Reviewed by: Laura

RATING: 6/10 – Good, would probably recommend

GOODREADS:

The Republic had taken everything from Moon—her research partner, her privacy, her illusions. They thought they had her under control. They were wrong.

Srin Flerovs, Moon’s new research partner, is a chemically enhanced maths genius whose memory is erased every two days. While he and Moon work on a method of bringing dead stars back to life, attraction between them flares, together with the realisation that they are nothing more than pawns in a much larger game.

When Moon discovers the lethal applications her research can be put to, she knows she must rescue Srin and escape the clutches of the Republic. But there are too many walls around them, too many eyes watching. They want to run, but they’re trapped on a military spaceship in the depths of space, and time is running out…

REVIEW:

‘In Enemy Hands‘ was a little inconsistent for me. I swung between enjoying it and getting frustrated with the pace. Set in the future, Moon is a scientist working on a ground-breaking project to re-animate dead stars. But, most of the Galaxy is controlled by the brutal and uncompromising Republic where failure would mean death, or even worse exile.

Moon is assigned the extraordinarily clever Srin Flerovs as her research partner. So intelligent is Srin, that he is the equivalent of a human computer. But Moon soon discovers that the Republic’s reign has no bounds. After they realised nearly twenty years ago that they could no longer control Srin, they began chemically erasing his memories every forty eight hours. And this has been his empty, cyclical life ever since.

The premise itself is a clever concept. Not the sci-fi setting or even the omnipotent dictatorship, but the way the Republic control Srin. It raised not only ethical issues, but added an interesting twist to the budding romance between him and Moon.

For a lot of the book I found Moon quite naive. For a very clever woman, she seems to miss a lot of what is going on around her. But she did have the endearing quality of wanting to always see the best in everyone and everything. But it was Srin that stole the story, from the complexity of his condition, to his switch between happy-go-lucky to brooding intelligence.

The sexual chemistry seemed to ebb and flow, building and then dissipating as though it was never there. I think this was because of Srin’s disappearing memories. There was one scene that comes to mind with Moon. Now, how to put this delicately…. when she relieved her own sexual tension, *ahem*. I don’t believe I’m a prude, but the whole thing seemed to come out of nowhere, there just wasn’t enough budding sexual tension in the narrative to make it work and the whole scene made me cringe and quickly flick the page over.

There was a lot of scene setting in the book, details of Moon’s past, the science experiment, her relationships with other members of the ship’s crew and this did slow things down. Then came ‘the great escape’ which was crammed into a few chapters in the end.

However, the last few chapters did have lots of great pace and adventure, but unfortunately they were just too short. I wonder if this is the beginning of a new series, because there is no way the ending can be considered in any way a conclusion.

VERDICT:

An inconsistent novel with promise. I did have a lot of problems with it, but for the most part I enjoyed the story. Srin was a fantastic, charismatic hero. But I wonder if this might have been a better novel focusing on his predicament, with the romance just being a small part of the story.