Galaxy Grifter

A Snarky, High-Stakes Space Opera

By: A. Zaykova

Narrated by: Dan Bittner

Only the wittiest, smarmiest, most sycophantic person in the galaxy can grift like Levi can.

Levi is an interstellar con artist: all charm, no conscience. His only real love is his spaceship, Caerus—his symbol of status and freedom—which he is forced to surrender as loan collateral to the most dangerous gang in his current quadrant. Desperate to get his ship back by any means necessary, Levi swindles a valuable antimatter-tech blueprint from an alien diplomat, which he plans to sell for millions of credits to the highest bidder.

To decode the document, Levi hires Vera, a programmer whose inherited debt keeps her trapped on an asteroid in the galactic backwaters. Certain that Levi is merely using her, she plans to steal the blueprint for her creditors and finally gain her freedom.

Their alliance is plagued by fiery sexual tension, betrayals, and an impossible choice when they learn that an alien government intends to use the stolen technology to plan humanity’s genocide and that they will stop at nothing to retrieve their plans.

Fun book

Light hearted space opera. Looking forward to the sequel.
Very well read. One of the more entertaining such books.

Decent Debut

I am interested in the intersection of sci-fi and heist and crime side. I also appreciate that this looks at some international relationship with crime but with alien governments.

Levi as a character was interesting but he is very narcissistic. I cannot tell if the author wanted us to feel confused by him. If so then the author was successful. Vera as a character was much more relatable and I felt empathy for.

The plot was a bit meandering and just felt like a string of events and it was hard to connect them all together in the middle. For a debut this was great and I can see potential for this author.