Embers of War (Embers of War #10, by Gareth L. Powell

  Embers of War is a light little space adventure that feels both strangely anachronistic and written by a woman - even if Gareth L. Powell is very much male. Dog/machine spaceships with their own emotions and personality, human and alien factions bumbling around in the universe like they own the place and the hint of something greater waiting to pounce, but the focus is mostly on the emotions of the various characters, most of them women, and their perspective on life, duty, responsibility and ultimately the fate of the universe. This either makes Powell a great writer that can inhabit the characters he creates or a very weird dude. Even the conflicts seem to be more about personal drama and psychological implications than actual important stakes.

  Anyway, the story revolves around a spaceship that was involved in something horrific and decided to resign her commission and, in order to atone, join an organization that specializes in space rescues. You see, in this future, the ships are run by hybrid organic and machine brains, with the organic part derived from dogs and humans, so they are kind of like persons who can do that. That in itself was a bit hard to swallow, especially in a book written in 2018. It really felt like something that has probably been written a long time ago and just now published.

  Another thing that pulled me out of the story was the first person perspective. I don't have an issue with that, normally, but in this case every chapter was written from the perspective of a different character and all of them in the first person. If I wasn't paying attention which chapter I started, I felt like something was really off, since the inner monologue of most characters - the main ones - all sounded the same, but happened to different people, which was jarring.

Final nail in the coffin, the focus was painfully exclusive on the humans, even if the ship had a little engineering alien that had its own little chapters, the other characters never spared it a thought. And all of the inner thoughts of this guy were "work, fix, sleep in my nest, that's what I do!". A little Dobby, but in space, while the humans were whining about how much they care about the crew and had completely forgotten he existed.

  That being said, it wasn't a bad book, but it wasn't great either. The ideas in it are intriguing, but by this point they feel a bit derivative. I am almost convinced that the following books in the series will find a different, better voice and the story will unfold in a more interesting way, but after reading this one book I am not motivated to continue reading the series.