Reviewed by Chris
TITLE: Machine Metal Magic
SERIES: Mind + Machine #1
AUTHOR: Hanna Dare
PUBLISHER: Self-Published
LENGTH: 204 pages
RELEASE DATE: May 3, 2018
BLURB:
The galaxy’s a dangerous place. Best not to travel it alone.
It’s been over a century since the AIs rose up and attacked, driving humans from Earth and leaving them scattered across the galaxy. Humanity survives, but always fearful of the technology that allows them travel among the stars, never knowing when it may turn against them once more.
An interstellar fugitive.
For Jaime Bashir, born with the ability to communicate telepathically with computers, his gifts are more of a curse. They also make him a target. On the run, he finds himself among a starship crew, one transporting a mysterious cargo. Even more intriguing is Rylan, the muscled guard watching his every move. Jaime has no reason to trust him, but nowhere else to turn.
A disgraced ex-soldier.
Rylan Slate is looking to leave his past behind. Joining a crew of smugglers is one way to do it. But capturing Jaime is both an opportunity and a danger. He starts out as a prisoner, but then becomes something more, testing loyalties in ways Rylan never expected. Will regaining his honor mean betraying Jaime?
REVIEW:
This was one of those books where I got three chapters in and was convinced I was going to be severely underwhelmed by the story. As I got further into it, though, all the things that I was so sure were going to make this yet another unimaginative scifi book that took absolutely no risks got nicely swerved around and I was left with a story that left me rather satisfied and intrigued.
This book centers around a run-away tech “wizard” Jaime Bashir, who is trying to evade recapture from the government. The facility where he had grown up and been trained had recently been bombed, and Jaime was the sole survivor. Not trusting the government–mostly because he is not all that convinced that they weren’t the ones to cut their losses in the most expedient way possible–he took the chance to run away. Unfortunately life outside the the facility is not all shooting stars, what with not having any money and trying to evade not only the government who no doubts wants his ass back where they can control it, but a group of human “purests” who are not down with technology on the whole and wizards like Jaime in particular. They seem to think it is their duty to rid the universe of anyone who dared to mix human and technology in one body, and Jaime with his inherited ability to manipulate tech with only a quick thought of his mind is the epitome of everything they hate. His life gets even more complicated when he gets “volunteered” to help a group of smugglers. Smugglers who seem to have a very mysterious package to deliver.
I’ll admit that moment I came across the part of the book that mentioned Jaime having to run from the government vessel in pursuit of him, I sighed resignedly to myself. Because to be honest, I have had to read more than my fair share of Scifi and dystopian novels where the author gets so hung up on harping about the “evil government” that they forget to tell a compelling story. It’s why I don’t read dystopian stories anymore. I find it so absolutely unoriginal and boring. So, when I thought that this was going to be just yet another book set in the future that was going to spend its whole time beating the dead horse of “Lowly Man Fighting Off the Evil Government Overlords!!!”, I figured I was just going to have to get this book over with as soon as possible and then try to bury my disappointment in some other story. And yet the further in I got I started to see something well worth reading.
It is not without its flaws (I rolled my eyes so fucking hard at the “New Dark Ages”) but by halfway thru the story I was actually invested with the characters and their various subplots. I’m not sure most scifi-smuggler books can get away from the comparison–at least not from anyone in my generation–but this story has a very Firefly feel to it. And yet is doesn’t feel like a carbon copy or a badly hidden fanfiction-rewrite. It simply has a few of the elements from that show that I enjoyed so much (though Firefly did have the Evil Government plot line which, yeah, still is disappointing to me).
I like the comradery of the smugglers. I enjoy how easy the world building is built into the bones of the story so that there are not too many times the book feels like it is dragged down by exposition. I found Jaime’s and Rylan’s romance to be mostly believable (I just really don’t care for characters who have known each other less than a month declaring their love for each other–especially when it is clear they hardly know who the other person really is). And I was incredibly intrigued–surprisingly so–by the Singularity and how it will play out over the rest of the series.
There were so many times I found myself getting sad because I figured that I knew where the story was going, and yet the book almost never went there. The twists were not surprises because they were so amazingly unexpected, but simply because in 80% of the scifi I read the stories tend to take the road most traveled, and this one didn’t. And I really fucking like that. This might not be the best scifi I’ve ever read, but is a very good one. And if this is where the story for these characters begins, I think this is going to be a series to watch out for by scifi lovers like me.
Machine Metal Magic is an incredibly compelling scifi story. It has a rather interesting world that will no doubt be better fleshed out in later books, but easily exists in this story as a grounded and yet slightly mysterious backdrop for the characters to play against. I am really looking forward to getting to know these characters better, and seeing what else the author will allow them to do and see as the story progresses and the stakes get even higher.
RATING: 
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