An Accidental Goddess by Linnea Sinclair

Narrated by Amy Landon

I used to read/listen to a lot of paranormal romance but that has dropped off to mainly just a few series now – what has taken its place is sci-fi romance and fantasy romance. I’d never tried Linnea Sinclair before but trusted romance readers recommended her books. When I saw An Accidental Goddess was coming out on audio, some 10 years after it was first released in print, I decided to dive in.

(Thank goodness for Amazon samples because the downside of audio reviewing, especially with SFF books, is that it’s really hard to know how to spell names and places.)

The story is mainly told from the point of view of Gillaine Davré, the captain of a Raheiran crystal ship assigned to help the Khalaran Confederation fight off the evil Fav’lhir. Gillaine is a “kiasidira” which essentially means sorceress. Crystals glow in her presence and she can manipulate matter (uses include healing) with her magic. Raheiran kiasidira and their masculine counterparts are kind of like Jedi – their magic is only for good. The Fav’lhir’s Melandan mages are kind of like the Sith, using their magic for evil.

Gillie, as she prefers to be known (“just Gillie”), wakes up in a sick bay on the Cirrus One space station, to find that she has spent the previous 342 years in rift space. She has, essentially, time travelled. She entered rift space in a daring military manoeuvre during a battle with the Fav’lhir. All of their Melandan mages were on board (or were they? Hmmm) and she destroyed their ship, thus saving the day. The Khalarans of 342 years before now refer to it as the “Day of Sacrifice” and “Lady Kiasidira” is now a Goddess, worshipped and adored by Khalaran society.

Gillie is horrified. Even though 342 years have passed, for Gillie, it feels like the same day. So much is different and much of that different revolves around her. She doesn’t want to be adored or enshrined. One of her problems with being a kiasidira in the first place (she was born to it, there was no escaping) was people not seeing the real her, and liking her only for what she represented or could do, rather than for herself.

She is also worried about what revealing her identity would do to the Khalar; their whole society has embraced Lady Kiasidira as their main Goddess – to find out the “Holy Guideline” were just some drunken words of wisdom someone had transcribed on the Raheiran version of an iPad would crush them. What would the Khalarans think to know their Goddess likes to drink in bars and play billiards for money?

Gillie’s crystal ship, an advanced Raheiran sentience named Simon (with his own magic powers), was damaged in the battle in rift space. Gillie must stay on Cirrus One to effect repairs and she obviously can’t tell anyone who she really is. Fortunately, Simon can whip up fake documents in no time and she takes on the guise of Gillie Davré, freighter captain.

Admiral Rynan “Mack” Makarian is initially suspicious of Gillie – he thinks she’s a smuggler; but she is able to allay his concerns and, as they begin to know one another, a mutual attraction develops. Romance fans need not worry – there is plenty here to satisfy.

Complications arise when Gillie realises that Mage-Father Rigo, the Kiasidiran priest, is in fact of (distant) Melandan heritage. She is horrified that he sells healing – healing was always to be free of charge and he is making money off of it! It is not only that, however; she is suspicious the Fav’lhir are returning and that perhaps the Melandan mages were not all extinguished in rift space. Gillie is faced with a series of difficult choices – reveal herself to help the Khalarans and risk losing Mack when he realises who she really is? Or do nothing and risk the possible destruction of Cirrus One or worse?

She tries to keep as much of her anonymity as possible so the reveal is not in one big display; because she has good reasons for hiding her identity, I was mainly in sympathy for her through this process.

Simon is a wry voice in her head offering unwanted romantic advice and he often has to let her know he’s “looking for a sock” (as in, to put a sock in it) when she gets too exasperated.

The more desperate the situation, the more Gillie has to reveal in order to do her job and fulfil her prime purpose and save the Khalaran people (which aligns with her compassionate personality). The more she reveals, the greater her risk of losing Mack altogether.

It’s all very exciting, with the pace moving at a fast clip until the grand finale. I thought the story was let down a little at the end, with an important conversation with Mack and Simon occurring off page and some questions unanswered about Mack’s and Gillie’s future together – they are together though; don’t worry, there is a HEA. I just wanted to know a bit more about how it would actually work in practice. The ending also brought some good surprises I wasn’t expecting so it was far from all bad.

The narration was very good. Ms. Landon understood Gillie’s practical, down-to-earth and yet empathetic persona and delivered the humour of the banter between Gillie and Simon with skill. Simon was given a toffy sort-of English accent which helped to differentiate him from other characters. Mack’s voice was not very deep but it was done well enough that I had no trouble buying into the performance.

There were quite a few internal thoughts which were interspersed in the dialogue. In print they would have appeared as italics but on audio, it is not always easy to convey. I didn’t always twig that the words were not spoken aloud – until the text confirmed it. This was occasionally confusing but also was a fairly minor niggle.

The production was clean and I spotted no errors in POV and there were only a couple of times I felt the timing was ever so slightly off in sentence delivery.

An Accidental Goddess was a romantic space adventure, a fun romp and great on audio. I recommend.

Kaetrin

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Narration: B+

Book Content: B+

Steam Factor: Glad I had my earbuds in

Violence Rating: Fighting (of the military sci-fi and magical kind)

Genre: Fantasy Romance/Sci-Fi

Publisher: Tantor Audio

An Accidental Goddess was provided to AudioGals by Tantor Audio for a review.

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