Keeper # 9: Grimspace by Ann Aguirre

Ms Aguirre is quite the girl. I've been aware of her since I started lurking on romance websites a year or two ago. So I know that although this is Ms Aguirre's first print novel under her own name, she's published a fair few e-books and has - I imagine - been working to this moment for some years.

I had only read one thing by Ann Aguirre before Grimspace. That was an e-novella called Seven Days. I liked it a great deal but Grimspace is in a different league. Seven Days is a fun little tale. Grimspace is....

Grimspace is...

I ...... I loved it.

And I was surprised. Sci-fi is so not my thing. But this - really, I did, I loved it.

It's aggravating, truth be told. The trouble is that this book has been garnering seriously good reviews, like, everywhere. Which leaves with the problem of what to say about it that hasn't been said a dozen times already.

The plot has been summarised by every other review so I'm not going to bother. I'm hoping - nay expecting - that any readers of this post will already have read one of the many reviews of this book. If not, check out Dear Author. Or Carrie Lofty. Or Shannon.

Me - I'm going to focus on a couple of key points that particularly interested me: the 'voice' of the story and the characters.

The fact that this book is written in the first person present tense, narrated by the heroine, Sirantha Jax, has been mentioned in most of the reviews I've read. The general response to it seems to have been 'I don't generally like this POV, but Ann Aguirre pulls it off'.

I'm coming from somewhere different on this. I've always liked first person narratives. My other preferred genre is literary fiction and there's no shortage of first person voice there. As for present tense, one of my favourite ever books was written wholly in the present tense.

Iin traditional romance, I do generally prefer a third person narrative. But then Grimspace doesn't fall into that category. It's resolutely sci-fi, albeit with a very strong and compelling central love story.

For me, the first person POV was absolutely key to the success of the book and is probably why I loved it. Sirantha Jax has a unique voice that hugely appealled to me. Seeing the action of this novel through her eyes was the very thing that made it so interesting to me. In all honesty, I don't think a reporting-third-party voice would have worked for me. I'm just not sufficiently into sci-fi. Perhaps it's the reason I like romance. I'm interested in the internal/emotional, rather than the external/action. So, I find an action-heavy story like this one much more appealing through the eyes of a first person narrator, who is responding emotionally to what is happening.

As for the use of the present tense, that gives Grimspace an immediacy and momentum that carried me along on an irresistible wave that crested - perfectly - in the final chapter. Much kudos to Ms Aguirre for that particular achievement. I can't count the number of novels that have 'shot their load' too quick and left me flicking desultorily through the last 20 pages.

And so to the characters.

I loved Jax. I gather some reviewers disliked her at the beginning and grew to like her but I thought she was fantastic from the first. Don't get me wrong - she does grow and develop as a character - but I warmed to her immediately, particularly when I read this beautiful little morsel at page 30:

The only person I could've trusted at my back, no exceptions, had his molecules dispersed with all due ceremony about fourteen days ago.

I fucking miss him.

I love that. The first sentence is bleak and harsh. The second is broken. And for me, that quote is wonderfully characteristic of the whole book. I was constantly set back on my heels by Ms Aguirre's lovely prose. Jax's voice is simultaneously tough and vulnerable. And above all, honest. I wasn't surprised to learn, close to the end of the novel, that it is her honesty more than anything else, that March loves about her.

As for March, like Jax, he's flawed and knocked-about by life but fundamentally incredibly decent. A great pairing these two and I'm keen to read more about them, which is saying something. Generally, I'm happy to wave a couple off into the sunset at the end of a book into what I imagine will be a blissful life of uninterrupted happiness. But these two are a bit like Jamie and Claire from the Outlander series. I know that life isn't going to be easy for them and that makes me curious about their future.