Description:
The Ballad of Halo Jones meets Becky Chambers' Wayfarers by way of 3:10 to Yuma; a clash of law and lawlessness, storytelling and truth in a headlong romp across the stars.
After forty years of wreaking havoc across the galaxy, the outlaw Nine Lives--AKA Former General Gabriella Ortiz--has finally run out of lives. Shot down into a backwater at the system's edge, she is rescued by Deputy Air Marshall Havemercy Grey.
Hav is a true soul, trying to uphold what is right in the heedless wastes. Hav is determined to see justice done. And Hav could sure use that twenty-million bounty ...
But escorting the most dangerous fugitive in the system across the stars is no easy task, especially when decades of fire and destruction are catching up with her, and every gutspill with a pistol wants that payday. So when Ortiz offers a deal--to keep them both alive, as long as Hav listens to the stories of her lives--Hav can't refuse.
There's just one catch: everywhere they go, during every brawl and gunfight and explosive escape, people say the same thing--don't let her talk ...
Brief description: Krystal Hammond is a narrator/writer, cancer survivor, and nonbinary queer human. They grew up in rural North Carolina, nurtured by a steady diet of local Black Beard legends and Civil War-era ghost stories. These nuggets of folktale and myth fostered a lifelong love of storytelling and all the drama that goes with it, resulting in loads of trunk novels and dozens of audiobooks. They have a passion for science fiction, fantasy, and horror, YA and middle grade novels, and romantic comedies.
Review Quotes:
"Eerie, riveting, and scalpel-edged."
-- "Max Gladstone, Hugo Award-winning author, on Hel's Eight"