I usually look up info on authors beforehand and I saw that JS Dewes was a gamer, then I saw she liked Mass Effect and now that I'm paying closer attention, I am seeing the ME parallels I didn't notice at first. It might've been unintentional (as creative works tend to pull from one another), but I thought that was pretty funny, especially after that ending.

I liked this a lot! How can you start a book with the line "Spread your legs and bend over" and not be totally charmed? It's impossible, I'm telling you! I really enjoyed these characters and their misfit nature and how they come together through the ridiculous nonsense that's going on out at the edge of the universe. I'd say that it was possibly a bit too convenient at times for how much Cav could manage to do without a lot of real world application for his book smarts, but that still didn't bother me too much because he's not taken too seriously.

I really enjoyed the tech that was included, like the weird imprint tattoos that basically made the 'super soldiers' of the future without the need of giant mechs and stuff. There's alien races in this, but I'm not totally sure I get much about them. It might be my flawed listening skills and I need to read over a description better. Though I guess if I just think of them in like ME terms, it's maybe Protheans, Salarians, Krogans, and Humans at the moment? As far as I could really grasp them in their roles (not necessarily how they look, just as the functions they kind of take on in society as a whole).

I'll be interested to see where things go next since that was a pretty big thing that happened in this one--though probably a temporary fix, if anything.