Sentinel (Galactic Gladiators: House Of Rone #1) by Anna Hackett Format: eARC
Source: author
Formats available: ebook
Genres: science fiction romance
Series: Galactic Gladiators: House Of Rone #1
Pages: 209
Published by Anna Hackett on July 21st 2019
Purchasing Info: Author's Website, Amazon
Goodreads
Fighting for love, loyalty, and freedom on the galaxy’s lawless outer rim…
When Quinn Bennett’s exploration ship is attacked, the security chief finds herself abducted by alien slavers. Unable to save her crew, she is taken across the galaxy and sold to a desert scavenger on the lawless planet of Carthago. Driven by her guilt and failure, she’ll do anything to escape and save the other abductees from her ship. Chained and forced into servitude, she’s waiting for her chance to strike, when across a dusty trading post, she comes face to face with a big, cyborg gladiator.
Jaxer Rone’s loyalty is to his imperator—the man who saved him from a lethal cyborg military program. Jax works tirelessly for his gladiatorial house and would die for his fellow cyborgs. His emotional dampeners have never functioned well, but while he feels some emotion, he never lets it get in the way of his duty. Right now, his mission is to find the stolen humans from Earth. But when he rescues the fierce, relentless Quinn, he starts feeling a rush of emotion he’s never experienced before.
Quinn and Jax join forces to track down the aliens holding the other Earth women captive. Side by side, they venture into the desert and uncover a desire hotter than the desert suns. But the aliens who captured Quinn want her back. In order to protect Quinn, will Jax embrace his newfound feelings or shut them off to keep her safe?
My Review:
In my review of Cyborg, one of the last books in the Galactic Gladiators series – and the direct precursor to Sentinel – I opined that the series could continue indefinitely without feeling thing and stretched the way that the author’s Hell Squad series has begun to feel, at least for this reader.
And here we have that continuation, and it’s every bit as much fun as the series from which it sprang.
The premise of the Galactic Gladiators series was that a temporary wormhole opened up between far, far distant Carthago and Jupiter Station in our own solar system. The wormhole was exploited by the slave-trading Thraxians, who kidnapped a bunch of humans from Jupiter Station and dragged them back to Carthago before the wormhole closed.
By the end of the final book in the series, Imperator, all of the humans who had been rescued from the Station had found their HEA with the gladiators of the House of Galen and their allies. One of said allies is Magnus Rone, cyborg and Imperator of his own gladiatorial house.
In Alien Hunter, part of the novella duo Hunter that bridges between the Galactic Gladiators series and the new House of Rone series, our friends discover that Jupiter Station was not the only place in our solar system that the Thraxians raided. At least one ship on it way to Jupiter from Earth was also picked up on that raid – so there’s a whole new batch of Earth humans to find and rescue.
A journey that begins in Sentinel, the first book of the House of Rone.
The House of Rone, in general, offers a deeper dive into the science fictional world that the author has created. Galen’s house is primarily a gladiatorial house. That’s how they make their money, and that’s how they support all of the members of the house and its operations, including the underground mission of not just rescuing Earthan refugees, but of buying and freeing as many people as possible who have been enslaved in the less-savory gladiatorial houses.
All of the gladiators in Galen’s house are free. They fight willingly – and very successfully – in the Kor Magna Arena.
The House of Rone has a more multifaceted operation. Magnus Rone and his fellow cyborgs are not allowed to fight in the arena. They have an extremely unfair advantage because of their cybernetic enhancements. Which does not mean that the House of Rone doesn’t compete in the arena. Magnus has plenty of unenhanced but skillful and effective fighters who compete under his House’s banner.
He has also funded a highly sought after medical service that sells cybernetic limbs to the wealthy and provides replacement limbs free of charge to those who need them but can’t afford them. While the research into cybernetics is self-serving in that he and his inner circle all require those services themselves, using that same research to help others is very much not.
Magnus began his house by rescuing his fellow cyborgs, starting with Jaxer, the hero of Sentinel. Most of the cyborgs in the House of Rone have faulty programming – much like Magnus himself. They were supposed to be programmed not to feel, but underneath – or in one case outside of – the enhancements they are men and not machines.
When the faults in Jaxer’s programming became so obvious that he was about to be terminated, Magnus rescued them both and brought them to Kor Magna. All of the stories in the House of Rone series look like they will be about the cyborgs of Magnus’ inner circle discovering just how many messy emotions are hiding under their usually impassive exteriors.
Jax is the first. His programming has always been the flakiest, so he has both hero-worshipped his rescuer Magnus and feels duty-bound to help shoulder some of his rescuer’s burdens now that Magnus has found his own surprising HEA. Magnus promised Galen that he would continue the search and rescue of the Earthan refugees and Jax intends to take over as much of that effort as he possibly can.
And that’s what sends him into the path of Quinn Bennett, the former ship’s security chief and now slave on Carthago. In spite of her terrible circumstances, Quinn is beaten but not bowed. Her spirit is still alive and fighting, and when she sees the cyborgs, she does her best to help them, in spite of the beating that follows.
Jax sees her – and now he has a specific woman to rescue – not just the duty of rescuing faceless people he’s never met. Not that he won’t, and not that they don’t deserve rescue. But in spite of everything he tells himself, over and over, Jax wants to rescue Quinn for himself.
Even if he doesn’t think he deserves her. Especially because he doesn’t think he deserves her. But who is he to tell Quinn what she needs, wants or deserves?
Escape Rating B+: I realize that I’ve written a lot about the setup of this story. Consider that a sign that in spite of Sentinel being the first book of a new series, the majority of the worldbuilding for this series is in the previous series. In other words, Sentinel is probably not the best place to start. I’m not sure you’d have to read the entire Galactic Gladiators series to get into Sentinel, but at least the first one or two plus Cyborg and the novella Alien Hunter in Hunter.
Why not just begin at the beginning at binge? This series is a whole lot of fun from beginning to current end – and I expect the fun to continue in future entries.
One of the things that I continue to love about this series is that in spite of so many strikes against them, the refugees from Earth are not damsels in distress. They don’t need “rescue” in the traditional sense, they just need a little help rescuing themselves. And they are active participants in everything that happens from that initial intervention to adapting to their new world to finding their HEA and claiming it.
They are all kickass, but they are not all kickass in the same way. Some have been warriors, but they’ve also been engineers and computer geeks and doctors and pretty much everything else. There’s no one way to be a heroine in this series (or in any of this author’s work)
However, one thing about the Galactic Gladiators series as a whole, including the House of Rone spinoff, that’s starting to stretch my willing suspension of disbelief just a tiny bit – although certainly not enough to keep me from continuing to enjoy the series.
Jupiter Station, and any ships en route to or from it, would presumably have had crews consisting of all genders. But all of the books in the series, with the notable exception of Champion, have featured an Earthan female and a male from somewhere in the wider universe. Only in Champion is that reversed.
If there were extremely few men on Jupiter Station and the ships servicing it – why? If the Thraxians chose to only capture females – why? I find the second possibility more likely than the first, but there must be a reason. Especially since I’d love to see one of the books in this series feature a female warrior and a male who is not. There are certainly plenty of female gladiators to make this a possible scenario.
Consider the above comment my the first item on my “wish list” for this series. Because I do love it and want to see it go more places and do more things. It’s a big galaxy!
The House of Rone continues in Defender, coming in August. Oooh!, something for me to look forward to, to bring me out of my post-WorldCon blahs!
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