Honor Among Thieves (Honors Series #1)

I enjoyed this interesting take on space travel. It is by no means the first to come up with sentient living space ships, but it was still a great story to read. The mind melding of the ship with the occupants was a little weird to get used to, but in the end I enjoyed it. This is a story with a black protagonist, which I enjoyed, but to my knowledge it is not an Own Voices book. The authors did an excellent job and appear to have qualified sensitivity readers, so there didn't appear to be anything problematic in nature that I (a white woman) noticed. I would still love to see more Own Voices books about marginalized characters though, even if this non-Own Voices was done well.

I was immwdiately pulled into the world and its characters. Great story. Lots of action that leaves you breathless for more.

***Review posted on The Eater of Books! blog*** Honor Among Thieves by Rachel Caine & Ann Aguirre Book One of the Honors series Publisher: Katherine Tegen Books Publication Date: February 13, 2018 Rating: 4 stars Source: ARC sent by publicist Summary (from Goodreads): Petty criminal Zara Cole has a painful past that’s made her stronger than most, which is why she chose life in New Detroit instead moving with her family to Mars. In her eyes, living inside a dome isn’t much better than a prison cell. Still, when Zara commits a crime that has her running scared, jail might be exactly where she’s headed. Instead Zara is recruited into the Honors, an elite team of humans selected by the Leviathan—a race of sentient alien ships—to explore the outer reaches of the universe as their passengers. Zara seizes the chance to flee Earth’s dangers, but when she meets Nadim, the alien ship she’s assigned, Zara starts to feel at home for the first time. But nothing could have prepared her for the dark, ominous truths that lurk behind the alluring glitter of starlight. What I Liked: I was expecting to love this book, because it's science fiction, and I adore Rachel Caine's books, and I adore Ann Aguirre's books, and this book sounded really great in general. How awesome is it that these two powerhouse authors collaborated to create this story! Honor Among Thieves was thrilling, shocking, and nail-biting, and I am hooked and ready for more. This book starts with Zara Cole stealing a rich woman's purse, and some unintended consequences follow. She is hiding from the rich man who is the father of the woman from whom she stole, when she (Zara) is notified that she has been selected to be an Honor. An Honor is a person selected to board a sentient alien ship to explore the universe while working with the ship to help the ship learn more about humans. At first, Zara refuses, but what choice does she have? Becoming an Honor seems safer than waiting for Deluca to hunt her down. But she quickly finds out that being an Honor is infinitely more dangerous than it's made out to be. There is something sinister out in the universe, and Zara may find out about it the hard way. It took me some to get into this story - maybe the first hundred pages or so. But when Zara is ready to go on the Tour with the alien ship and another Honor (Bea), then I started to get more interested. The first couple of chapters are very necessary to the story, to get a peek into Zara's background and also her desperation to follow the safer path. Once Zara and Bea get started on the tour with the alien ship (Nadim), things start to pick up. This story relies a lot on secrets and hidden information that Zara is determined to find. The alien ships - called Leviathans - are very secretive and as much as Nadim wants to reveal information to Zara, he can't - not without punishment from the Elder Leviathan. So there is a lot that a reader won't know, because Zara won't know, up until the last few chapters. I was reading intently, trying my best not to peek at the ending (I didn't!), but I really wanted to know some of those secrets! The authors set up the reveals well and I didn't feel clueless or lost throughout the story (in terms of the "missing" information that we as readers and Zara are not privy to, until the end). Read the rest of my review on my blog, The Eater of Books! - eaterofbooks DOT blogspot DOT com :)