The sequel to Lone Huntress begins with a wannabe Lovable Rogue and his two best friends, a Power Trio of professional hackers serving aboard a pirate ship.
See Jacques warmly greet their newest shipmates!
See Jacques show the depths of his bond with his beloved Karen and Li!
See Jacques explain the nuances of etiquette aboard a space vessel crewed by pirates!
See Jacques demonstrate how to capture a target vessel intact!
See Jacques piss himself when he realizes just who's in that vessel!
In contrast to the previous book, Bems and Bugs spends almost as much time showing the viewpoints of other people as they cross paths with the emotionally fragile, devastatingly lonely, but undeniably formidable mercenary. But of course many of those people are pirates. Not to mention that the Fey, the ancient enemy of humanity, is still out there looking to undermine Lisa by any means possible, no matter how petty or underhanded.
Much like the first book, Bems and Bugs can be found at Amazon
as well as select other retailers.
The third book, Keeping Downwind, is still in development and slated for a 2024 release.
Contains the following tropes:
- Alien Invasion: Not just the historical infiltration by the Fey. Lisa is left temporarily stranded on an alien planet where a BEM worldship crashed hundreds of thousands of years prior. The indigenous life forms have not only adapted to their presence, but evolution and adaptation have turned the BEMs into just one more component of the local ecosystem.
- Bruiser with a Soft Center:
- When Red goads Lisa too far, the result is an explosive release of negative emotions that catches him completely off guard. More specifically, Lisa starts to bawl about the damage to not only her ship, but also to her favorite stuffed animal. It causes him to realize that the amazon with the murderous reputation is also a lonely young woman.
- Red himself is a gruff, rough-natured man who prefers to fly alone aboard his massive space freighter. He's also kindhearted, quickly apologizes for causing harm, and is thoroughly disinterested in committing violence for profit. Oh, and the reason he owns such a giant ship? It allows him to ferry entire vessels back to port, when he's rescuing people stranded in space.
- Character Development: When Lisa finally decides to have consensual sexual relations with a male for the first time in her life, it's a major victory over her past trauma. She's decided she's had enough of allowing the memory of the worst of her abusers to deprive her of good things."I'm tired of letting him win."
- The Dreaded: When Jacques realizes that the vessel that baited the Unexpected Charge into ambushing belongs to the Huntress, he literally soils himself and has to have a sedative administered, before he can provide any useful information to his shipmates. Then the captain opens communications — after which point Jacques ceases to be the only one unnerved.
- Enemies Equals Greatness: When an entire species of world conquering aliens, albeit one dominated by a hive mind, regards you as an existential threat to their existence, you must be doing something right.
- Laser Blade: Played with. When Vionne recognizes the wounds inflicted to her colleagues as having been inflicted by a lightsaber, her frame of reference is as someone who has worked with mining crews for decades. She's only ever encountered a single incident of human beings using the devices — normally employed as the drill bits for mining drones — as weapons. As far as she's concerned, only a psychopath would ever wield such a thing.
- Punny Name: Jacques and his friends serve aboard a pirate ship calling itself the Unexpected Charge, comparing their pillaging to that of a duplicitous business slamming customers with surprise fees.
- The Power of Hate: When Lisa allows herself to relapse into old habits, the results are horrifically gruesome for the denizens of the illicit mining facility. Unfortunately for Lisa, killing people before they can tell you about the passwords for their computers can cause unforeseen complications.
