The Backwater Job, Shane Shepherd (2022)
The Bassalia Job, Shane Shepherd (2022)
The Barter Job, Shane Shepherd (2023)
My first encounter with Shepherd’s work was in the Thanksgiving roundup to mixed results. I thought The Blackmail Job was an improvement over the opening to the Neighbor series so given the chance I jumped into ARCs of these stories, numbers 2-4 in the “Chronicles of Jason Rokku Part III” in mid-stream. A lot has happened since the Blackmail Job, and it’s not all evident.
It’s important to understand these aren’t stand-alone stories. They’re not novels, and in terms of how the action’s laid out there’s definitely a TV inspiration — you can be understand these as episodes in a longer season or series. Given this, the lack of emphasis on continuity is understandable. But at least a short note of explanation of who’s who, where they are, and how they got there would be super-helpful.
The Backwater Job sees Key and his associates taking refuge on a backwater planet (thus the title) after being chased and captured by a well-known bounty hunter and then abruptly liberated by a mysterious and inscrutable force.
The Bassalia Job requires Key & Co. to get a working ship, which in turn means dealing with local toughs and rescuing captives from them. In the course of this, Key and his friends find themselves separated, and Key makes a fateful but impulsive decision that will leave him short on power at a bad time.
The Barter Job sees Key confronting and attempting to bargain with the evil Barbazzura. This goes badly, and leads to more suspenseful adventures -- and just possibly -- the return of a mysterious force we thought Key was done with.
The series is a work in progress. The action is clearly the star here, as Shepherd’s characters are mostly two-dimensional and some of Key’s major choices are a bit baffling. It helps to have read the backstory, although as stand alone stories these are still enjoyable. As so often is the case with independent/self-published authors, I found myself wishing that Shepherd had slowed down and written less overall, but put more into each episode of the series.
Speaking of needing a little more effort, when I went looking for a cover for The Barter Job, this is what I found on Amazon.
Smirk factor: Acceptable: 1 pt (8 smirks in a few hundred pages -- no page counts available, what?)
Immersion factor: Damp: 0.5 pts
Writing quality: Average: 1 pt
Character/plot development: Average: 1 pt (The seeds are there but haven’t sprouted.)
Innovative/interesting: Average: 1 pt
Total: 4.5/10