Astrid Amara - Song of the Navigator

Tover Duke’s rare ability to move anything instantly across light-years of space makes him a powerful, valuable asset to the Harmony Corporation, and a rock star among the people of the colonies. His life is luxurious. Safe. Routine.
He has his pick of casual hookups passing through Dadelus-Kaku Station. His one brush with danger of any kind—the only bright spot in his otherwise boring life—is Cruz Arcadio, a dark-haired, hard-bodied engineer whose physical prowess hints he’s something much more.
When a terrorist abducts Tover, hurling him into a world of torture, exploitation and betrayal, it’s with shattering disbelief that he realizes his kidnapper is none other than Cruz. As Tover struggles to find the courage to escape his bondage, he begins to understand the only way to free his body, his mind—and his heart—is to trust the one man who showed him that everything about his once-perfect life was a lie.

Comment: One of my favorite m/m books was written by Astrid Amara. I've read it a long time ago but from then on decided to check other books by the author and this one got on my radar some time ago as well.

In this sci-fi book, we follow main character Tover Duke, a "navigator". In the future of planetary travel and such, navigators are prized individuals for they can create a sort of orbit and sing a transport, whether of themselves or of goods, from one place to another very quickly. This is an economical feature that many rich companies desire.

Tover, therefore, works for Harmony, a company that has the financial monopoly in the area where the story is set. They can also provide Tover with the technology necessary to make his work easier and he is well paid and respected by everyone for his work.

One day he is kidnapped, then tortured and as worse as finding the lover he was falling for is his abductor, is the discovery that his life is based on a lie and Harmony isn't as clean and fair as he and everyone else seems to think...

This story had interesting elements, that for certain. In the world of sci-fi, the differences between planets, their inhabits, regulations and all kinds of prejudices aren't that difficult to accept, since it only reflects what happens anyway in other genres with class/status/financial differences.

The "old" dichotomy of too good to be true vs apparently not good enough is classic and the main notion the author wanted to convey here, with the company Harmony seemingly a great good for all but hiding some obscure decisions which would cause harm for many as well while the planet Carida seemed poor and with terrorist inhabitants but hiding a fight for survival.

Disguising this, we have Tover, the main character and whose POV we follow, going through a terrible ordeal, both because of the torture he suffers and also because he learns the things he considered good and bad weren't as black and white as that and his fame wasn't as genuine as he always felt.

I think the idea and development of this story were good and what one would expect of a book with this message (perspective can be everything) but I have to say I wasn't as impressed by how the pace seemed to rush me, as the reader, through all the situations depicted and I didn't always feel the urgency of everything. I think if the plot were to be able to be developed into a longer period, if it could be worked out in a way that would indicate things were changing at a slower pace, many things would also have been more believable.

I comment on this for a simple reason. Although all things happened in a way that made sense for the type of setting and world created, it did feel a little rushed.

The same with the romance, after all we are told Tover and his lover Cruz had hooked up enough times in the past that - by Tover's POV - we get to realize they might be more than just friends with benefits. The issue is that even apart from the whole abduction situation, I don't think we have enough evidence they were really in sync. From the moment Cruz abducts Tover and the torture that followed at the hands of other guys Cruz wasn't aware of, the dynamics simply had to change anyway.

I think some violence and torture weren't necessary but at the same time, those scenes weren't prolonged nor exploited for how much pain Tover was in. We know this but thankfully, he quickly moved on to other scenes. But you see, in a way, this links with the issue of how rushed things are. It's as if some scenes just move, move, move and we don't have enough time nor emotional connection to infer what it must really be for Tover.

I should also say Tover's POV limited things a bit, in how much impact the story had.

The whole "fight against the system" was also a little poorly presented over having just one POV.

All these things said, the story was good enough but it wasn't as spectacular as it could, for the type of plot we have. I ended up being glad, though, that Tover found his HEA and that his fate wasn't solved as if by magic. We are aware he still had problems and his future might still have some danger but it was good to sense he found good things, even among all the bad stuff from his ordeal.

Grade: 7/10