Orbital Space, Book 1 - Theft of Fire by Devon Eriksen

Wow.  It's been a bit.  I really should blog more, but I have little to say.

Anyway...

At the recommendation of Eric S. Raymond, I picked up a copy of "Orbital Space, Book 1 - Theft of Fire" by Devon Eriksen and got it into the eBook queue.

tl;dr;

It isn't working for me.  I'm about 1/3 into the book and my "1/3 rule" has kicked in.  I need to care about the characters and the story by this time or I end up slogging through, just flipping pages.  And with a backlog of 700+ eBooks to read, it's not worth my time.

Longer explanation:

I really don't have any other complaints.  Writing is good.  Characters are OK.  An AI, a "princess" and a "working class" man all cooped up in a spaceship.  Lots of potential here, but it's just not happening for me.

The "working class" man is portrayed as stupid and moral - which is good.  The "princess" is spoiled and not very worldly.  The AI is bland (but I consider that normal at this stage).  Not much chemistry except for some unnecessary sexual stuff that just happened in the story.

They've been cooped up in the spaceship, which the "princess" has taken control of and everyone's trying to do their thing.  Ya, I get it.  Character Development - and, really, I appreciate that.  I've had my share of shallow characters in stories.

But it's gone on for so long now that the story has stalled.  I no longer care about the story.  And while there was Character Development, I really don't care about any of the characters.  If the story ended on the next page with "and the fusion engine exploded vaporizing everyone", I wouldn't feel cheated.

So, sorry Devon.  I tried.  I can't say you are a bad writer, but this story just doesn't work for me.