Review: A Solid Debut Effort
Rating: 4 out of 5
Date: 12 17, 2012
'Outlaws', the debut effort by Nick Sands is not a perfect book, by any means, but one with a lot of promise. A gritty, sci-fi novel that centers on the crew of 'The Galileo III', some of the most wanted pirates in the Galaxy. This motley collection of ruffians, outcasts from society, make a bloody trail across the stars, looking for loot and not caring who gets in their way. Drugs, slaves, ships, they'll take anything as long as they can sell it.While they are quiet vicious, they care for each other, to a degree, and long for some sense of normalcy. For example ship's captain, Piper Ness, is tormented by the fact that he has not seen his daughter in years and would do almost anything to see her again. Harmony - ship's mechanic, spent years fine-tuning 'The Galileo III' into a mean and lean ship that can can keep up with the best IPF (Interstellar Police Federation) ships.The plot is somewhat uneven, at least in the beginning - seems like action keeps jumping a bit too much from place to place but it does get significantly better. The prose is good and delivers the noir atmosphere of criminals, pirates, junkies and cops rather well.Being a sci-fi fan I try to read as much of new works as possible and 'Outlaws' performs well in comparison.  I'll be curious to see what the author will come up with next.