HAND OF STEEL – Jessi L. Roberts

In a world where corporations rule by divine fiat, those who resist the government are not just rebels. They are also heretics.

Krys is finally old enough to join her father in a bounty hunt. By himself he has only been able to catch lower-level bounties for poor pay. Although they have richer extended family that also hunts bounty, her father has always avoided these violent relatives. She hopes to gain enough bounties to rise in the ranks to Elite Hunter when she will be able to ride space ships for free and stop living hand to mouth. When her father hands her an image of criminal with a high bounty, she excitedly heads into a grungy mining town and enters a bar full of aliens to search for them. Things go terribly wrong, and only the mercy of one of the pirates lets her escape with her life.

Only the mercy of one of the pirates lets her escape with her life.

Disappointed, she and her father plan to go off-planet to search elsewhere when they run across the bounty by herself and capture her. Now they can make some money and rise in the ranks. They hire a ship to transport the criminal and themselves to the capitol planet, but are intercepted by pirates who rescue the prisoner, kill the father, and capture Krys. What will happen to her? Will she be sold into slavery?

Unexpectedly, the alien pirates heal her burned body and replace several parts with steel prostheses. When she escapes and runs into a storm that could kill her, the pirate captain rescues her. What is going on? Eventually Krys will need to choose between forgiveness and revenge.

Eventually Krys will need to choose between forgiveness and revenge.

This delightful religious space opera is full of aliens and a few humans who navigate a universe ruled by a corporation and kept in check by bounty hunters. The writing is clean and simple, which is why the book is suitable for advanced middle graders to adults. The book is also short enough to be read by busy people.

Scripture is quoted from time to time. Krys prays and reads the Scripture as she struggles with the death of her father and the desire for revenge. The reader is shown how a misinterpretation of scripture can lead a people astray as Krys learns that not all is as it seems.

There is a glossary of the species, so if you forget what a torf looks like, you can find a picture of one in the back of the book. I still wish she had introduced the species to me one at a time instead of all at once, because I did keep forgetting what a torf looked like. In addition to my difficulty in keeping track of who was what, I sometimes found the motivations of the characters to be a bit simplistic at times. I find this to be true of most space opera, so if you like space opera in general, this simplicity should not be a problem for you.

Recommended for fans of Star Wars, age ten on up. Adults who like clean reading will also enjoy these books.

Ratings

Heat: None

Violence: Lots of space opera blaster fire and aliens using teeth and claws. The violence is not graphic. Some people are killed.

Language: None

Available on Amazon. 

Lelia Rose Foreman homeschooled her three boys for a total of fourteen years. They survived. She writes Christian science fiction.   Under the name of Rose Foreman, she  also writes general market fantasy adventure with her oldest son, Josh. The first  of these is The Scarred King: Exile.