TBR Challenge: Linnea Sinclair - Finders Keepers

Independent trader Trilby Elliot is making some not-quite-legal modifications to her starfreighter, when an unexpected visitor falls out of space. Literally. He’s crashed onto the uninhabited planet of Avanar in a crippled ’Sko fighter–the last place you’d expect to find a Zafharin military officer because the ’Sko and the Zafharin have been at war as long as Trilby can remember.
Rhis Vanur is your typically arrogant Zafharin. But to Trilby’s surprise, he doesn’t look down on her or her slapdash ship. Still, Trilby’s learned the hard way that even though she found Rhis, she can’t keep him. She’s just a low-budget jump jockey as far as men like him are concerned. She’s not falling for his offer to help…until Port Rumor reports her best friend missing and Trilby learns that the ’Sko are hunting both her and Rhis. Now they’re in it together for better, for worse–or till death blasts them to oblivion....

Comment: It's time for another TBR Challenge read and this month the theme was "kicking it old school", basically meaning a book with at least 10 years publication. As it happened with many other readers, this is always a theme I can easily choose something because there's a lot to pick from within the TBR pile and many of the books aren't that young.

My choice is a book by Linnea Sinclair, whose work I like. This book was first published in 2002 although my own copy is from 2005. In either case, it has been more than 10 years since it was originally published.

In this story we meet Trilby Elliott, an independent trader who is alone in a remote planet, doing some work on her ship, basically adding some details which could be considered illegal in some places. Completely unexpected, something happens and she rescues a man from a dangerous zone of the planet, simply to get scared she might have made a mistake when the man regains his senses and she realizes he's from the other side of the galaxy, therefore not from the same area as she is. He tries to overpower her but they soon realize if they work together, they can lave quicker and he can return to where he is needed, no harm, no foul. The problem is the closes space brings them together in ore ways than one and even the future of the galaxy might be a subject to worry about...

I liked that the author tried to include some class differences in the characters of Trilby and Rhys. Clearly, they come from two different backgrounds and are seen as different people when it comes to their importance in society. Although this didn't define who they were to one another, obviously the reader is supposed to see not only the unlikeliness of their relationship in different settings but also the even more impressive decision of their HEA at the end. Personally, this seemed quite evident to me but I still appreciated how they decided to be together anyway.

I think, though, that the way they have fallen in love feels a little too weak, consistency related, because it happened too fast in my opinion.

The plot, as it often happens with books by the author, is set in a alternative reality of a sci-fi scenario. It's quite interesting to see on the page the imagination of not only the situations related to the plot but the whole setting which comes from the authors imagination. There is so much detail, so many little features and descriptions it has to be some sort of notion which the author tried to bring to life. This is not a plot where we just assume known things, it's like a whole new world presented from scratch (loosely based on existing things if one does think about it for a while) but while still letting the reader imagining in their own way how things could possibly be. I like this aspect of the author's work a lot, even if there are some consistency mistakes or some confusing content sometimes.

This is not a perfect book, nor a perfect romance but I think it does offer that escapism feeling one often considers when reading fiction, especially something so unlike the reality around us.

The plot is complex enough and I think some things weren't as easy to grasp but since this was one of the first books by the author, she has improved a lot with time.

There are some situations which I also think weren't as appealing, namely the need to have obvious villains and caricatural figures to highlight the goodness in others but that can be seen as just a personal preference, I guess. I'd also have preferred some details to be more obvious solved but leaving it in our imagination works too...

All in all, this was a good enough book, a fascinating story, amazing details and elements, a romance interesting enough because both Rhys and Trilby's personalities were intriguing but I've read better by mrs Sinclair. I will keep reading her work anyway, though, but I wouldn't say this is the book to really make a reader fall in love with her writing style and "voice".

Grade: 7/10