Blue Shift

Second Species, Book 1

By: Jane O'Reilly

Narrated by: Catrin Walker-Booth

Length: 11 hrs and 8 mins

Publisher's summary

2187. Earth is cold, dead and divided. The rich hide away while the rest will do anything to survive.

Humanity have only one hope: crossing hostile alien territory to reach a habitable planet. (It's lucky that for some, fighting their way through space is just a way of life....)

Jinnifer Blue is on the run. An expert pilot, she apprehends criminals on behalf of the government and keeps her illegal genetic modifications a closely guarded secret. But when a particularly dangerous job goes south, Jinn is left stranded on a prison ship with one of the most ruthless criminals in the galaxy.

Now she must decide if she can trust her co-prisoner—because once they discover what the prison ship is hiding, she definitely can't trust anyone else....

©2017 Jane O'Reilly (P)2022 Audible, Ltd

Interesting characters and story line

I don't agree with the other reviewer. Not sure where the "soft porn" comment fits in. There are a couple of couple of sex scenes but they are not gratuitous and are needed to show the connection between the 2 characters. If you like Jennifer Foehner Wells or Peter Cawdron you should enjoy this one too. After finishing this book I immediately downloaded her second book in the series and wasn't disappointed.

Not as advertised.

Let's get this out of the way...this is NOT a first contact novel. The aliens already know about us, and we know about them. There simply isn't much of a discourse between the species. Good thing, coz what contact there is occupies only a small part in the plot.

Conversely, genetically-modified humans play a much larger role. There's definitely a Blade Runner vibe going on. Even so, the plot feel less derivative than it could have been. There's some pretty good concepts being explored here.

The author also takes on slavery and classism in a fairly competent manner.

So why only two stars...

The execution is not very good. Some of the situations jump the megalodon. I just couldn't suspend my disbelief to a degree or for a duration the author expected me to.

Most of the characters lacked depth, and didn't evolve enough considering their experiences. In fact, the most interesting character is a self-aware android. Too bad the humans weren't as complex.

Then there was the sex. I'm no prude, but the erotic elements were effing ridiculous. Don't believe me? A genetically-modified male pirate orgasms three times doing the deed. In one of those scenes, he crushes a pleasure android somewhere between climax two and three.

Finally...there's the ending. It's a cliffhanger purpose-built to goad the reader into buying Book 2. I might have actually taken the plunge. However, the author included the first chapter of Book 2 at the end. The teaser did the opposite of what it was supposed to do - it completely turned me off. The scene made a meaningful part of the first book irrelevant. Not cool.

The voice-actor's performance was better than the material she was given.

I'm afraid the first reviewer had it right. This is soft-core erotica with sci-fi thrown in. It sure as hell isn't Peter Cawdron, like the second reviewer suggested.

Blue Shift had the potential to be more. The concept was there; the execution wasn't.

soft porn garbage

Truly the worst book I've experienced on Audible. If the the description had mentioned the gratuitous sex scenes, I wouldn't have wasted a credit on this. If the story had had anything to enjoy, I could have overlooked the sex, but the writing was laughably bad. The characters were mere caricatures, not believable people. I wish I could get a refund for my time.