Member Reviews
Hmm. I'm sad I didn't connect to this one like other reviewers seem to have connected with it.
Fergus Ferguson is a bit of an Indiana Jones type character, but he's having his action adventure in space. Fergus is a repo man, and he's on a mission to steal back a spaceship.
I think my issue lies in how action heavy Finder turned out to be. I love action, but this book was pretty full throttle the whole way through. When I started Finder, I thought "Yes! This is going to be so much fun!", but the level of fun kept going and the character-action scale tipped too far down on the action for me.
If you love nonstop action, though, without getting to know who you are rooting for, this might be a really great pick for you.
This is the sort of adventure novel that could have been published at any point in the last seventy years (except the prose is much better than the vast majority of the old stuff). This is exactly the sort of novel that certain elements in fandom claim to want to read. Yet my grasp of the cosmic all leads me to believe that they will overlook this book.
Generally, sci-fi isn’t one of the genres I read. I do, however, pick one up once in a while if the book sounds good, or it’s written by an author I’m already familiar with. This book, which I picked up because it sounded interesting, is a good find. I really liked the main character Fergus after getting into the book because he’s very interesting and different. I also liked most of the side characters, as well. I really do like books with adventure and action, and this book had loads of both. And, fun. After a little bit of a rough start in the beginning, I was engrossed until the end with this unique space adventure. And, no, it isn’t so tech heavy you won’t enjoy it if you’re not big on sci-fi. This book wasn’t really what I was expecting in a good way, and I’m glad I picked it up. I do recommend this book and was provided a complimentary copy which I voluntarily reviewed.
3/5 Stars
Thank you to the publisher and netgalley for the e-galley.
I loved how this book dived right into the action at first but I never really became fully interested in the characters or story. It felt a bit disjointed and confusing to me for the first 30% of the book. The plot was definitely interesting and I liked it. I loved all the action but because I didn't really attach myself to the characters I had a hard time with it. Would recommend others to try!
If you've ever been to Disneyland and ridden the original Star Wars ride (the one that seats you in a kind of cable car, and you begin floating along, then suddenly it jerks and takes a wild turn, begins to fall . . .) well, you'd have my visual image of this book.
It starts out so pleasantly, as Fergus Ferguson, a big red-head, rides a cable car with an elderly woman who is carrying a bunch of crates of lichen to sell.
A jerk, and things rapidly begin going wrong, setting off a wild adventure that keeps on accelerating until the very end.
I loved this book. I adored Fergus, whose inventiveness just about matches his ability to get himself into trouble. I loved the people of Cernee, especially prickly Mari , Good-hearted, sardonic Bale, and a host of other characters. The villains you love to hate, the action is so vivid it's cinematic, and the humor frequently had me chuckling, yet it didn't diminish the rising tension.
I loved this story, loved Fergus, loved Cernee--and loved the intriguing aliens, especially the Asiig. I really hope that Palmer intends to write more about them all.
Thank you to the publisher for the copy.
0-25% : Getting into the story. Finding out the quest.
25-50% : Reaching toward that goal! Yay having fun and really into the story !
50-75% : Deviating from the course, going someplace else, action action action... Okay, but am I supposed to care ? Why are we here ?
75-100% : Back on the main course, really interesting ! Much politics Yay... But part 3 kinda ruined it after all. Ugh too bad.
My critic as far as the writing goes is that this book was too focused on the action, so we didn't get any character's development (stayed 2 dimensional and didn't get attached at all). It also didn't explain.. Anything ? The politics were good, but then, 75% of the book was based on Cernee, so... What does it looks like? We're given fragment of informations when pertinent but never a bigger picture to let us grasp the scale of things. This leaves us sometimes confused and not able to really understand (therefore to care). I think this could have been a really great book with better editing (mostly clarifying things here and there and giving more character depts).
This was a really fun novel that I'll be sure to recommend at work to patrons, for all that it wasn't in my taste. It's a lot of fast paced and witty novel that will delight fans of sci-fi adventure space operas.
Every time I thought the story had ended, something else happened to poor Fergus. I loved this character. Everyone''s perfect anti-hero.
"From Hugo Award-winning debut author Suzanne Palmer comes an action-packed sci-fi caper starring Fergus Ferguson, interstellar repo man and professional finder.
Fergus Ferguson has been called a lot of names: thief, con artist, repo man. He prefers the term finder.
His latest job should be simple. Find the spacecraft Venetia's Sword and steal it back from Arum Gilger, ex-nobleman turned power-hungry trade boss. He’ll slip in, decode the ship’s compromised AI security, and get out of town, Sword in hand.
Fergus locates both Gilger and the ship in the farthest corner of human-inhabited space, a backwater deep space colony called Cernee. But Fergus’ arrival at the colony is anything but simple. A cable car explosion launches Cernee into civil war, and Fergus must ally with Gilger’s enemies to navigate a field of space mines and a small army of hostile mercenaries. What was supposed to be a routine job evolves into negotiating a power struggle between factions. Even worse, Fergus has become increasingly - and inconveniently - invested in the lives of the locals.
It doesn’t help that a dangerous alien species Fergus thought mythical prove unsettlingly real, and their ominous triangle ships keep following him around.
Foolhardy. Eccentric. Reckless. Whatever he’s called, Fergus will need all the help he can get to take back the Sword and maybe save Cernee from destruction in the process."
Because every once in awhile you need a good space caper to remind you space opera is awesome.
I didn't quite finish this in time, but I really enjoyed this space caper/adventure. Looking forward to the release date so I can find out what happens!
Looking for a swashbuckling hero who is part daredevil and part rogue with his own brand of charm? Meet Fergus Ferguson, now on a mission to recover (read that steal back) a certain spacecraft on a remote space settlement. Hang on tight as Suzanne Palmer blasts us of into a space opera adventure that plays out at the speed of light!
FINDER is fast, fun and furious as Fergus attempts to con the conman and retrieve the ship while escaping with his life. All in a day’s work for Fergus, but can he outwit the hostile mercenaries that will be on his tail?
Haven’t tried a space opera yet? Now’s the time to meet Fergus and friends…and enemies. An out of this world escape into reading!
I received a complimentary ARC edition from DAW!
Publisher: DAW
Publication Date: April 2, 2019
Genre: Sci-fi | Space Opera
Print Length: 397 pages
Available from: Amazon | Barnes & Noble
For Reviews, Giveaways, Fabulous Book News, follow: http://tometender.blogspot.com
A fun, quick and quirky space opera, "Finder" by Hugo Award-winner Suzanne Palmer channels both Douglas Adams and Orson Scott Card and fans of both will find much to love in this common (repo) man turned reluctant interstellar adventurer/potential galaxy savior. While the initial pulse is a stretch (again, back to Douglas Adams, or, perhaps World War I), the play pans out in a fast-moving story that sometimes works too hard and overrides character development. But, that's why we read space adventures in the first place, right? Not Palmer's best, but that's in relation to a best that is on a stellar level. A notable and significant addition to the sci-fi space canon.
Finder was not my typical read but I found myself captivated by this imaginative space adventure.
Fergus Ferguson is tasked with retrieving a sentient space craft that was stolen from its creators and he finds himself thrust into a space war that only a mastermind could possibly survive.
Lets just say nothing goes as planned by Fergus finds some amazingly loyal companions and some major life lessons along the way.
Like I said earlier, the plot was nothing like I expected but I really enjoyed Palmer's storytelling. I found myself anxiously looking for more clues as we route for Fergus and his friends that he makes along the way.
I received this ARC copy of FINDER from Berkley Publishing Group - DAW. This is my honest and voluntary review. FINDER is set for publication Apr. 2, 2019.
My Rating: 4 stars
Written by: Suzanne Palmer
Hardcover: 400 pages
Publisher: DAW
Publication Date: April 2, 2019
ISBN-10: 0756415101
ISBN-13: 978-0756415105
Genre: Scifi
Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/Finder-Suzanne...
Barnes & Noble: https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/find...
Itunes: https://itunes.apple.com/us/book/find...
5 likes
Finder is a snappy, smart space adventure from Suzanne Palmer. It’s a lot of fun, and has some clever big ideas lurking beneath some tremendously human characters and a breakneck plot.
The story is centred on the marvellously alliterative Fergus Ferguson. Fergus calls himself a finder. He retrieves things for people. That leans less toward dropped earrings, and more toward slightly larger things – in this case, a spacecraft. To retrieve these lost objects, Fergus employs a variety of soft skills, including fast talking, impersonation, building improvised tools and the occasional well-placed theft. Fergus is also thoughtful, introspective, and altohihg unwilling to dig too far into his own psyche, gives us some truly vivid imagery to allow for a partial analysis of his personality.
The larger point here is, Fergus is fun to read. He can talk his way out fo a lot of things, and seeing the excuses and rationales he runs up to get out of various scrapes is a delight. At the same time, when events call for the physical, he’s no slouch (if not a ninja). There’s enough high impact conflict here to sate anyone – but there’s also a lot of running away, or arranging events so as to fight again another day. This is a smart, thoughtful protagonist, unwilling to risk their hide unnecessarily. That Fergus is also always ready with some banter is a plus, and helps carry the story along. But Fergus has enough depth to make him more than an entertaining cipher. There’s a sense of history, of past hidden beneath a shroud of memory and long con’s gone wrong. The meat is there if you want to infer and dig into it, and if not – he’s an interesting person with a smart mouth and a degree of competence that makes the characterisation an absolute joy.
Fergus operates in a weird, complicated, fascinating world. It’s one which knows about non-human species, where some are better known as your neighbours, but others are a potentially lethal enigma. The system he’s working in is a string of habitats, linked together by a desire for atmosphere and commerce, at the edge of any space where anyone cares about law enforcement. It’s a pot on the boil, torn between several factions, none of whom particularly want to share power with the others. But they’re also part of a broader universe, a claustrophobic environment connected by hump oints to a larger, sprawling universe. And to Palmer’s credit, this universe feels alive. If the habitats are often cramped, claustrophobic and filled with dangerous flora and fauna, they’re also thriving, with a dynamic and invested population base. The politics, the environs, the details of life in this world feel believable. The wider scale also works for internal consistency. There’s grime and grudges and attitude, and they all feel real. This is a real, living, breathing world – it makes internal sense, and it will keep your attention even as Fergus leaps across it wreaking havoc.
Speaking of which – the plot is rather fun. It ramps up quickly, and although you’re grounded, there’s a sense of the unknown and unfamiliar throughout. We’re grounding ourselves alongside Fergus, and as he looks into alien ships, into political malfeasance, and as he works to talk his way into stealing a star cruiser, we empathise, we understand his pain, every step of the way. The conflicts though have depth and raw, hard edges, and a history which helps them to feel real The stakes are high, for sure, and the pacing never lets up – throwing you between witty repartee, gunfire and the potential end of the world between paragraphs.
This is a tightly written, compelling space opera. It has charm and grace, and will make you want to finish it very quickly, to see what happens next. It is, above all, a fun piece of sci-fi which will reward your attention – and so I recommend it.
I enjoyed the world-building in this book, the characters were interesting enough, despite the villains being a little one-note and predictably stupid. The pace of the book is pretty brisk, lots of action but also enough introspection to balance out the story.
In the year of our Lord 2017 (of unfond memory), I read these two stories about sweet little bots doing their best, and it launched me into a new state of being in which I read short fiction so much that I have had to commission a logo about it. The main one, admittedly, was "Fandom for Robots," but a very close second was Suzanne Palmer's very sweet "The Secret Life of Bots." So it was with great pleasure that I learned she has her debut novel out this year: Finder!
Fergus Ferguson is a finder, and he's been tasked with finding a sentient ship, the Venetia's Sword, and stealing it back from the crime boss Arum Gilger. Things go spectacularly awry. First he meets a woman called Mattie Vahn, and then she dies, and then he meets a zillion of her apparent clones, the crossest one of whom insists on following him around suspiciously while he's trying to accomplish his business. There are also some quite ominous aliens flying about the place in pointy triangle ships. Nobody is sure what they want. Probably nothing good.
Fans of madcap excursions, please congregate. I have got the book for you. Not only is Fergus banging all over the universe in this book, dashing from one planet to the next trying to get things under control; but he is also perpetually trying to triage the many many things he is forced to care about; including but not limited to:
a very cross maybe-clone who reminds him of someone he lost
so many different changes of clothes that it boggles the mind (some of which the previous inhabitants have peed in)
decoding seven passwords to gain access to a sentient starship
transportation logistics
pointy triangle alien ships that keep re-orientating to point directly at him
murder plague insects
regular, annoying insects
his better-off-forgotten past as a Martian war hero
an unnerving number of dead bodies
disarming a defensive perimeter using tennis balls and sex toys
All on very little food or sleep, and in increasingly parlous physical condition as various of his enemies catch up to him and thwack him with varyingly deadly weapons. So there you go; it's that kind of book. You would know best if that is the kind of book you would enjoy. I enjoyed it massively. As the above list has perhaps made clear, Finder contains a very high number of elements. In the hands of a less talented creator, the whole shebang could have devolved into chaos -- much like any of the ninety-six-thousand plans Fergus makes over the course of Finder (but especially the one with the sex toys). Instead, it bounds exuberantly forward like tennis balls with vibrators inside, and crackles like vibrating tennis balls being electrocuted by defensive measures set by a paranoid warlord.
I give Suzanne Palmer and her publisher permission to use that last sentence as a blurb for the paperback edition. Be blessed.
Note: I received an e-ARC of Finder from the publisher for review consideration. This has not influenced the contents of my review.
A new science fiction book from an author I had not read before which turned out to be a great read. Apparently Earth has done itself in so that most of mankind has moved out to other planets- or at least other manmade habitats. Mars seems to be the most viable planet in our solar system and it’s initial settlers have been pushed aside as the last inhabitants of Earth take over when they have to move. Fergus Ferguson is a young man who has many memories of his home in Scotland but they are not good ones as the seas rise and his mother falls into madness and his father gives up. At age 15 he moves to Mars and finds out that he is someone who can solve problems even when they are life threatening.
In this book he is a ‘Finder’ , basically someone who is repossessing items that have been stolen. The item is Venetia’s Sword, a smart ship run by an A.I. (Which really made me think of some of Anne McCaffery’s books). This ship was taken for a test drive and then stolen and is located at Cernee, a habitat a long way from our solar system. Ferguson is sure he can figure out how to get it back but along with breaking into a smart ship he also finds himself caught up in a civil war that the different groups in Cernee have decided to start. My one quibble is that Ferguson constantly sells himself short (perhaps because he does manage to do everything like a super hero) which gets tiring after awhile. All in all it was a fun read.
I'm not really a science fiction reader, but this book had me from the very beginning. Fergus Ferguson is a 'finder'. He recovers stolen goods and returns them to their rightful owners. He is currently on the trail of a stolen space ship that, literally, can think for itself if you know the answers to the questions it will ask. Fergus knows the answers, or at least he believes that he does, but first he has to get close enough to the ship to 'talk' to it. This task is made more difficult when he ends up in the middle of a war...a war in which this stolen ship plays an important part. This story was a roller coaster of a ride and I enjoyed the trip very much. Was the ending designed so that there could be more books set in this universe? I hope so!
Fergus Ferguson is an interstellar repo man working for the shipmakers of Pluto to repossess Venetia's Sword, a state of the art intelligent ship from Arum Gilger, the criminal who ran off with it. His destination is Cernee, a higgledy-piggledy series of habs in space around a gas giant. They are connected by transport lines, but Fergus's first ride proves almost fatal. When his cable car is targeted by Gilger, he gets away but his fellow passenger, Mother Vahn, matriarch of a clan of (he assumes) clones, is killed. Quite rightly the clones don't trust him, even though they save his life.
The plot thickens as Fergus becomes invested in some of the locals, including Mari, one of the clones, spiky as hell, and Harcourt, arms dealer, one of Cernee's powers, and Bale his surprisingly likeable henchman. Pretty soon Fergus is in the middle of a war between factions that he unwittingly helped to start. He lurches from one desperately improbable situation to another, managing to end up (several times) not-dead by the skin of his teeth. Fergus is a quick-thinking schemer with a conscience. He's a likeable character with a backstory which eventually returns to bite him.
There are aliens, and then there are Aliens, in particular the ineffable Asiig who sometimes take humans and 'alter' them. Some come back, some don't. They take an unnatural interest in him, so Fergus is wary, but when they intervene things get very strange.
Ms Palmer makes her characters work hard. Finder is a breathless ride. The pacing is good and the characters nicely complex. (I particularly liked Mari with her sandpapery attitude towards everything.) Though this is a complete story there's a neat little opening at the end which offers the possibility for Fergus to have more adventures. I'm looking forward to that.
Finder by Suzanne Palmer. Fergus Ferguson is a Finder, sort of a Bounty Hunter that locates objects for you and brings them back. Upon arriving in Cernee, his day turns bad and doesn't get better. Almost blown up, killed for finding out secrets he shouldn't know and trying to find the object he has been hired to find, it just isn't his day.