GRIMSPACE – Ann Aquirre
Ace
ISBN: 978-0-441-01599-3
March 2008
Science Fiction

Conglomerate Space – Sometime in the Future

Faster-than-light travel is impossible without a navigator-jumper working very closely with a ship’s pilot, so close that their minds are linked as one. The rare J-gene all jumpers share gives them the ability to face Grimspace, where space is bent and folded for traversing vast distances. Jumpers identify the beacons and direct the pilot to the correct location. Like many drugs, the allure of seductive Grimspace eventually kills the jumper. It wears out either the body or the mind. Often the jumper commits suicide while on one last fling in Grimspace.

Everyone thinks that is what happened to Sirantha Jax. At thirty-three, Jax is old for a jumper. When the Sargasso, the ship she and her pilot are taking to Matins IV, crashes killing the crew and passengers, Jax is blamed. Her beloved partner and pilot, Kai, died too. Only Jax had the misfortune to survive. While the determination is being made by unit psyches to either imprison her or place her in a Corps asylum, a stranger defies the incredible security of the Corps facility where she is held and breaks Jax out of her detainment cell. Of course he wants something, and it isn't hard to figure out -- even an unstable jumper might be in demand.

Jax hates March, even though he freed her, and it is evident that he isn't too fond of her. However, she will do anything to escape the Corps men hunting her, including acting as jumper to his pilot. This intimate connection leads to some interesting situations, especially since March is also a psi and often reads Jax’s mind. Life is not easy. Since the Sargasso, Jax finds her world of entitlement vaporized. Instead, she has become a jinx who leads everyone with her to trouble or death wherever she goes.

GRIMSPACE is told in first person with a snappy, stylish prose that carries the whole intense story. Jax’s breezy, flippant style provides both the momentum for the story and the relief for the horrible positions in which she gets entangled, mostly not of her making. A few secondary characters help complete the sketch of this unusual and complex world. My only disappointment, of which I can't say too much without giving away the plot, is that Jax, for all the growth she accomplishes as a person, doesn't save herself. GRIMSPACE is a hard driving story for all science fiction aficionados.

Robin Lee