Brought to you by OBS reviewer Marie-Reine

*Beware of possible Spoilers*

Gage Brassan, A.K.A. the Hunter, is a successful assassin. He has a reputation for being the best at what he does and gets paid well. He brushes elbows with the elite—mostly when he is commissioned to shoot one of them—and the bottom dwellers of the various planets he visits. But his interstellar business dealings are halted by a confluence of bad luck. His conscience acts upon his last job, an ex-girlfriend sets him up, and then a massacre he witnessed as a soldier rises to haunt him. Along the way, he has the help of several old friends, like the sister of a fallen brother in arms, and makes new ones, like the Rigian street urchin Jak. He sets out to settle old debts and after waiting six long years, nothing will stand in his way to getting to the truth.

At his initial introduction, Gage Brassan seems to be a hardened criminal with well-honed killing skills. He curses frequently, drinks hard liquor and can size up any man in seconds. However, beneath the hard surface lie secrets that have remained unanswered for years, and memories of his fellow soldiers being massacred during an assignment on Andros Prime.  Most importantly, the death of his close friend and member of his team, Danny Travis, haunts him. While not being revolutionary thematically, these traumas give Gage an impetus for moving forward throughout the book and give him emotional depth. And it helps to prove this character was once an honorable man with ambition, thus enabling the reader to more easily sympathize with his violent choices. Otherwise, the high body count achieved by the hero in this book would seem somewhat psychotic rather than justified.

As for the science fiction elements, the author, S.L. Partington, mostly keeps to the conventions of the genre—space stations, laser guns, strange new drugs. There is a governing body, the Galactic Federation, but planets act under their own governments within the Federation. Some are rife with corruption and crime, like Rigis Prime where Gage is at the beginning of the novel, others are war-torn like the Androsian system. But to classify this book as straight science fiction would be a mistake. In fact, this novel is more of a future noir, and Partington ably weaves in such elements as first-person narration, femme fatales, seedy crime lords, and urbanized settings. Partington constructs a complex narrative, with many intersecting characters and plot points. This is also a noir element, but she utilizes it much less successfully. The separate plot points, Gage’s different adventures, end up making the overall plot choppy and disjointed until Partington finally joins them to create a somewhat predictable finale.

Despite some of its plot dysfunctions, this is an entertaining book. Violent and just raunchy enough, this book offers readers sci-fi themes with a great mix of noir. Due to the language and some material, this book is best suited for adults, especially those who love interstellar adventures.