Niko, Dabry, Skidoo, Gio, Lassite, Talon, and Thorn are people from a variety of species who escaped grueling military service by starting a restaurant together - one of the Holy professions - at the edge of the universe. Now they’re a different kind of crew! When the space station their restaurant is on gets blown up, they manage to escape on a state-of-the-art bioship named You Sexy Thing, who has a personality and opinions of her own. Her opinion is that she has been hijacked and so she’s taking them all directly to the space cops, but some space pirates have different plans.

A solid found-family space opera, though a bit less cozy than others. (Content warning: major character death) The writing here is a little jarring - interestingly the dedication of the book calls it “an omniscient point of view” but it isn’t - it’s a close third-person that switches between characters constantly, sometimes mid-paragraph. It can get annoying. The world-building is really messy in a fun way. There’s no way to untangle aliens from technology from magic from religion, so all you can do is go along with it. The plot has a lot less to do with cooking/foodie stuff than the marketing description would lead you to believe (and I wouldn’t have minded less, tbh). It’s not a perfect book but it’s a lot of fun and won me over and I enjoyed myself. I loved how gross the descriptions of the bioship were - she’s always absorbing things or making furniture out of her own flesh. I’m probably going to read more in the series just for her alone.

It does need to be said that You Sexy Thing is a terrible name for a ship and a terrible name for a book. It only exists to make a single joke about the 1975 song of the same name by the band Hot Chocolate, and is so annoying to talk about that even the characters in the book call her “the Thing” almost exclusively. ( )

while there were some continuity issues from time to time, the book had enjoyable and well-written characters, most of which were NOT human, and interesting plotlines to follow... ( )

I thought there were a few pacing problems. Places where the story went to fast or two slow. I also thought the ending was entirely too predictable. Having said that, I really enjoyed nthis book. I want to spend more time with each and every character and look forward to the next book in the series. ( )

Uneven tone and pacing, but there's a good story in there somewhere. ( )

Captain Nikko Larsen and the remaining members of her unit are retired from the military of the Holy Hive Mind, which is a feat in and of itself. They're running a restaurant on a space station at the edge of the known universe, trying to save up some money and keep a low profile. Unfortunately, some of Nikko's old enemies aren't willing to let bygones be bygones, which is how the crew find themselves aboard a hijacked sentient spaceship, headed toward pirate territory -- and mortal danger.

I love the whole spaceship-crew-as-found-family motif (especially if the ship gets to be part of the group), and that's a big part of this story. There's a cozy vibe when they're not in deadly peril, with a fun cooking angle as Nikko's head chef teaches the ship to cook, rather than just whip things up in its replicator units. I did feel that some of the big emotional moments didn't land as well as I would expect, but that's pretty much the only weakness I noted as I was reading this book. The ending wraps things up satisfactorily, but there's definitely plenty to be explored in a sequel. Recommended to fans of Hitchhiker's Guide and The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet. ( )