Colleen Mondor Reviews Calamity by Constance Fay
Calamity, Constance Fay (Bramble 978-1-250-33041-3, $18.99, tpb, 320pp) November 2023.
Constance Fay’s debut, Calamity, is an SF adventure set on a distant planet amidst several groups and individuals all operating with their own conflicting purposes and totally willing to kill each other to achieve their goals. The heroes are the small crew of the somewhat dilapidated space vessel Quest, who scout out various planets for whatever their clients, typically members of their galaxy’s ruling class, want them to check out. It’s an occasionally dangerous living that, for various reasons, suits each of the crew just fine. The heroine is Temperance Reed, banished daughter from one of the elite Fifteen Families, recently secret (and dumped) girlfriend to the Quest’s former captain, and now a desperate captain trying to keep her friends and ship together. The crew needs income, thus when the Escajeda family’s patriarch hires them to scout a backwater planet that no one cares about, Temperance leaps at the job. The price for their potential windfall is a lot of suspicion that they are going to be screwed and the forced addition of Arcadio Escajeda to the crew. Enter the novel’s love interest, a guy carrying a set of secrets that even he doesn’t realize could get them all killed.
Calamity, the first title from the new Tor romance imprint, Bramble, is marketed as a romance, and I totally get it – there are some very spicy scenes between Temperance and Arcadio. But it is the adventures on Herschel Two, a desert planet reminiscent of Tatooine that is home to both a small religious cult and a large volcano, which spur the plot along. Each member of the crew comes to life there as they grapple with all the things they had no reason to expect would be waiting for them on the ground. They have to get the lay of the land, navigate necessary interactions with the cult members (it really is a cult), and defend themselves against mysterious adversaries all while still carrying out the job for the Escajedas. The crew needs the money – that is nonnegotiable – but Temperance also, quite reasonably, wants them all to survive. When they start getting shot at, all their plans for a quick job are toast. That’s when the relationship between her and Arcadio really heats up, even though they still can’t be sure they trust each other. (Yes, this is a romance novel trope, but it works just fine.)
I’m a big fan of action set in space, and Fay delivers a lot of that in Calamity. The story is so much fun, though – the villains are complex, their motivations intriguing, and the politics behind everything are wonderfully interesting. The author also gives readers plenty of chase scenes and rescues, humor and friendship, and the sizzling romance. The second book in the series, Fiasco, is due out in June and from its description promises more of the same, along with following up with a few folks from the first book whose stories were just hinted at. Sounds like perfect diversionary reading for an election year to me!
This review and more like it in the March 2024 issue of Locus.
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