Cat Rambo

Niko, Dabry, Skidoo, Gio, Lassite, Talon, and Thorn are people from a variety of species who escaped grueling military service by starting a restaurant together - one of the Holy professions - at the edge of the universe. Now they’re a different kind of crew! When the space station their restaurant is on gets blown up, they manage to escape on a state-of-the-art bioship named You Sexy Thing, who has a personality and opinions of her own. Her opinion is that she has been hijacked and so she’s taking them all directly to the space cops, but some space pirates have different plans.

A solid found-family space opera, though a bit less cozy than others. (Content warning: major character death) The writing here is a little jarring - interestingly the dedication of the book calls it “an omniscient point of view” but it isn’t - it’s a close third-person that switches between characters constantly, sometimes mid-paragraph. It can get annoying. The world-building is really messy in a fun way. There’s no way to untangle aliens from technology from magic from religion, so all you can do is go along with it. The plot has a lot less to do with cooking/foodie stuff than the marketing description would lead you to believe (and I wouldn’t have minded less, tbh). It’s not a perfect book but it’s a lot of fun and won me over and I enjoyed myself. I loved how gross the descriptions of the bioship were - she’s always absorbing things or making furniture out of her own flesh. I’m probably going to read more in the series just for her alone.

It does need to be said that You Sexy Thing is a terrible name for a ship and a terrible name for a book. It only exists to make a single joke about the 1975 song of the same name by the band Hot Chocolate, and is so annoying to talk about that even the characters in the book call her “the Thing” almost exclusively.… (plus d'informations)

The crew of You Sexy Thing is back set on warning the captains ex-lover that they are still very much in danger when they are stopped by a closed gate, the possibility of which was mere rumor. The have opened as a restaurant for the crews of the stranded or waiting ship while the person who may be able to open the gate in en route.
This was just too much thrown in the pot and characters with illusory agency as only a few the choices they make seem organic to the individual. Lots of grumping and grimacing and not much sense.… (plus d'informations)