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A review by sleeping_while_awake
Windswept by Adam Rakunas
3.0
Disclosure: I received this book as a Goodreads giveaway.
Windswept is a decent first novel. The writing style is casual, kind of like an urban fantasy, except no paranormal romances flourishing. Windswept refers to a brand of rum featured prominently.
Padma Mehta lives on a backwater planet. There are the Big Three Corporations who run the universe, controlling both people and products. People will sign up for indenture with the corporations, often to travel somewhere through space. Akin to leaving the small farm to get to the big city.
The indentures are soul-sucking, and when people decide to literally jump ship and breach, sometimes they end up on Padma's planet.
Padma recruits these breaches, as they are called, into the Union. It's a weird pyramid job scheme. I had a hard time understanding how it worked, but if there are new breaches, they will take the terrible jobs, and the people in those positions prior will move onto something better.
She has a number of breaches she needs to recruit that will help her buy a distillery, and she won't have to recruit again. She can leave the Union job behind and focus on her passion. Once an acquaintance informs her there are 40 breaches that will descend on the planet, she rushes to bring them in, before another recruiter takes them.
Things don't go as planned, and lots of action and swearing occur throughout the book. Also, many breakneck tuk-tuk rides.
I liked that the main character was an older female, and that many of the characters were working class people. I liked Padma's toughness.
However, it wasn't until about 2/3 of the way in, her true motivations for desperately recruiting the breaches is explained.
I assume it's so late as this writing style doesn't write out a lot of internal monologue, so it had to wait for Padma to talk to another character about it. I had a hard time connecting to Padma until that particular conversation. Once it was revealed, I wish it would have been sooner, as she wouldn't have been so selfish.
Banks was a great balance for Padma. Jilly seemed under-characterized. So much was happening there weren't opportunities to characterize. Even for the main character Padma.
The world-building is interesting. It makes a lot of sense that people wouldn't be able to afford a ticket through space, so they indenture themselves. I guess the rest of the world outside the story is really bland, and the people are slaves to whatever the corporations want?
The areas visited in the book are industrial and slummy. It wasn't too over the top though. It very vaguely reminded me of the Windup Girl. No robots or anything similar. There is some minor talk about genetic modification of crops, but it's not thoroughly explored.
I found the description of action scenes to be lacking in clarity. One of the ending scenes with Padma is really confusing (). It was often I needed to go back a page and re-read to figure out what happened.
Windswept is a decent first novel. The writing style is casual, kind of like an urban fantasy, except no paranormal romances flourishing. Windswept refers to a brand of rum featured prominently.
Padma Mehta lives on a backwater planet. There are the Big Three Corporations who run the universe, controlling both people and products. People will sign up for indenture with the corporations, often to travel somewhere through space. Akin to leaving the small farm to get to the big city.
The indentures are soul-sucking, and when people decide to literally jump ship and breach, sometimes they end up on Padma's planet.
Padma recruits these breaches, as they are called, into the Union. It's a weird pyramid job scheme. I had a hard time understanding how it worked, but if there are new breaches, they will take the terrible jobs, and the people in those positions prior will move onto something better.
She has a number of breaches she needs to recruit that will help her buy a distillery, and she won't have to recruit again. She can leave the Union job behind and focus on her passion. Once an acquaintance informs her there are 40 breaches that will descend on the planet, she rushes to bring them in, before another recruiter takes them.
Things don't go as planned, and lots of action and swearing occur throughout the book. Also, many breakneck tuk-tuk rides.
I liked that the main character was an older female, and that many of the characters were working class people. I liked Padma's toughness.
However, it wasn't until about 2/3 of the way in, her true motivations for desperately recruiting the breaches is explained.
I assume it's so late as this writing style doesn't write out a lot of internal monologue, so it had to wait for Padma to talk to another character about it. I had a hard time connecting to Padma until that particular conversation. Once it was revealed, I wish it would have been sooner, as she wouldn't have been so selfish.
Banks was a great balance for Padma. Jilly seemed under-characterized. So much was happening there weren't opportunities to characterize. Even for the main character Padma.
The world-building is interesting. It makes a lot of sense that people wouldn't be able to afford a ticket through space, so they indenture themselves. I guess the rest of the world outside the story is really bland, and the people are slaves to whatever the corporations want?
The areas visited in the book are industrial and slummy. It wasn't too over the top though. It very vaguely reminded me of the Windup Girl. No robots or anything similar. There is some minor talk about genetic modification of crops, but it's not thoroughly explored.
I found the description of action scenes to be lacking in clarity. One of the ending scenes with Padma is really confusing (