Six Lights Off Green Scar -- Gareth L. Powell

The plot
FTL travel is achieved in roulette ships by jumping to a random point in space. A haunted and washed-up roulette pilot is lured by a story-hungry journalist's promise of enough money to retire into doing one last jump.

What I liked
I love the concept. Per aspera ad astra -- it's a rough road to the stars. No space travel without paying a price. The setting is vivid -- it calls to mind descriptions of rough towns in the Arctic circle. I liked the description of Kate -- it tells of a hard engineer who needs nothing from anyone, and then blam, hits you with something very soft and sensual.

What I learnt
I felt cheated by the ending -- maybe this is a problem with me, rather than with the story. I think it was because the story made me care a lot about the characters -- I'd invested quite a bit because I'd been learning about what drove them, where they were coming from, where they hoped to go; and I'd travelled with them through a terrifying experience. The story ends in a way that left me unsure what became of them -- I imagine nothing good, but there is a peep of a chance they might have survived. Perhaps this mirrors the experience of the roulette pilots.

I'm not sure if it's a bad thing to make readers feel cheated. I know the rules say you shouldn't, but at least it's a reaction. I am going to look out for other stories that make me feel this way and see if I can work out why it's happened.

The story could have ended in a different way to make me not feel cheated. I guess an act of self-sacrifice on the part of one character to save the other would have felt right -- but it wouldn't have left me wondering about the possibilities.

Six Lights Off Green Scar on Infinity Plus.
Gareth L. Powell's blog.