SPSFC Review: Captain Wu or a really nice space opera!

Hello everyone! I hope you all are happy and safe, and that you have a really nice weekend waiting for you! I will spend mine working, and with no niece schedules, but… at least I am doing some great reading, so it is not all bad, yay!
And today I am here with the first review for the second phase of the SPSFC and I can really say that we started on the right foot!

Title: Captain Wu
Series: Starship Nameless #1
Authors: Patrice Fitzgerald & Jack Lyster
Pages: 284
Publication Date: February 15th, 2021

Captain Wu’s the name. Smuggling’s her game.
To be fair, they only started shooting after she started insulting them.
She was just about to hand off the package—Wu didn’t know what was inside, and she didn’t want to—when three tentacle-faced strangers attacked.
Wu loves a good fight and lives for a good heist. The Captain and her crew make their living taking undercover assignments from questionable clients… and it pays. Or at least, it used to.
But this time the merchandise is a little too hot to handle. So when the squid-shaped xenos show up and destroy the guys who are there to receive it, Wu is barely able to make it back to her ship alive. Soon the Nameless is racing around the galaxy with not only the powerful Commonwealth on its tail, but another dangerous creature bent on revenge.
And then an unexpected visitor arrives, putting Wu and her crew in the position of taking care of some very precious cargo. Is it time for the Captain to give up criming and retire to a sedate life more suitable for a woman of her age?
Not a chance.

So, the other day I talked to you about Good Neighbors and I was saying that I wanted to see more characters like Mia around, well, I want to see more characters like Captain Wu around too! She is grumpy, even if her grumpiness is on a completely different level from Mia’s. Mia is grumpy as “normal” people are grumpy, Captain Wu is more grumpy on the almost alcoholic, veteran of something, old captain kind. And again, usually, we have male characters in this role, and here I really appreciate that we get to see a woman. But this is not all! She is sixty-something years old! How fantastic is that??
I love to see all the ages in my books, and when I find an older character I am really really happy! And this was just peachy! Even if “peachy” is not a word you would associate with Captain Wu!

So, the MC was pretty impressive, and I loved her. But we have also an interesting crew. Six is my favorite, even if they are the hardest to pinpoint because of their race and the fact that nobody seems to know a lot about them, but since I am planning on continuing this series, I really hope to get more info on the next books! And also Rev and Gillium (I hope to have written this one right, because I may have some memory problems, so sorry about that!) were pretty good.
And we had also a couple of criminals that were secondary to the story but that were pretty intriguing, too, and this is not a bad thing!

And then we have a rich world-building, with different Xenos in there, and planet and tech. It is pretty interesting, even if I have to say that this book is not heavy on world-building. This is the perfect book if you want to take a break from more demanding books, and want something set in space, with a lot of action, intrigues, fights, and some interesting characters. It is not a masterpiece, that’s true, and the world-building could have been more developed because it has a ton of potential and what we get to see is fascinating! It is like the majority of urban fantasy I have read. They are good to keep you intrigued and hooked, they have great characters and a plot full of action and twists that would keep you intrigued and hooked up till the end, but usually, they are not really strong on the world-building. But who cares? You know that going in, and you know that you would be in for a treat all the same, and you go in gladly! And this is exactly the same for this book! I had a great time with it, and I have all the intentions of going on with this series!

And the banter! It is really good, and we have some really funny moments, even if our characters are not in a funny situation at all!

“At least we can be happy that with our final acts we pissed off a bunch of very powerful people.”
In spite of everything, Wu smiled “Yeah, I think we can feel proud of just how irritating we’ve managed to be” she said. “yay for us”.

So, as I was saying, I had a great time with this book. I really enjoyed the characters, and I really hope to see more of them around in the next book, I was hooked up from the beginning, too! It was funny, it made me think, and it was a real pleasure from the start to the end!

And what about you? Have you read this book? Or are you interested in it?? Let me know!

Happy reading!
S.