22 of 22 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
A hybrid Romance that works both ways., February 23, 2006
It's about time they got someone writing this sort of hybrid story who understands both parent genera. Most of the books out there sold as futuristic, or SF, romances are so bad that I'm embarrassed for the authors. They are lame romances, horrid SF, and something of an insult to the readers they are marketed toward.
Ms. Sinclair's work does not fall into that category. This book works as a Romance and a Space Opera, although the SF setting does not work quite as well as the settings in Finder's Keepers or Gabriel's Ghost. Sure this is brain candy, but it's really good brain candy, a fun read and a wonderful escape from the stress of the real world.
I've put Sinclair on my A list of writers. I'm looking forward to reading her future works.
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23 of 24 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Wonderful Sci Fi Romance!, March 4, 2006
Captain Gillaine Davre of the Raheiran Special Forces, the Kiasidira, had just barely escaped the Fav'lhir attack by traveling through the Rift. The Fav'lhir followed her and were destroyed, decimating the Fav'lhir's mageline or line of sorcerers. So when she woke up in a sick bay, she wasn't too surprised. After all, she did get a pretty nasty bump on her head. However, Gillie quickly discovers that she is 342 years in the future. Somehow the conflict between her ship and the Fav'lhir projected her into the future. And, even worse, the Khalarans, the people she was protecting, have made her a goddess! Gillie knows that she needs to keep her head down, repair her ship and beat it out of there before anyone discovers who she is, but Admiral Rynan Makarian already seems a little too interested...
Admiral Rynan "Make It Right" Makarian, Mack to his friends, is the youngest and newest Admiral in the Khalaran Fleet. His reputation for perfection and excellent track record land him on Cirrus One, the preliminary project for the Rim Gate Project, or a gate that will link the remote corner of the galaxy with the rest of the Khalaran Confederation. Everything that could go wrong seems to, from the civilians refusing to cooperate with the Fleet personnel, the magefather having delusions of grandeur - and the dratted parrots that no one can seem to get rid of! The last thing he needs is the beautiful Gillie, whom he mistakenly assumes is a smuggler, distracting him from his duties.
Mack first hangs around Gillie because he is suspicious of her, but quickly falls in love with her. When Mack proposes to Gillie after she has been on Cirrus One for a week, Gillie is shocked - but very, very tempted. For the first time in her life, Gillie starts to imagine what it would be like to be just plain old Gillie - not the Kiasidira, not a Raheiran sorceress, but just a woman who loves a man. For a short time, it seems that Gillie's dream will come true, but then Gillie discovers that the magefather is Melandan, the ancient enemy of the Khalarans. When Carrick Blass, a mageline sorcerer of the Melandan people arrives on board Cirrus One, Gillie knows she has to make a choice - protect the Khalarans, as she swore an oath to do and risk losing Mack's love or to let the Khalarans be destroyed, which is no choice at all...
An Accidental Goddess is the far future sequel to Wintertide, Baker's excellent fantasy novel and is just as entertaining. Gillie was a great character and I could totally empathize with her tough decisions. If she revealed who she truly was, the Kiasidira, she would disrupt centuries of religious worship in the Khalaran culture and knew that the people would never look at her the same. Mack was a great hero, very intelligent and able to figure out a lot of Gillie's history on his own, but not really wanting to believe what he found out. Mack's crew were also wonderful characters, as was Simon, Gillie's sentient computer/ship who was one of my favorite characters - I would love to see him in a story of his own! Anyway, the characters were fabulous and well developed, even the wretched villains, and the setting was great. I felt that the story had a good sense of history (because I read Wintertide first, I understood a lot of the religious connotations better, but it is not necessary to read Wintertide first) and a very developed world with all aspects of life covered - food, healing, religion, military, politics, etc. The cost is a bit steep for Megan Baker's books, but I can assure you that they are well worth the cost! (If you want a cheaper copy, look to buy them in ebook format.)
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11 of 11 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Highly entertaining romantic nonsense in space, July 30, 2006
An Accidental Goddess is not going to win either Hugo and Nebula awards for the SF content or the equivalent prizes as a romance. But it is good fun.
Captain Gillaine Davre, or "Gillie", is a military advisor from a highly advanced race called the Raheirans to their slightly less advanced allies, the Khalarans. The Khalarans are themselves advanced enough to operate interstellar space ships and space stations, but both the Raheirans and a hostile race, the evil Fav'lhir, are so advanced that some of their abiliites seem like magic to the Khalarans.
The book makes frequent reference to magic: Linnea Sinclair appears to have deliberately allowed the reader to interpret these references in either of two different ways. You can take them literally, or assume that Raheiran technology is so advanced that it meets the saying by Arthur C Clarke that "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic."
At the start of the book, Gillie wakes up in the sickbay of her ship after a battle in which they have destroyed an enemy vessel belonging to the Fav'lhir.
It is a nasty shock to find that a side effect of the battle has been to throw her 342 years and 18 hours into the future. It is a much worse one to discover that during that interval the Khalarans have started worshipping her as a Goddess.
Gillie promply gets herself into all kinds of amusing scrapes. On the one hand she has no desire to be regarded as a deity, which she certainly is not, on the other she doesn't want to start trampling on other people's religious beliefs and risk destabilising Khalaran society by doing so. To complicate matters further, she becomes romanticaly involved with the Admiral commanding the Khalaran fleet in the sector - a man who worships her in a rather different way than she would have preferred.
There are all manner of logical inconsistencies in the book and things which are never explained. For instance, it is not clear why the Raheiran central government appears to have done nothing to replace their envoy to a key sector of the galaxy who was missing and presumed killed in action for 342 years. Nevertheless it is easy to forget about these issues while you are reading the book and just enjoy it.
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