Max Seventeen by Kate Johnson

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I’d heard the author talking about this book on Twitter for a while – she called it the Mad Space Book.

I LOVED her last Mad Book (Untied Kingdom – it’s brilliant, if you haven’t read it, please do), so I was keen to read this one too.

Max is a brilliantly heroine. Hard as nails and will steal your teeth if you smile at her for too long. She’s so stubbornly independent, you can’t help liking her. Riley is big and scary to look at, but totally adorable and oh, so honourable. She breaks his nose when she first meets him. So naturally, they’re perfect together. The two main characters are wonderfully complex and the connection between them is brilliant. To be honest, I think I was a little bit in love with Riley by the end.

Max and Riley end up on the Eurydice – which is basically a crew of space pirates, led by the enigmatic Captain Orpheus. The rest of the crew were fun too – a bit like Firefly if Jayne were in charge.

The story is part adventure, part mystery, part romance and barrels along at full pelt. I really enjoyed it. The bit about the cat towards the end made me laugh out loud.

There’s a lot of violence (nothing graphic), a fair bit of sex (again, nothing graphic), quite a lot of poo (because it’s a fuel source) and a lot of swearing. So if you’re bothered about that sort of thing, you have been warned. On the other hand… SPACE PIRATES. How can you go wrong?

As an aside, I liked that this heroine was mixed race and didn’t make a big deal about it.

Disclaimer – I know Kate. We’ve written books for the same publisher. I received an ARC in return for an honest review – mainly because I badgered her for it.

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