Review – Wreck of the Nebula Dream

Wreck of the Nebula Dream
by Veronica Scott
Ebook or Paperback

Science Fiction Romance

I was poking around on Veronica’s Scott site–she’s incredibly cool–when I saw an awesome looking science fiction title–Wreck of the Nebula Dream.

Wow. What’s that? I checked it out. It turns out that it was a science fiction romance billed as Titanic in space.

Wow again. I brought it up at Amazon and clicked Purchase.

Here’s the blurb:

Traveling unexpectedly aboard the luxury liner Nebula Dream on its maiden voyage across the galaxy, Sectors Special Forces Captain Nick Jameson is ready for ten relaxing days, and hoping to forget his last disastrous mission behind enemy lines. He figures he’ll gamble at the casino, take in the shows, maybe even have a shipboard fling with Mara Lyrae, the beautiful but reserved businesswoman he meets.

All his plans vaporize when the ship suffers a wreck of Titanic proportions. Captain and crew abandon ship, leaving the 8000 passengers stranded without enough lifeboats and drifting unarmed in enemy territory. Aided by Mara, Nick must find a way off the doomed ship for himself and several other innocent people before deadly enemy forces reach them or the ship’s malfunctioning engines finish ticking down to self destruction.

But can Nick conquer the demons from his past that tell him he’ll fail these innocent people just as he failed to save his Special Forces team? Will he outpace his own doubts to win this vital race against time?

I can’t rave about this story enough. The main character, Nick, is compelling and likable, which is a good thing because 80 percent of the story is from his point-of-view.

The story begins in a shuttle as the last group of passengers is being shuttled to the Nebula Dream in the last minutes before its departure. Along the way, Nick has an early chance to be a hero when a superstitious traveler decides to try to kill herself. The opening was a bit contrived and somewhat unnecessary in my opinion, but it did serve the purpose of getting the main characters together.

Once on board the ship, Nick somehow scores a personal tour of the ship by one of the ship officers. This tour comes in handy later. He also takes a jaunt up to the observation deck, where he meets a very interesting old lady.

Less then twenty-four hours later, the ship is in chaos, and no one knows what is going on. Ms. Scott did a great job sowing chaos into the plot. The first challenge is people mobbing the lifeboats, and due to some unforgivable shortcuts taken by the space cruse line, there aren’t nearly enough of them. Plus, there are gaping holes in the hole, and bulkheads are slamming down everywhere to preserve the oxygen in the ship.

What a ride. Everyone has a chance to be a hero. Even the children and the old woman.

This is very much a science fantasy, somewhat along the lines of Star Wars. The mythology has nothing to do with anything you’ve ever heard of in Earth history, which makes it all the more cool. In fact, I am not even sure an “Earth history” is intended in this book, although I may be mistaken. The deities plays a role at least two times, the story is open to a sequel involving one of the deities in particular.

The story is tense, the romance is sweet, and the villains are ruthless. If you pick up this book, the pages will fly by and you will be absorbed into a story that you won’t easily forget.