Russ Allbery: Review: Dark Ambitions

Review: Dark Ambitions, by Michelle Diener

Dark Ambitions is a science fiction romance novella set in Michelle
Diener’s Class 5 series, following the events of Dark Matters. It returns to Rose as the protagonist and in that
sense is a sequel to Dark Horse, but you
don’t have to remember that book in detail to read this novella.

Rose and Dav (and the Class 5 ship Sazo) are escorting an exploration team
to a planet that is being evaluated for settlement. Rose has her heart set
on going down to the planet, feeling the breeze, and enjoying the plant
life. Dav and his ship are called away to deal with a hostage situation.
He tries to talk her out of going down without him, but Rose is having
none of it. Predictably, hijinks ensue.

This is a very slight novella dropped into the middle of the series but
not (at least so far as I can tell) important in any way to the overall
plot. It provides a bit of a coda to Rose’s story from Dark Horse,
but given that Rose has made cameos in all of the other books, readers
aren’t going to learn much new here. According to the Amazon blurb, it was
originally published in the Pets in Space 5 anthology. The pet in
question is a tiny creature a bit like a flying squirrel that Rose rescues
and that then helps Rose in exactly the way that you would predict in this
sort of story.

This is so slight and predictable that it’s hard to find enough to say
about it to write a review. Dav is protective in a way that I found
annoying and kind of sexist. Rose doesn’t let that restrict her decisions,
but seems to find this behavior more charming than I did. There is a tiny
bit of Rose being awesome but a bit more damsel in distress than the
series usually goes for. The cute animal is cute. There’s the obligatory
armory scene with another round of technomagical weapons that I think has
appeared in every book in this series. It all runs on rather obvious
rails.

There is a subplot involving Rose feeling some mysterious illness while on
the planet that annoyed me entirely out of proportion to how annoying it
is objectively, mostly because mysterious illnesses tend to ramp up my
anxiety, which is not a pleasant reading emotion. This objection is
probably specific to me.

This is completely skippable. I was told that in advance and thus only
have myself to blame, but despite my completionist streak, I wish I’d
skipped it. We learn one piece of series information that will probably
come up in the future, but it’s not the sort of information that would
lead me to seek out a story about it. Otherwise, there’s nothing wrong
with it, really, but it would be a minor and entirely forgettable chapter
in a longer novel, padded out with a cute animal and Dav trying to be
smothering.

Not recommended just because you probably have something better to do with
that reading time (reading the next full book of the series, for example),
but there’s nothing wrong with this if you want to read it anyway.

Followed by Dark Class.

Rating: 5 out of 10