Review: Fun Read
Rating: 4 out of 5
Date: 04 13, 2013
Sara King is an author of "character-driven" books.  In other words, if you actually like pages of techno-babble in Sci Fi books, or five pages of description of a single dress in romance books, Ms. King's books aren't for you.  However, if you want to be inside a character's head and heart, to feel and think what they do and why, you've hit the jackpot!  "To the Princess Bound," the first book in the "Terms of Mercy" series was my first experience of Ms. King's genius.  I was hooked before I finished the first page, and knew I'd found a new addition to my very short list of favorite authors.Wings of Retribution: The Millennium Potion is an (as yet) stand-alone Sci Fi novel by Sara King.  It takes place in a future so distant that no one knows where Earth actually is/was or even if it still exists.  Seven thousand years in the past of the current time, a Potion that extends human lifespan nearly indefinitely was created by Marceau Temple.  He dosed himself, his daughter and a few of her friends with the original concoction, making them virtually immortal and indestructible by being able to regenerate destroyed body parts.  The remainder of humanity is given a watered-down version of the Potion that merely extends life and has to be taken every 100 years for its effects to endure.Athenais Owlbourne, née Marcella Tempest, is more than 7,000 years old, the second-oldest person in existence next to her father and a pirate.  Marceau is the unchallenged leader (dictator) of The Utopia, which encompasses all the known worlds and there is nothing Athenais would love more than to take down the Utopia, her father and destroy the Millennium Potion.  When asked by a trio of shape shifters who have access codes to get them into Marceau's domain to help them do just that, she buys in, even though shifters are nearly extinct due to having been hunted and killed by humans and have extremely high bounties on their heads.Attie's co-pilot, Dallas York, a/k/a "Fairy" because she's a "stick fairy" who can maneuver her ship out of virtually any threatening situation is a nosy little thing, only 34 years old and desperately lonely.  Hiding in a broom closet she overhears a conversation between Attie and Ragnor, Attie's second and lover, that he is also a shifter and the other shifters are his family.  Unable to keep the secret to herself, Fairy goes to a bar to find the ship's surgeon to share the secret.  Dr. Smallfoot betrays his crewmates, kills Attie and turns in the shifters to the Utopian agents for the reward.  What ensues is fun and entertaining as Attie and Dallas, Attie's friend, Rabbit, who is another Original, like Attie, and Stuart, who was with the shifters in the bar, but isn't a shifter, but a parasite-like being who can enter a human brain and virtually take over its body attempt to rescue the real shifters.This book is lighter than most of Ms. King's books, with several of the characters being seriously logic-challenged, but funny anyway.  Unlike in her other books, the characters emotions aren't heavily explored, and I found this disappointing, hence the 4-star rating.  In spite of this it is, for the most part, an enjoyable read.