GRIMSPACE by Ann Aguirre

Publisher Ace
Date published February 2008
ISBN 978-0441015993
Sci fi/action adventure/romance
Mass Market Paperback
Reviewed by Lil



Sirantha Jax is a Jumper, one of those rare people who have the J-gene and have passed the rigorous training to navigate Grimspace. As such she is highly prized and treated with the deference and admiration of a celebrity. This glorified lifestyle comes crashing to an end…literally. In a highly publicized accident she loses her pilot lover and her reputation.

Incarceration in a Psych Unit, hellish dream therapy, and suspicions regarding the people in charge of her care ensue. This gives her little option but to follow March, a mysterious stranger who breaks in ostensibly to spring her from the sparse cell. Relief of success in escape gives way to feelings of jumping out of the frying pan and into the fire.

Her rescuers are part of a group intending to break the monopoly on interstellar travel and for that they need Jax.

Readers are taken on an incredibly wild ride. GRIMSPACE, the method and procedure of travel and the world building are described in a gritty eloquence one doesn’t often run across. The first person point of view is employed with a deft touch and the present tense gives a great sense of immediacy that combined places us firmly in the heroine’s shoes.

The heroine is a flawed character, one who is as much selfish and self-centered in the beginning as she is honest and has an inconvenient conscience. It gives us much satisfaction to learn about her character, view her abrasive survivor-like attitude, and watch her growth throughout the book.

March is equally flawed and a tortured hero to match the prickly Jumper. Needing to atone for his past doesn’t stop him from being generally brusque and contrary to those around him and to Jax most of all.

The relationship of the hero and heroine progresses with a natural and leisurely breaking down of barriers. The romance is persuasive though it is not the only focus to the tale.

Ms Aguirre has given her characters a depth to complement the fascinating worlds and intricate plot of a well rendered story. She grabs ahold of her readers from the first page of GRIMSPACE and doesn’t let go.