Housewife Blues and Chihuahua Stories

Book Info
ebook, 240 pages
Expected publication: February 25th 2014 by Roaring Brook Press
original title Tin Star
ISBN 1596439149 (ISBN13: 9781596439146)
edition language English
other editions (2)
Source:Netgalley EARC

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BOOK SYNOPSIS

On their way to start a new life, Tula and her family travel on the Prairie Rose, a colony ship headed to a planet in the outer reaches of the galaxy. All is going well until the ship makes a stop at a remote space station, the Yertina Feray, and the colonist's leader, Brother Blue, beats Tula within an inch of her life. An alien, Heckleck, saves her and teaches her the ways of life on the space station.

When three humans crash land onto the station, Tula's desire for escape becomes irresistible, and her desire for companionship becomes unavoidable. But just as Tula begins to concoct a plan to get off the space station and kill Brother Blue, everything goes awry, and suddenly romance is the farthest thing from her mind.

My Thoughts

The story of 17-year-old Tula Bane spans a period of several years and starts when she reveals that she knows something she was not supposed to with the end result of her being beaten, left for dead and then abandoned on the remote space station of Yertina Feray. The only human amongst the multitude of aliens who inhabit the space station Tula luckily is found, revived and healed by the station’s doctor and later on befriended by the sole Hort named Heckleck who not only helps her by giving Tula employment but teaching her about the other alien species as well.

Soon the pair have a thriving business between them, making both Tula and Heckleck enough to live on as well as giving them both at least one ally to count on amongst the others who live in the underbelly of the space station.

I thought the book was a bit slow paced and then it became a bit rushed when action started to happen, Tula is the main character and allowing us to see everything through her eyes the entire book makes it fairly narrow in scope but at the same time since she stated from the beginning her knowledge of the rest of the world was limited this makes sense, also when things change and she finally has other humans living on the space station it becomes very obvious that Tula has become more of an “alien” herself as she does not really know how to interact any other way anymore.

The way in which Tula adapts, while fighting not only the loneliness that comes from being the only one of her kind but the depression of losing her mother and sister, is a testimony to the resilience most humans are capable of but never utilize since their lives follow a logical orderly path.

Not a fan of the ending, there was no true resolution but since this seems to be the beginning of Tula’s adventure it may prove that someday the intrigue that she has uncovered will be dealt with later on in another book.

Not a bad beginning to a series but not really something I am wanting to pursue further as it was not exciting enough to want find out more about what happens and there are too many other books on my wishing to read list that are waiting for me to dive into. I found myself torn while reading and kept putting this book down within a 20 day period and finding something else with the pace and action to keep me enthralled from beginning to end so apparently Tula Bane’s story was not for me after all.

[EArc from Netgalley in exchange for honest review]