Okay, this was pretty good, actually. It's so nice to see characters behave like adults who can function in society without being huge jerks to everybody all the time in an effort to demonstrate how badass they are. In this case, their excellence as assassins is separate from their personalities; or rather, they are both excellent at their jobs and their personalities allow them to differ in their tactics, but successfully in each instance. There's a lot of paranoia inherent in being an assassin, which is all the complication needed for a relationship without constant one-up-man-ship. I dug the world, too, and that's a huge deal for me. If the world doesn't click, it doesn't matter how good the characters are. Minimum of weirdly purple prose in the sex scenes. Two thumbs up. Rikki is an assassin. In space! 'Love' opens with her fumbling attempts to open the airlock so she can dump the corpse at her feet out into space. Poor old Rikki is having a little crisis of confidence, reflecting that she is barely competent at her chosen profession, that perhaps she needs more skills in airlock-lock picking and knowing her way around luxury liner spacecrafts. I guess her complaining is meant to engage my sympathies, because killing people and disposing of corpses is hard, dirty work, you know! Here she is, attempting to commit the perfect crime. Confusingly though it's not a crime. According to the rules of Kris DeLake's universe, Rikki might have a spot of legal bother if she is caught red-handed, or caught plying her trade in Assassin's Guild licensed territory. Fortunately for Rikki, a blonde god soon shows up to take care of all her problems, get her expensively drunk and then roger her senseless on expensive sheets.The next morning brings breakfast pastries and revelations. Blonde god is a member of the Assassin's Guild, her most recent employer for her most recent corpse work, and he wants to bring her into the fold. Rikki doesn't join stuff, she's not that kind of girl. Frustratingly, this attitude is in complete conflict with every other element of her personality: she's detail focused, she wishes for uniformity and is demonstrably not that great at adjusting to change. She would make a very good bureaucrat. I can imagine her taking a red pen to an underling's report with fiendish glee.Although more to the point, blonde god thinks that while she's a good lay she's an incompetent assassin and probably she's been trying to pin recent corpse jobs on him for reasons that are never explained. So out Rikki flounces, later regretting that she did not have the foresight to snatch a couple of extra danishes, and blonde god is left wondering if Rikki might be a mean girl corpse maker rather than an adorable klutz.Rikki and blonde god have a past together, and when Rikki discovers it she runs. Blonde god gives chase, there's minimal work done on their trust issues and then they're both slapped with sufficient plot to get them through to the end of the book. Any possibility that I might like Rikki is lost when she comes up with the plan that leads to her discovery of blonde god's past. Any possibility that I might engage with the plot is lost in its stupidity.I will sabotage any possibility that anyone reading this review will take it seriously by stating that I am not in favour of assassin romances, in space or otherwise. I do try to like them, because assassins are presented as sexy, fashionable people with sleek and sexy weapons. When I read, I really do try. I imagine an awesome soundtrack and nonchalant walks away from explosions that gently ruffle perfectly arranged hair. I think about abs and toned arms and women with insanely gorgeous eye makeup and how each character has glossy lips that at just the right moment will curve into a perfect sexy smirk, but none of it helps. The profession itself is problematic. Rikki is in the profession because she thinks this is where her talents lie. Those talents appear to be research, planning and boobs. And ultimately, the ability to stick the knife in. This is where I think assassins and romance have serious compatibility issues, because to go in for the kill you have to be able to think about people in such a way that you causing their death is justifiable and is not leaving an indelible stain on your soul. You have to crush all hope and trust in your heart. The point is - assassins work in romances if they are on the point of retiring. And in a romance, either the hero or heroine has to be, or want to be, the nice hopeful optimistic one. Assassination is a tool of fear, not justice. Even if Rikki is super careful to only kill bad people who, according to her sense of justice, deserve to die, she's contributing to a culture that governs through fear of cloak and dagger reprisal. Reading this book was a frustrating experience. There's no substance to the plot, the characters or the setting, nothing beneath surface, no internal logic that makes Rikki's world make sense. I'm sure there's assassin romance out there that I can like, but this isn't it.
