I liked this. It's a solid sci-fi novel with interesting and well-rounded characters. I was invested in all three MC's and POVs (Jasper, Sowing of Small Havoc & Ship) and found the narrative and plot very engaging. The romantic element could have been stronger for me, I liked the two together but there wasn't as much spark as I would have liked but it did work for the two characters. The world-building was strong and it was well paced. I'd like to see more in this world for sure.

I enjoyed this book, and the three main characters Jasper/Mason, Sowing of Small Havoc, and Ship. Even though it involves an alien species and some space travel, it's mostly about organizing a small labor uprising against an evil corporation, which could be set anywhere on Earth in the present. The viewpoint of Ship is an interesting take on emerging machine sentience. The story stayed pretty light hearted, and there isn't much nuance to the corporate bad actors, but the relationships are nice. The story is nicely told and comes to a satisfying, stand-alone conclusion.

Another one of those books where the blurb made it seem like something I'd really like but the way in which the author dealt with the plot in question just didn't quite work for me. As usual, YMMV.

The basic premise is that it's science fiction, set in a world where corporate entities control entire planets, which means that the people living there (whether human or not) have to live under the dictates of those corporations. One of our protagonists, who goes by Jasper (aka Mason, when he's undercover) has grown up on one of those worlds, where use of drugs on the population has led to a number of side effects cropping up which give the planet's inhabitants various psychic powers, while simultaneously decimating the birth rate. Somehow this has been able to be kept from the company which ran this (and many other) planets and so Jasper uses his particular gift of being able to see the emotional connections between people to try and sabotage that company's work on other planets.

Our other protagonist, Jasper's eventual love interest, is Kovari rather than human - despite his name Sowing of Small Havoc lives within a society where working towards the group good is the main goal and that's been abused by the company who owns this planet to make even the idea of organising against the company almost taboo. When our main characters meet, Jasper is supposedly encouraging unionisation but also has a plan to try and infiltrate the company headquarters, as further work is being done on a drug that works much like the one that affected his planet, destroying the birth rate but being immensely profitable.

In general terms, there's pretty good world-building and a nice range of supporting characters (including a spaceship which has recently acquired sentience and wants to get involved in what's going on) but the main characters aren't as strong as they could be. I had some trouble visualising what the Kovari look like, so it's probably a good thing that this is not a particularly explicit book for m/m and I hope the writer has a clear grasp of the respective biologies if she plans to change that in future installments. There's also a bit of bleed-over from what looks like the author's own experience of unionising, as sometimes there's a degree of info-dumping of 'how to organise people into a union' which just feels awkward.

So, in general terms not a bad book and it's likely to work well for some - for me, it just lacked that clarity of characterisation that makes me care what happens to the people involved and then want to pick up the next in the series.

I received a free copy of this book from the publisher, via Netgalley. This is my honest review of the book in question.

Jo Miles' debut novel, Warped State, exemplifies the author's bio, who says they "write optimistic science fiction and fantasy." At times, the optimism outweighed the attempt at realistic activism and organizing. A lot of happy accidents and convenient explanations that wouldn't hold up against scrutiny allow for main characters Jasper (aka Mason Singh) and Sowing of Small Havoc to carry out their plans. Warped State tries to do a lot of things and does most of them at an okay level, rather than doing one or two things really well. There is inter-species romance, extra-human capabilities, corporate caste systems, complicated family and team dynamics that aren't fleshed out, spaceships gaining sentience and developing personal ethics and morals, and a lot of debates around various approaches to activism and organizing.

I wanted to like this book, but there are several things that just turned me off. I probably would have set it down after only a couple of chapters under other circumstances, but I wanted to give it a shot. The inter-species romance aspect really is not for me but I know that there is an audience that will love it.

I also found it incredibly difficult to visualize the Kovari, who make up around half of the characters, including Sowing of Small Havoc. A late-revealed physical feature of them not having lips and instead having always visible teeth caught me off guard and made me more confused about their appearance. I don't feel like they were adequately described and that details were too sparse and far apart.

The story jumped between perspectives of various characters so often that it left very little room for suspense or mystery. When Mason is infiltrating a corporate building early on in the story, we know exactly what the security officers are thinking and doing because of the constant jumps back and forth between Grist, the security consultant, and Mason, mid-heist. I think the story would have been stronger had we not known what the circumstances were behind the scenes. Additionally, because of the way this author switched perspectives so frequently, it often required jumps back and forth in the chronology of the narrative, meaning we'd see the same thing happen from multiple perspectives in a row, with dialogue repeating in consecutive scenes. This felt redundant to read and really threw a wrench in the flow of the story.

Additionally, the dialogue and inner-thought style narration of characters felt so overwrought and unnatural, and it constantly reminded me I was reading a capital-S Story, rather than allowing me to sink in and enjoy what I was reading.

Another aspect that really put me off was that Grist, the security consultant with augmented physical capabilities, was also a drug user dependent on painkillers. It's such a tricky thing to introduce pain medicine dependency to your story and I don't think it was done with care towards drug users at large, especially since the one character who was using drugs was also a villain. It wasn't addressed again after serving as an opportunity for Grist to pass out while the sentient ship intervenes in some local happenings.

Was there anything I did like? Sure, I think the corporate caste system was really interesting and an accurate look at how folks act within strict hierarchies with the idea of rising up through hard work. The disdain folks at higher ranks viewed those with lower ranks and even the self-deprication within those at lower ranks felt reminiscent of the real world and our class and economic systems. I wanted to read more about this corporate life and about the people at every rank who wanted to join in revolution, to hear about their stakes and what made them tick.

While this book wasn't for me, I'm sure the story will make a lot of readers excited. Readers who enjoy a more optimistic approach to social justice and activism who are interested in furry-adjacent futuristic intergalactic space world building will get a kick out of this book, which promises to be a trilogy series at least.

Thank you to Jo Miles and NetGalley for access to an advanced reader copy in exchange for an honest review!

Just finished reading Jo Miles' Warped Date and all I can say is...
MORE!

There's an earnestness to Warped State that I found incredibly appealing. It trades in the usual sarcasm and cynicism for a mix of idealism, pragmatism, and realism. The characters fulfill this by being smart, but naïve, loving, but pragmatic, and good,... but good.

Strangely, it's this last part that I found so inviting. The good guys in Warped State are good guys through and through. They are the people struggling for their families, their company, and their cause who don't need to overcome their super-dark past. And for me, it was a breath of relief that the heroes were not part-time villains. They are good guys simply because something needs to get done and they chose to give a damn. Even better, they didn't accidentally fall into being good guys, they saw a problem and chose to act.

On the surface, this is a book about workers, big pharma, corporate culture, rights, and what it means to be part of a team. It is a space epic where the rebels infiltrate a planet to stop the production of a product that will produce dire consequences. Yet it's not a shoot 'em up and it's not a political intrigue. It's not even really a book of chess moves. What it is is richer than that. It's a book about cultivating relationships and wrestling with the nature of one's culture and blind spots to engender change.

Beware, below lies the spoilery parts:

Jasper is an outsider whose people were afflicted by a really nasty drug whose side effects nearly wiped out an entire generation. The drug gifted him with telepathic empathy, but cost his family, his community, and his whole planet millions of lives. When he discovers a company called Ravel is about to replicate this drug on a planet called Artesia, he signs up to stop it from happening again.

Havok of Sowing is a lizardman who's fighting to change the corporation from the inside. He wants his people to have better working conditions and more opportunities for upwards mobility, But Havoc is also pro-corporation. He wants his corporation to be successful and cares about it more than himself. His deft naivety which makes the book so engrossing. While initially, Jasper wants to help Havoc achieve his goals, Havoc is more dubious. He wants his company to prosper. But the question of what prosperity is and who it is for or rather who gets a piece of the pie and at what cost is what drives the book.... And the book drives fast and easily.

This is a downhill read that you will enjoy even during the tightest of its curves.

A promising sci-fi debut with political intrigue and a romantic subplot

Jasper (AKA Mason) arrives on Artesia to stop Ravel, all-powerful bio-pharma company, from continuing development of a drug that caused widespread infertility on his planet and left the surviving children with unexpected but secret powers. His ability allows him to see the links between people: hostile, friendly, hesitant, romantic...he sees it all.

Sowing of Small Havoc is a Kovar - lizard-like is the easiest description - employed as a support staff for Ravel and protesting for his right to better working conditions and access to promotions. His kind are marginalised in Ravel society and never seem to progress past menial labour.

Ship - an unexpected 3rd POV - is a newly sentient AI spaceship, grappling with their new emotions, identity and how they can assist our MCs without their main opponent, the ship's captain Grist, finding out.
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Overall, I found this to be a well-paced sci-fi novel with interesting worldbuilding, ethical questions and cultural differences.

This is very much a dystopian evil mega-pharma world, kind of terrifying in its believability. This story only really introduces one alien culture, the Kovars, but it does so convincingly and manages to avoid any infodumping by keeping this story relatively small and tight.

I found that using Ship as a POV character was a great way to offer a somewhat omniscient view of what was going on, and show the antagonist's actions without having to use their POV. At some times Ship was the most human character of all and I'm keen for more development on that front.

The conflict between the MCs felt believable and I thought the cultural aspects were particularly well-developed. Kovar highly value a community mindset, and do everything to protect their group. Part of Havoc's group identity is his colleagues and loyalty towards Ravel so Jasper undermining this to tear Ravel down goes counter to Havoc's desire to see progress for all.

In spite of this, they each have a lot of respect for the other and their attraction is undeniable. That being said, the romance here is definitely a subplot. It's present, and does drive a lot of their actions, but at the end of the day it remains quite surface-level.

While it does end on a HFN for the couple, I hope they're the protagonists for future books because I feel like their story is incomplete. And maybe I'm just a total perv who enjoys alien/monster romances (no comment) but…I want more details on the logistics of this pairing. I mean...Havoc has a snout. Tell me more.

I also thought Jasper’s ability was very clever but underused. It's mentioned a lot in the beginning, and his analysis of the crowds during Havoc's protests was interesting, but I found it got left by the wayside somewhere in the middle.

I would recommend this to sci-fi readers over romance readers, but I definitely did enjoy it and will pick up the next book once released!

I didn’t like this book as much as I hoped, and I could not quite put my finger on why. It took me awhile to get through, so I think there was probably something off about the pacing. It picked up in small parts, then slowed way down as characters talked through strategies and philosophies, and overall rather choppy.

There was lots to like here, though. In this universe corporations have colonized worlds and abuse workers, and a Cooperative of activists engages in corporate espionage and sabotage to undermine them incrementally. It went heavy into the politics of that, maybe a bit too much for my tastes.

The main character is Jasper Wilder, a member of the Lost Generation, children lost to birth defects that were the byproducts of a new drug. He’s loyal to his family, who runs a store on a space station, but he’s restless and feels the need to atone for his existence when so many others were lost. I found his character compelling, and I liked the fact that his love interest was a lizard-like alien who’s a fledgling activist working from inside Revel (That scene when they’re curled up together on a small bed with Sowing of Havoc’s tail tucked around Jasper! Swoons).

The romance here is very sweet and a slow burn. It was one of my favorite parts. I loved how they clashed on cultural misunderstandings and I thought Havoc’s dialogue very well done. I was intrigued by their species and Havoc changing to accept more individualism.

I also liked Ship’s character, a spaceship piloted by one of the baddies who’s new to sentience and tries to help Havoc and Jasper.

I didn’t find the conflicts here particularly compelling though. I didn’t really understand how these corporations became so all-powerful and profitable. The characters overall, especially the villains, were flat and kind of forgettable to me, and the story was so slow paced I had to make myself get through it.

It was entertaining enough though with a lot of potential. Fans of space opera spy thrillers will find much to like here.

Thank you to Netgalley and the publisher for the advance review copy. I am leaving this review voluntarily.

On Goodreads, I tagged this as both science fiction and paranormal because one of the MCs has a sort of superpower -- he sees a visual representation of the emotional connections between people -- that in-universe has a scientific origin but that, as a trope, feels paranormal. Also, Warped State turns out to be the first of a trilogy, so although there's an HFN for the central couple, there's a cliffhanger for (what I presume will be) the overarching story.

You might call the premise here Conglomerate Capitalism in Space: Ravel, a -- private enterprise, I guess you'd call it -- that functions like an authoritarian nation-state, is developing a more powerful version of a drug that was used on Jasper/Mason's home world, Brennex; this drug had disastrous effects on the people's fertility, and the few children who were born have strange and variable extra abilities, such as Jasper's ability to see emotional connections.

Under the name of Mason Singh, Jasper is an agent of the Cooperative, an organization devoted to opposing Ravel and all its works. His mission to stop Ravel from releasing the drug fails catastrophically at first, with grave consequences for a group of Ravel workers who've been organizing for better labor conditions. The lead organizer is Sowing of Small Havoc, a member of a somewhat lizardlike people called the Kovar, who are indigenous to the planet where Ravel is trying to perfect the drug, and who suffer especially poor treatment under the Ravel regime. Havoc is also Jasper's love interest.

Warped State has affinities with Ann Leckie's Ancillary series, in that it features people who seem to have little power but who succeed, despite the odds, in damaging (we'll see whether that becomes "destroying") a malign regime. There are also some sentient AIs around, including an important secondary character named Ship. I don't mean by this that Jo Miles is cribbing -- the themes they have in common with Leckie seem like ones that would arise naturally, at this political moment, in the mind of many SF writers with a progressive bent, besides which the structure of their plot is quite different. Unlike Leckie's Breq, Jasper/Mason is part of a larger movement from the outset, and although there are labor organizers in the Ancillary series there's no one directly comparable to Havoc.

By the way, I loved the Kovari naming conventions. Besides Havoc, there's Five-Chit Defense and Confounding Echo, for two, and these Kovari names allude to some nifty low-key culture building by Miles. (Another nice touch: none of the Ravel managers, who are all Human, manage to get Havoc's name right. Almost to a person, they call him "Sower of Havoc" if they call him anything.) The Kovars speak of "games" where we might say something like "projects," and their "eshrato" is something like a team. I really hope we get to see more of Kovari culture in the next books.

For my taste, Ann Leckie's books have more ... call it rigor, maybe? -- than this first installment of the Gifted of Brennex series, but I can't really complain about an enjoyable & suspenseful story with characters as appealing as these. The Kovari aren't the only nifty instance of worldbuilding, either -- there's a priceless sequence in an "Old Earth-style restaurant" that reminded me a little of Calvin Trillin's Maison de la Casa House, Continental Cuisine: the Old Earth "cuisine" is a lot less pretentious but is an equally jumbled mess. Jo Miles, run with this inventively funny streak of yours!

This book surprised me so much! I had no real expectations going into this book and only really knew that it was sci-fi, but I was pleasantly surprised. The plot was fascinating, and I absolutely flew through this book.

I loved the queer representation, and the premise of fighting evil corporations through organizing protests and assembling a community was fascinating (and educational!). I loved the characters, and the relationship development between Jasper and Havoc was so natural and endearing. I look forward to the rest of the series and can't wait to see how everything pans out.

Also, Ship, I love you and support you in your journey to discover yourself <3

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for an ARC.

Warped State is a space drama based around Jasper (Mason) as an activist/spy against an evil corporate sudo government with plans to profit from its biopharma products even if it poisons and kills the workers and inhabitance of the planet. Jasper finds a possible ally in Havoc, an alien worker for the company looking to organize and protect his teammates. It's not easy taking down a corporate division that is also basically the government, Havoc and Jasper run into several problematic situations, but in a bit of luck one of the corporation ships has become sentient and is trying to help. I am looking forward to the next books in the series, I like the ship IA subplot and Havoc and Jaspers budding relationship (the first book is all coy smiles and small touches, nothing explicit). If you enjoy space dramas and undermining exploitive corporations you might want to give this book a read.

Please note, I received an ARC copy of this book for review from NetGalley, but that never influences my honest reviews of books or authors.

This book has a lot of heart but needs a little bit of polish: I liked the setting and the ideas behind it, and there was a charming assembly of characters, but I felt that the dialogue could be tighter. On the plus side: the queer rep was excellent, the themes of taking down the evil corporation by a ragtag bunch of queers is always A++ in my books. I am looking forward to more by the author, and hope to see them grow in craft. 3.5 stars rounded up to 4.

Thanks to #NetGalley for an arc#WarpedState.