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Galactic Hellcats
Nov. 5th, 2020 01:47 pmGalactic Hellcats, by Marie Vibbert, is coming out next spring. I read an ARC provided by the publisher.
Three women (a thief from Cleveland, an anxiety-plagued veteran from the Moon, and a bored rich girl from another planet) form a biker gang--except they don't have bikes, they have personal spaceships called solo-flyers. They bond by rescuing an abused prince who has been trained to please women but would rather meet a handsome young man of his own.
Galactic Hellcats has an old-fashioned pulp aesthetic. For example, there's a planet where everyone wears elaborate eyeshadow, a pair of disturbingly flirtatious androids, and a nomadic group on a patched-together spaceship who reminded me a little of Mass Effect's quarians. It's light-hearted and ecumenically sexy: I particularly enjoyed the scene where the formerly law-abiding veteran Margot yearns as her new teammate Zuleikah paints her solo-flyer with flames. But this is a story shaped around friendship and lucky heists, not romance: absolutely nobody's longing is reciprocated.
Vibbert's work is grounded (here, literally, at the bottom of the space elevator) in her working-class Ohio experience. In this book, that experience shows up in sharp-eyed observation of the way the repo man cheats and a sequence where naive Moon-raised Margot learns the important moral lesson that you never, ever trust the cops. If you're fortunate enough to live near Cleveland, you can find croissants like the ones so delicious that they almost disrupt a hacking attempt at the On the Rise bakery in Cleveland Heights.
All of the Hellcats are embarrassed and inadequate sometimes--the prince nearly flubs the final heist because he has never heard of a kumquat--but they all get chances to shine, as well. Even Margot's unromantic experience as a space navy stock clerk turns out to be crucial. I learned from working on cars with my dad that sometimes you lay out everything carefully, with the parts you removed neatly labeled in painstakingly washed salsa containers, and sometimes you just have to bang on part of the engine until everything aligns. Galactic Hellcats provides both of those satisfactions, the planning and the crashing. At last everything slides into place with purring motors and a team setting out to explore another star.
Three women (a thief from Cleveland, an anxiety-plagued veteran from the Moon, and a bored rich girl from another planet) form a biker gang--except they don't have bikes, they have personal spaceships called solo-flyers. They bond by rescuing an abused prince who has been trained to please women but would rather meet a handsome young man of his own.
Galactic Hellcats has an old-fashioned pulp aesthetic. For example, there's a planet where everyone wears elaborate eyeshadow, a pair of disturbingly flirtatious androids, and a nomadic group on a patched-together spaceship who reminded me a little of Mass Effect's quarians. It's light-hearted and ecumenically sexy: I particularly enjoyed the scene where the formerly law-abiding veteran Margot yearns as her new teammate Zuleikah paints her solo-flyer with flames. But this is a story shaped around friendship and lucky heists, not romance: absolutely nobody's longing is reciprocated.
Vibbert's work is grounded (here, literally, at the bottom of the space elevator) in her working-class Ohio experience. In this book, that experience shows up in sharp-eyed observation of the way the repo man cheats and a sequence where naive Moon-raised Margot learns the important moral lesson that you never, ever trust the cops. If you're fortunate enough to live near Cleveland, you can find croissants like the ones so delicious that they almost disrupt a hacking attempt at the On the Rise bakery in Cleveland Heights.
All of the Hellcats are embarrassed and inadequate sometimes--the prince nearly flubs the final heist because he has never heard of a kumquat--but they all get chances to shine, as well. Even Margot's unromantic experience as a space navy stock clerk turns out to be crucial. I learned from working on cars with my dad that sometimes you lay out everything carefully, with the parts you removed neatly labeled in painstakingly washed salsa containers, and sometimes you just have to bang on part of the engine until everything aligns. Galactic Hellcats provides both of those satisfactions, the planning and the crashing. At last everything slides into place with purring motors and a team setting out to explore another star.