A fast-paced, ruthless space-western where the only thing worse than the monsters are the people who profit off them
On the unforgiving planet Kalderra, Mona Ripple has a job that no one envies. Tasked with scavenging the bodies of kameeba, huge, gelatinous creatures with valuable flesh and even more precious hearts, she and her team of fellow Maggots are accustomed to pain, danger, and the constant threat of death. With her beautiful, young lover, Darien Vance, by her side, she can see a gleam of hope for their future. Once they make enough yennies to buy their way out of their lives, the universe will become their oyster.
When the biggest kameeba carcass to date shows up, it’s Mona’s chance to make her dreams a reality. The haul from this beast will be enough to set her and Darien up in the bright new life they envisioned. The larger the loot, though, the bigger the risk. And Mona’s about to find out that the powerful elite can be just as deadly as the monsters she spends her days fighting. With everything she has ever worked for on the line, Mona will need all her skills, some of her allies, and a heck of a lot of luck to preserve the future she had hoped for.
Lovestruck Maggot is a stand-alone sci-fi novel set on a planet populated with brutal creatures and an even worse landscape. While it’s very much a futuristic, techno-space opera, it has heavy elements of old Western novels. Space cowboys, last stands, the lawless frontier, and a starkly unforgiving landscape all collude to create a novel that feels innovative and familiar all at once.
Kalderra, the world where this story unfolds, is fantastic. It’s a place where electric forests may kill you if the huge, bug-like wildlife don’t beat them to it. Such a setting is sure to create equally rough residents, and the Maggots who fight off monsters to plunder the flesh and hearts of the kameeba are no exception. This whole novel unfurls quickly, with each page revealing more and more about the hidden history of the planet, the brutal family who run the show, and the people who are trying to eke a living out of it all. This is one of those novels that feels like it will be a small, personal story, but the scale shifts and keeps shifting until the scope is larger than you could have imagined.
There’s nothing to dislike in Lovestruck Maggot, but the cover and title combo might make you think it’s closer to a romantasy or literary novel than it actually is. Sure, there is romance here, but not enough to sate most romantasy readers. There is far more to the story than romance. It’s a fast-paced, vicious, turbulent, action-adventure story at heart.
Lovestruck Maggot is a phenomenal journey. The setting, characters, politics, and culture saturate every paragraph without ever feeling heavy-handed. It’s a shame that it seems to be a stand-alone because the world and characters are rich enough to carry far more. I would have loved to come back to meet Mona and her Maggots again, but instead I’ll content myself with having spent a perfect few hours with them.
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