Architects of Memory by Karen Osborne
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

So! The good:

The pacing, a lot of the action, the core concept of the aliens, and the OTT blowout of the end.

The so/so:

The relatively generic space-opera feel with very little to make it stand out from most space-opera setups. Such as corporate indenture. Has no one read Cherryh? Scavenging is also so commonplace as to be a core fixture of these types of SF-lite novels. The originality is centered, but not very developed, on the (no spoiler) abilities of the aliens and how it relates to our MC. That being said, the whole tale feels mostly surfacy and I never got that invested in either the over-plot or the characters.

I don't think this was a bad novel by any stretch. My main complaint is that I've read way too many novels that behave almost exactly like this. It didn't kick my pants in the originality department. At all.

That being said, it does fill a number of checkboxes for those of you looking for it: Disabled. LGBTQ. However, these aspects never really felt core to the story even if we were meant to believe they were. (At least to me.)

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