of Shannon’s thoughts.

You can also read Loonigrrl’s TGTBTU review here.