The Counterfeit Captain by Henry Vogel

My rating: 3.5 of 5 stars

Category: Adult
Genre: Space Opera
Content: Clean





Captain Nancy Martin expects a lonely death.

Passing out as her battle-damaged starfighter bleeds the last of its air, she comes to in the cavernous and deserted docking bay of an unknown starship.




There were two things that drew me to The Counterfeit Captain, one was the gorgeous cover and the other was the fact that it's a space opera. I always love a good space opera and I was sucked into this one right away.

This story starts out with Captain Nancy Martin expecting to die during a battle in her starfighter. Instead she wakes up on board the largest ship she has ever seen. She soon realizes it's a generation ship. Not long after she meets Sko, a native of the ship, and her adventure begins as she ends up fighting against an AI that has gone completely insane, the group of men who were shooting at her when she was in her starfighter, a tribe of ship natives, and a bunch of robots. I suppose there could be a little too much going on there.

What I liked best about this book was the creepy, maniacal AI; the robots that I could kind of picture like the cylons from Battlestar Galactica; and the fact that Nancy was cool headed throughout the whole thing. I liked her personality a lot and I found it very believable that she was a member of the military.

What I didn't like so much was the insta-love relationship, but it wasn't as bad as it could have been. I'm also not sure how I feel about the bittersweet ending. On one hand I didn't like it, and on the other it felt like it deepened the story not to have everything tied up as a happily ever after. (view spoiler)[ I just didn't find it very plausible that Nancy mourned the loss of a man that she only knew for four days for nine whole years (hide spoiler)] I also would have liked a bit more backstory and depth to the characters.

In some ways this book reminded me of one of those Star Trek or SG 1 episodes where a crew member wakes up in a strange place and they have an adventure and fall in love and then it all has to end because they have to go back to their normal or real life. Those episodes could be pretty compelling and sometimes even heartbreaking. This book was both. I may eventually pick up the other space opera by this author that is sort of a companion to this one.



View all my reviews