Review – The Lost Fleet: Incursion by Sarah Hawke

INCURSION is a bit outside my wheelhouse because I’m not someone who normally reads erotica, especially advertised as harem lit. It’s not something I look down upon, everyone should be able to read whatever sort of entertainment they enjoy. My wife has a great fondness for stories about women kidnapped by human traffickers who then fall in love with assassins or secret agents that promptly go Taken on their captors. [Edit: I have also been informed by my wife that I should add that they have BDSM overtones too].

However, this is a special case because this book was, first, written by a female author despite its male POV and also repeatedly was recommended to me for its story as well as world-building. Color me intrigued. I have always been a fan of books that manage to combine sexiness with being, for lack of a better term, decent writing. I can’t think of many books that do it aside from the Phadre series by Jacqueline Carey but I definitely know what I like.

Still, if this is all too much information, I certainly understand. This is a book with an extensive well-written plot, excellent world-building, and extremely likeable characters. It just so happens that it interrupts every four or five chapters to a protracted scene of snoo-snoo. If that’s not your bag, consider yourself warned and this is not your kind of book. I listened to the audiobook version and think the production values were very good for that and recommend the narrator(s). A smart decision was getting dual narration for the male and female voices.

The premise is Kal Zeris is a Commander Shepard-esque psychic Special Ops soldier that works for the Dominion. He’s good-looking, kind of a jerk, and still has a heart of gold. His favorite pasttime is beating up racists, helping the conspicuously hot alien sex workers living around him, as well as running covert ops to kill slavers. Tailor made to be the kind of guy that male gamers love to play in video games and are very popular fanfic subjects for women.

While investigating a ship that was subject to a massacre by the presumed-long dead Dowd race, Kal is forced to work with the cute genetically-engineered cadet named Miranda. Kal hates the genetically engineered ruling class of the Dominion, no matter how cute, and she is casually arrogant but soon impressed by the size of his battlefield experience. What? Did you think that was a euphemism? Either way, they soon end up together and weirdly I really got invested in their romance. Which I never do. Seriously, no romance in the history of fiction save maybe Picard and Crusher. I actually kind of resented when they introduced the other girls.

Either way, I actually was interested in the story and enjoyed the book thoroughly. I also rarely compliment the covers of these books but I really like the uniform Sarah Hawke designed because it fits what’s actually described inside. Book fidelity plus being pleasing to the eye. Whenever lit harem books are recommended, they tend to be, uh, well, cartoonish in their looks. It’s still a bit, uh, well, generous but not inhumanly so.

Ahem.

Two thumbs up. It’s the R-rated version of Mass Effect we all wanted.