Persephone Station

A science fiction adventure where women have all the major roles. And, I must say, it is disconcerting. A couple times I have gone "where are the guys" ... but then shake my head and go "normally, I wouldn't notice the lack of women in the world, why am I having problems with all the major characters being female? How badly programmed am I by my society?" - I mean, there really isn't any need for characters to be all male or all female. It's a space fantasy, what does it matter what genre a person is?And that is part of the reason the author chose to do a majority female story BECAUSE we need to see it. To normalize women being in stories of action and adventure just as much as men. We don't need just space princesses, but also space mechanics and space pilots and space guards of the female genre. Over half our species is female, and that fact will remain even when we jump to the stars.As for the story itself - a solid space opera yarn with aliens and guns, ships and AIs, gangsters and politicians. Action varies from an assassination at a party to setting up for a siege.Loved the sensory immersion of this story. Not only the great visuals, but sound, touch, temperature, taste. You feel the sharpness of the blades of grass, smell the omnipresence of the ship oil, taste the air of a storm moving in.

The good: Interesting, strong, intelligent, bad ass women kicking butt, answering to no one especially men. What's not to love about that. Excellent world development. Exciting space frontier Sci-fi that could appeal to almost anyone.The bad: Laborious reading at times, i.e. slow going. Too much needless character development of those that go nowhere. Someone should fire the editor.I'll update once I have time to read properly.

It's not bad.I want to give a better review than that, because I do like the story, but it definitely feels like that story took way too many unnecessary pages to tell. Getting into the book was difficult because of that drag, and there were a lot of parts I had to skip for the extra length. There are long stretches of dialogue and long stretches of prose, when mixing would have done better to move the story along. The separation makes it feel like you're spending a lot of pages in one spot, not moving forward and waiting for something to happen. Aside from a bustle of activity in the beginning, it's a good halfway through the book before the characters have any reason to get together and head out to do anything.When things are happening, it can be hard to figure out what they are. Large casts of characters sometimes get packed into scenes that don't really need them in the beginning, putting more focus on the attendance list than on what's actually going on. Sometimes parts of the world that we don't need to know about are described, possibly leaving the reader wondering why they needed to know that right this moment when it doesn't play into the scene, and most of that description is visual and lacking the meaning or useful context that builds a world.The characters themselves are surface-level interesting... it's a mostly female/non-binary cast, and lgbtq+ relationships are treated as a norm. They'd be great if you were watching a movie and only needed a basic knowledge, but hard to get invested in in book form.The basic story is about a group of rag-tag mercenaries who had hard/sucky lives and banded together as a little found family, being hired and sent on a job that ends up with them being up against a galaxy-wide corporation. This is a theme that's been done before and for good reason: it's great. The elements are all there for a David-And-Goliath victory, the book just doesn't handle it as well as a lot of others.Persephone Station is still on my "to read again" list, because maybe a second read-through at a later time will help to pull the story together a little better for me, but a book shouldn't need two reads to do that. On a story level, I would suggest it. On a writing level, I don't think it's for everyone.

Yes. Definitely yes! This is totally my kind of space opera. Sci-Fi Western space opera! (Star Trek or Firefly, anyone?)Ms. Leicht has written other novels before but this is her first foray into space opera.I loved the original 1960 gunfighters in the Old West film "The Magnificent Seven", which of course is a remake of the Japanese classic "The Seven Samurai".Persephone Station is the latest remake, only gender-switched and in space (and a novel, not a film)!Ms. Leicht wrote this book for the best of reasons. She had seen a recent remake of "The Magnificent Seven" at the theatre and walked out vowing that she could write a better version herself. Then she did!I loved the characters, the setting, the plot. I like an ensemble cast.I also loved that so many of our character/spaceship names were homages, such as one of our key protagonists’ ship is named Kurasawa. Another key character is named Rosencrantz (Hamlet, anyone?).The only better news, in my humble opinion, is if I hear that Ms. Leicht is working on a sequel!! (Failing that, at least another space opera!!)

If the book had a hundred less pages, I would give it 5. Very good beggining. But I dont have patience anymore to read about long battles, skirmishes and ruminations that add very little. From the middle on, I start skiping page after page, anxious to see the plot development.

Nice and original,its a refreshing story,Nice action with places about friendship, courage and empathy.Wish to see them again !

I chose the four star rating because I find reading long involved battle scenes really tedious. But other than that I really enjoyed this book and it's a really fine an interesting read from beginning to end. The relationships between the characters are really excellent. Plot is engaging, and the World building is realistic and engaging. I hope stina has a follow-up planned? I'd love to see these characters re-engage and find out what's going to happen with the ai's going forward