The La Sirena Negra crew are back again!

I have been eagerly awaiting Prime Deceptions ever since reading Chilling Effect last year. Let me just say, it was worth the wait!

Prime Deception’s biggest advantage was being able to jump right into the action again, but this time, without having the exposition of who everyone is. Where Chilling Effect was the bringing together of this ragtag family, Prime Deception is the exploration of what it means to be family.

Prime Deceptions goes into more detail on things mentioned in Chilling Effect, such as more on Eva’s blood family dynamics (as opposed to her real family on the La Sirena Negra), Then there’s Garilia.

There’s also more about the Proarkhe, aka the mysterious aliens who created the Gates and other tech. Once again, they have an overarching presence that teases us with more information. Who are these ancient creatures?

This book was an absolute joy to read. I loved all the nerdy references sprinkled in the book. A fandom planet, creatures that seem to be Pokémon-ish, and bot fighting, are just a few of the fun details that made this book so much fun.

Don’t take the amount of fun as a lack of stakes, however! The La Sirena Negra team are working once more for the Forge, to find a missing scientist. It’ll push the group to their limits, and between old foes and haunting memories, Eva will be tested most of all.

I’m always a sucker for stories about broken people that come together to make a family, and the crew of La Sirena Negra are a prime example of what I love about this dynamic. Sometimes your family isn’t who you’re related to. Sometimes, your family is the weird but wonderful cast of characters you meet along the way. And then sometimes, you have cats.

(Speaking of cats, if you loved Mala in Chilling Effect, you’re in for a treat in Prime Deceptions)

The world building of Prime Deceptions is wild and imaginative, just as it was with Chilling Effect. My other favorite part was just how alien the aliens were. No Star Trek-type forehead ridges here! I assume there will be a book three, and I can’t wait to see what sort of things Valerie Valdes has in store for us in the future.

I can’t wait for everyone to be able to read this book. Since Prime Deceptions is a sequel to Chilling Effect, I’d suggest reading Chilling Effect first. Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for allowing me to read Prime Deceptions early as a eARC in exchange for an honest review!

The adventures of the crew of La Sirena Negra continue in this exciting sequel to Chilling Effect. This time, Captain Eva Innocente takes on a galactic conspiracy involving Pokémon and a lot more. Fun, thrilling, and a great read.

I may have enjoyed this book more than the first. Catching up with the crew felt like reuniting with old friends. I hope their stories continue.

Very worthy follow up to 'Chilling Effect." Sci-fi comedy with heart is a category many attempt and few master but Valdez has the pastiche genre nailed down perfectly. The found family that populates this delightful series has just the right amount of snark to balance their devotion, the right amount of love to balance their pathological need together into trouble. I liked that "Prime Deception" had a bit of a smaller scope, focusing a it more on character development, and particularly on Eva's past and family, though the larger plot line of the Proharke did make a fantastic and suspenseful appearance at the end.

I definitely hope there's more coming!

Prime Deceptions is just as fun as its predecessor - and maybe a bit more so. As with any second novel, the setting expands to cover new people and places and this allows for more fun adventures with our heroine and her crew - and the action scenes and character development are great. Most importantly is that it's still really funny at times, even as it never gets full on into parody at any given point. Valdes seems to go more over the top with geeky references (it's also possible I just was more familiar with these ones than the ones in the last book) but if you don't get them you'll hardly miss anything - you don't need to get any of them to enjoy the plot, the characters, the jokes or anything. And I suspect most will enjoy them, as it's just all so damn good.

Note: Minor Spoiler for a plot twist in the first book is below, but it's not really anything that will ruin your enjoyment of the first book if you know about it in advance. Still, read the first book before this one - it's too good to skip.

-----------------------------------------------Plot Summary----------------------------------------------------
Captain Eva Innocente and her crew - Co-Captain and Medic Pink, Special Agent and Engineer (and romantic partner) Vakar, Engineer Sue, and Pilot Min - have spent the last six months jaunting around the galaxy taking jobs that would put them in conflict with The Fridge, the intergalactic crime syndicate that tried to extort Eva last year. But after another successful mission, Eva is contacted by her sister Mari with an offer of employment on a mission for Mari's secretive employers - an organization opposed to the Fridge. Of course, the last time Eva had to deal with Mari and her employers, Eva had been constantly lied to, extorted, kidnapped, frozen, and left for dead, so neither she nor the rest of the crew is particularly excited to hear Mari out.

But Mari's offered mission is one that is impossible for Eva to resist: to help find and rescue Sue's engineer brother Josh - who was supposedly captured by the Fridge for ransom and never seen since. Sue has been looking for him for years, even breaking into banks to get the money for his ransom, and Eva has always been hoping to find him herself for her engineer.

But Josh's trail will lead Eva back to the planet where her greatest shame took place - the incident that forced her to change her name and leave her criminal father behind, one which she has kept secret from everyone but Pink all this time. For you can only outrun your past for so long, and for Eva Innocente, her dark secrets once changed the whole galaxy, and will threaten to swallow up all those she cares about one final time....
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So yeah, despite the above description, this is in NO way a dark space opera novel - even with the dark things that some of our characters may have done in the past. Like its predecessor, Prime Deceptions leans on the comic side of the scale - this is book about some fun characters getting into dangerous situations, and seeing how they get themselves out - often in comic fashion. It's not a Hitchhiker's Guide-esque novel where a million jokes a minute are more important than plot, but its a story not afraid to pile up jokes - often lowbrow ones - as the real plot moves along, and the book is all the more fun for it. What I'm trying to say is this is a book that will make you smile practically every chapter with delight, even though you know that's what it's trying to do.

It helps that the cast is really damn fun here, and the plot gives them all ways to shine, even if the story is still mainly focused upon Eva particularly. Eva's habit of reckless activity in the sake of her goals - particularly when it will result in her getting to hit those she dislikes - makes her a damn fun character, even as this book throws at her a moral quandary from her tragic past. Add her interactions with everyone else - the antagonist, her mother, the crew, and it's so easy to love her and root for her - especially because the book has her clearly learning from her prior errors and not simply repeating them over and over.

Then you have Sue the young woman engineer in control of her mass of tiny repair bots who is desperate to find her brother, who takes far more of a center stage role this time, and Min, the other young woman on the crew who hooks herself in to the ship as a pilot, but this time gets background depth. The latter leads to a brilliant 3 v 3 robot/armored suit combat contest which is an absurdly fun highlight of this novel, but far from the only one. Vakar and Pink as the rest of the crew get more subdued roles this time around - mainly because Vakar and Eva's romantic relationship is still strong and open at this point, so there's less to do there other than to see Vakar try to ensure he isn't called away by duty from Eva. Oh and I shouldn't forget the psychic cats.

And this cast, plus the secondary characters, leads to a plot that is a roller coaster ride of fun adventures of many many different types. Without spoiling, our initial ride takes us to three very fun planets dealing with 3 different types of fun activities that are takes on those on our own world and full of great humor as a result. And then we get to the main planet for this story, as our heroes attempt to avoid Eva's notoriety and solve their mission on a planet which again is on the verge of civil war, and has to deal with a number of opinionated minor characters as a result - including Eva's mother, who honestly was another highlight for me: she's stridently law-abiding and actually works for the galactic government (initialed BOFA because this is that kind of book), and is very much the caring but a bit overbearing mother you might find in your own family...except perhaps not in the end (I love her). All of this cast and the plot leads us on a fun ride that takes a bunch of unpredictable but well set up twists and turns up through its satisfying ending.

I should add here that this book is chock full of geeky references - quite a few of which I got and made me smile even more. And I mean chock full - the very dedication is a reference, as are quite a few chapter titles, and presumably I missed a whole bunch of such references as I realize I only got one after the fact due to the author giving hints on twitter. Still, the book's humor and characters are not dependent upon the reader getting the references at all and the book doesn't try to hit the reader over the head with these references - Ready Player One this is not. The references add to your enjoyment if you get them, but if you don't, there's little harm here.

In short, Prime Deceptions is tremendous fun and I'm absolutely not giving it enough credit in this review, because it's hard to explain WHY something is "fun" - but this absolutely is. I needed a book that would make me smile so I read it 5 months early in place of other books scheduled to come out sooner, and I do not regret that choice one bit. Recommended Highly.

Valerie Valdes has done it again! Five out of five stars.

Following up on her spectacular Chilling Effect, Captain Eva Innocente is still the same iconic woman she's always been--arguing with a cat, struggling with at least one of her gravboots, and her *family*, which she really can't run from. Entangled with her is her crew, who, while they certainly respect and like her, rarely take the opportunity to not tease her.

The cast of colorful characters continue, and there are some new faces added, some minor returns from Chilling Effect (though, of course, they are anything but minor). Prime Deceptions does an excellent job at immediately reestablishing characters (which is fantastic for me, I haven't had time to re-read CE before I read PD), giving quick reminders of their personalities, their relationships, and themselves.

Eva's new adventure is definitely not one she takes lightly at all-- returning to a site of fear for her, and delving into her past actions. Eva's relationships, as usual, are part of what make the book as great as it is! Snark, humor, and exasperation that Eva so regularly feels truly push her into feeling more realistic as character than many other sci-fi/fantasy protagonists, even as Eva is going things that many of us can't even begin to start.

The first sentence grabs you and holds tight. I suggest blocking out a few hours to read this in one go and enjoy it to its fullest potential!
Thank you NetGalley and HarperCollins for the ARC in exchange for an honest review.