*~~*ARC kindly provided to me for an honest review *~~*

- Review to come

Review originally posted on my blog with added content on Mikku-chan / A world full of words

While an interesting premise and a quick read, this novella didn't really have much else to offer than some well written characters. I really liked Mal and Rory--Ellis takes care with them to make them come off as fleshed out as possible, which I appreciated. However, on the whole, the plot was a bit lacking and the shifts in POV weren't transitioned properly, making the progress of the book a bit bumpy.

This was a surprisingly great read. I had forgotten it was a novella but it quickly set the scene and developed some detail in the main characters.

Normally I am not a huge fan of sci-fi type books. But I was presently shocked by In Ageless Sleep by Arden Ellis.


I went into this book think that it wasn’t really for me but I couldn’t have been more wrong. I like how it blended traditional fairy tale with modern sci-fi. It was a quick read of about 52 pages. But the author was able to make the characters come to life for me. I particularly liked the character Mal. She was just the right amount of snarky and flawed for my tastes.


My only problem with the book is a wish it was longer. I picked it up thinking it was a full-length novel. I feel like more could have been added to develop the characters and their relationship. But the ending leaves it open to a possible sequel. Fingers crossed.


I would recommend this book to anyone who is in the mood for a short light-hearted jaunt through space.


Thanks to the publisher and NetGalley for the opportunity to read and review this book.

At first glance In Ageless Sleep looked like a retelling of the Sleeping Beauty Fairytale with a futuristic science fiction setting. And indeed there are some similarities to it here and there, such as the name of the protagonist Aurora, the sleeping princess of the Sovereigns. One of her ships guards is even referred to as „Knight“. Otherwise the story doesn’t feel much like a fairytale inspired one. It could be that this story is simply too short to form a working atmosphere for me.

The story itself is at least a nice space adventure. It didn’t grip me, unfortunately, yet I did enjoy the topic of a cryo ship in space. But In Ageless Sleep felt too sterile to work for me. There is this conflict between two fractions, the Reaches and the Sovereigns, but everything about them is scarcely described. So everything I could tell you about them would be told too much. It’s the same with the characters. Mal could have been an interesting protagonist though. She is a misanthrope for good reason, for all I got to know about her. She has a broken knee and seems kind of mutated due to the poor quality of life on her home world. She is in fact the complete opposite of her beautiful, healthy and rich prisoner Aurora aka Rory.

This story is told to be a science fiction romance and I could see what the author was trying to do, but I just didn’t feel it. The way the relationship between Mal and Rory developed wasn’t convincing and felt unrealistic. Rory is in cryo-sleep all the time with the exception of a few minutes a day, where she is allowed to enter a code while cuffed. That happens day after day for some weeks and somewhere during those short time periods wherein Rory is allowed to be awake, the romance happened. I didn't see it, especially not from Rorys PoV who is send back to sleep whenever Mal decides it is time to.

Overall In Angeless Sleep is a short story with some entertaining elements but it ended up to be superficial. I would have liked it more if there had been a bit more extensive elaboration to the characters and world building. The story felt like a draft that could have been more.

- My thanks to Netgalley, the publisher, and the author for an ARC of this book -

I have a serious beef with this work; it’s just not long enough. Mal is a spy with one mission, to commandeer a ship and kidnap it’s royal cargo, Aurora, “Rory,” who is a Sovereign and a sworn enemy of Mal’s people, The Reaches. This job doesn’t include getting to know the cargo, and Mal definitely didn’t plan developing feelings. Mal has failed once before, and it nearly got her killed. This time, when faced with an impossible decision, will she carry out her mission or give into her feelings for Rory?

Though there may be traces of Stockholm Syndrome here, the developing relationship between the characters is presented well, and I appreciated that things exist beneath the surface, but each character is fighting for her life in different ways, so the warring elements are always in the back of their minds, even as they grow closer.

It’s well-crafted, and I thought that the characters are well developed for such a short work. That said, I would definitely like to see more. I want to know what happens next, more about the word these two live in, and where they (and the warring peoples) will go from here. It’s a great appetizer, but I’d devour the main course.

Great for a day lounging around the house (or in my case, a slow day at work), you can probably finish it in one sitting. I’ll definitely be looking out for more from Arden Ellis.

Impressive world building in such a short story. Malev Doma , an agent from the Reaches knows just enough coding to hijack a cryo-ship containing the daughter of the Sovereign King. The race is on to get to the rendezvous point where Mal can hand over her hostage to her countrymen. Damage to some of the ship's systems forces Mal to wake up Aurora every day for weeks to reset the computers. The Sovereigns and Reaches might be at war, but on The Royal Arc a battle of wits along with a growing attraction between Rory and Mal is anything but static. It's a subtle dance to be sure, but a dance just the same.

Mal covers her vulnerability and world-weariness with a cocky and confident bravura. She is a hero and anti-hero making her a rogue and a renegade. Rory, intelligent and clever, attempts to take control of her own fate using wit, words and the computer skills she possesses. Both women bond over many games of Kravash, a card game with the vaguest of rules.

As short stories go, In Ageless Sleep has it all; a decent plot, enough details to understand the physical locations of the protagonists and characters you know marginally well enough to care about. Conflict and tension? Check. Build to a climax? Big check. Deliver a resolution? Somewhat.

Pretty damn good for 17000 words.

This was interesting but just too short. The world felt incomplete because the author had too few pages to work with. This could have been another 100 pages of history and politics to help flesh out the world and Mal's backstory. The romance occurred in the blink of an eye and felt very underdeveloped. Again, 100 more pages would have allowed the romance and characters to fully develop. I'd definitely be interested in reading a longer, more developed version of this story.

I totally loved this! At first I didn't even notice it was a retelling of the Sleeping beauty (although the love interest's name is Aurora. God, I'm obtuse) but it didn't particularly bother me because the plot isn't too similar to the fairy tale. It draws some inspiration from the most obvious archetypes, like waking up the princess from a "magical" sleep, or the main character falling asleep after prickling her finger with a syringe, but besides this the plot is brand-new.

The idea of having Mal and Rory being enemies from opposite sides of a war was interesting, but it was even better that they came from backgrounds so vastly different. I thought the conflict from that clash added a lot of depth to both characters, and explained a lot about their personalities and motivations, and how the war had shaped them. My favorite thing was that both girls made morally gray decisions and weren't

Although I love that this is a f/f retelling I found the romance a bit bland. There was a lot of tension between them at the beginning that evolved into a begrudging friendship, but that step from being friendly to liking each other romantically was a bit far-fetched in my opinion. Also the fact that Mal had power to put Rory to sleep and wake her up whenever she wanted and kept her restrained felt wrong and made the relationship between them hard to digest for me. At least it avoided the whole waking-up-with-a-kiss-although-we-don't-know-each-other mess, but it still had some moments of Mal stalking Rory before she woke up that were kind of creepy and this never gets addressed in the text as something wrong. Mal had an excuse to wake her up and it didn't have huge repercusions for Rory, so it isn't such a big issue as in, let's say, the Passengers movie, which has a somewhat similar plot and comes off as terribly disturbing, but still all the staring longingly at Rory and a quote in the moment of waking her for the first time were awful.

Besides that, the narrative kept the suspense and totally hooked me. I would have enjoyed more background and worldbuilding, but since this is so short it's better that it focused in the plot at hand.

It was a solid four stars read for me.

*I received this book from NetGalley, and Less Than Three in return for a fair review.*

This is a really really good short story. The story snuck up on me unexpectedly. It just kept building, my heart actually was racing there at times.

Not really sure what to say, though, without saying everything.

The universe: Colonists, mainly the lower classes (or however that was worded), headed off to new planets. Only to find that they'd been tricked. They promptly decided to return 'home', but the homeworlds didn't want them. War broke out. It still occurs at the time of this story, but now less with soldiers, and more with assassins, missiles targeting . . . everything, and the like. The two sides are the Reaches (colonists/poor) and the Sovereign (homeworlds/rich).

This story: The book description is good enough. The book opens with Mal, a member of the Reaches, sitting around on a spaceship traveling through space. She'd snuck aboard and taken it over - relatively easily since, for the most part, while the ship contains 100+ people on it, only roughly 2 crew members are awake at a time. The rest are in sleep, frozen sleep. Cryo-sleep.

Why did Mal take over the ship? Because she was told to do so. More specifically, because the Sovereign Princess was aboard.

The story consists of a slow meeting between the princess, Aurora (or Rory), and Mal. Over weeks/months as the ship travels to a specific location. And the tension mounts, for they are enemies, and one needs the other for a specific ship task (being purposefully vague here); and tension mounts because of the risk - which will arrive first, the Reaches ship, or the Sovereign?

Everything is from Mal's point of view, but, even so, I felt like I got a good look at both characters (there are more than two, but - other than a few messages here and there and things seen on a view screen, there really are just two characters in the story). The relationship between the two was neat to watch.

Short, simple, neat story.

Rating: 4.88

March 24 2017

There's been a few movies in the past few years that use the 'what happens while everyone's in cryosleep trope and to varying successes. Air (2015) with Norman Reedus and Djimon Hounsou went down the psychological thriller route, whereas Passengers (2016) with Jennifer Lawrence and Chris Pratt aimed for romance and ended up with creepy, stalker horror movie.

In Ageless Sleep is what those movies could have been.

<B>Plot and World Building</B>
Ooooo.... It's so simple and yet so good. The reawakening/sleep cycle that Mal and Rory are forced into is really well written, you can feel the repetition of the days slowly passing in total isolation, but it never feels dull or dragging. There were at least two points towards the end where I shook my Kindle, You can't do this to me!, had to check the percentage bar wasn't full yet.

The story is set against the, all to believable, interstellar civil war. The time of soldiers and upfront battles has passed and now subterfuge and sneak attacks against civilians have become commonplace. This background allows the reader to sympathise with Mal even while she acts as Rory's captor. It creates a tension between the two characters, and always leaves open the possibility that they're playing each other for an advantage.

<B>Characters and Diversity</B>
A well as the f/f relationship, the story has Aurora/ Rory, a black woman, and Mal, whose time in artificial gravity has left her with a limp and cane. Each character is more than this simple, though. Rory is a scientist and a genius, Mal is bitter but a true survivor. Their personalities play off each other so that you never know who has the upperhand.

<B>Length</B>
This is a short novella that you can read in an hour, but it's perfectly paced and manages a lot within its small wordcount. While I wouldn't want the story lengthened for the sake of it (like I say, the pacing is bang on) I would have love to see it developed into something a little longer so that we could get some more time watching Mal and Rory's relationship build, more background on Mal's rough past and training, and maybe more on the ramifications of the hijacking.

(This review will be posted on my blog, Foxes and Fairy Tales on 29 March 2017: https://foxesfairytale.wordpress.com/2017/03/17/review-in-ageless-sleep)

"You couldn't trust beauty when it came from a place like that. But that didn't stop Mal's eyes from sticking to that face like hull-sealing glue."

* * *
3 / 5

In Ageless Sleep is a tiny little sci-fi/lesbian novella clocking in at about 17,000 words. Mal is a spy, grown up and grown old in the Reaches; Aurora, or "Rory", is the daughter of the Sovereign King and in cryostasis on the way to a scientific mission when Mal hijacks her ship. When a system disasters strikes, Rory is the only one who might be able to help Mal save the ship.

"I'm not much of a conversationalist," Mal replied without feeling.
"Luckily for you, I'm a captive audience."

I always have a strange relationship with novellas. I'm in awe of anyone who can pack a good plot, developed characters, and good worldbuilding into a scant handful of pages. In Ageless Sleep manages to do each of these and add in a splash of good humour, but the romantic relationship isn't particularly well developed, unsurprising given the shortness of this book. The thing with novellas is that they almost always leave me wanting more and I feel a touch cheated because I'd just got invested in the characters and then, wham, it's over - In Ageless Sleep is no exception.

The setting is briefly sketched: the Sovereign planets promised a new life to the poor masses, sending them out on ships to new worlds. When these worlds proved to be not-so-inhabitable, the Sovereigns didn't want them back. Thus began a very long-distance, century-spanning war. Now Mal's here to try and end it forever with the kidnapping of the King's daughter.

"The haze and confusion lifted off her like ice breaking from a ship's hull in the atmosphere"

There's a bit of action, a bit of coding and sci-fi references, but mostly In Ageless Sleep is a character study of Mal. There are about two plot twists, neither of which are hard to guess, so the value of In Ageless Sleep lies in how much you connect to Mal and Rory. I liked Mal, torn between her duty and fear of her punishment for failing her task, and the young woman she has begun to spend more time with as an attempt to stave off loneliness. I didn't feel like there was much to Rory, however. She's had a privileged life but is emotionally closed off and doesn't get along well with her father.

On the whole, In Ageless Sleep is an interesting little novella that is well worth giving a chance. It was particularly lovely to read a lesbian sci-fi romance, I haven't found too many of those!

3.5 stars

This is a well written story with a rather simplistic plot. Considering the majority of characters are in stasis (deep asleep) and events unfold on the ship, there aren’t too many opportunities for subplots, not that I’m saying that’s a bad thing, far from it in fact. The ship comes under attack which is enough to keep the reader flipping the pages.

Mal is an interesting and likable character, as is Rory. I really enjoyed their interaction and the fact I didn’t know how things would eventuate between them. At one point I thought they might become intimate, but it wasn’t to be.

While I enjoyed this story, it lacked the ‘feels’ of a sci-fi book and I wouldn’t really call it a romance as it stands, although the plot appeared to be heading in that direction.

I knocked half a star off for the abrupt ending. Cliff-hangers are one thing, but this story just stopped. It felt as though someone yanked the book out of my hands and refused to let me finish it. Needless to say the story didn't end on a happy note for me. Shame really.

God, I really didn't want this to be over.

It was impossible to ignore this book when I saw the cover on NetGalley. Seriously, this cover is so gorgeous. And thankfully, the synopsis seemed interesting too — sci-fi with lesbian romance is right up my alley. The sad surprise was the length, only 17000 words rather than a full novel, and oh how much I wanted this to be a full novel. I paused halfway through instead of devouring it all in one sitting because I wanted it to last but I just picked it up again hours later.

The main character, Mal, a spy from the Reaches colonies tasked with the mission of hijacking a cryo-ship carrying Aurora, daughter of the Sovereign King, and deliver her to her people. The Reaches and the Sovereigns have been at war for hundreds and hundreds of years.

The protagonist, Mal, is a spy from the Reaches colonies tasked with the mission of hijacking a cryo-ship carrying the daughter of the Sovereign King, Aurora (who goes by Rory), and deliver the princess to her people. The Sovereigns and the Reaches have been at war for hundreds and hundreds of years, and when the story starts Mal is holding Rory captive and asleep while she waits for her people to arrive. Well, until Mal needs to wake Rory so she can help fix the malfunctioning systems on the ship.

Only Mal and Rory are ever awake on the ship throughout almost the whole story, which means the author doesn't need to waste any time introducing other characters, focusing only on them, especially Mal, and I loved her. Growing up in the Reaches was brutal, where she had to pay with hard work for the simple privilege of staying alive, and she carries physical and psychological evidence of that. She could only imagine what the enemy princess was going to be like, and Rory started proving her wrong from the moment she first woke up. While we don't get to know her as well as we do Mal, she's a pretty awesome character too. My favorite part was maybe the conversation they had about the differences between how they were raised: "No one ever trusted me to take care of myself." "That's all people ever trusted me to do. No one ever thought to take care of me."

Even though the story is short, the way their relationship progresses didn't feel rushed to me, probably because I was aware of how much time was actually passing. This is one of those stories that spans weeks while only describing the most important scenes. Being enemies, Mal and Rory were reluctant to open up to each other, but they were also each other's only company on the ship. The first scene where Mal sort of reveals she might be attracted to Rory was just amazing; I thought about using the specific quote in the beginning of my review but I decided it should come as a surprise to everyone who reads this.

Overall, I'm very glad I took a chance with this novella. I don't usually read anything without at least checking ratings and skimming a couple of reviews first, and this didn't have any yet, so I went in with zero expectations and it was a really solid, well-written story.

This was the most satisfying novella I have ever read.

I have no idea how Arden Ellis managed to get so much character development, world-building and plot twists into a story that's like 20,000 words long, but she did. The main character, Mal, was a stunningly rendered character who underwent more development in this novella than most characters do in an entire series, and although the plot twists were slightly predictable, I found them interesting nevertheless.

Highly recommended; READ THIS BOOK!!