Waiting nervously in deep space, merchant Jamal Abu Hasan has a cargo of young virgins ready for sale to an agreed buyer. Unfortunately, the agreed buyer turns out to be Zedekiah Wight, a zealot looking to free the slaves from their fate. With his ship, the Voidbringer, and it’s controlling AI Eve they look to free the slaves before they are spaced. While Eve looks to hack into the ship’s systems, Zedekiah leads a boarding party to take a more manual control of the ship. Despite an EMP pulse slows Eve down, the boarding party has no such issues and before long they have punched a hole through the ships defences and are cutting a swathe through the crew. With his crew being decimated Abu Hasan desperately decides that he should get out of there and looks to try and both get rid of his captives and space jump out of the area. This leaves Zedekiah and Eve a decreasing amount of time to take over the ship, rescue the captives and deal with Abu Hasan.

A short sci-fi story which starts slowly then ratchets up the pace as the battle for the ship continues. The writing is snappy and the dialogue fun to read especially the banter between Zedekiah and Eve as they go about their business. There is a clever mismatch in their thoughts and beliefs and it is amusing to watch an AI trying to work out the probabilities of how her captain is going to act in any given situation. The plot works as a great introduction to the characters, what they stand for and what they have at their disposal to carry out their actions. It also make the two main characters an interesting pair, Zedekiah being a zealot and carrying out the Lord’s wrath on those who are deserving and Eve trying to make sure everything runs as smoothly as possible in allowing him to do so. As a result, the plot neatly revolves around them, with a quick setup and then the escalating mayhem that ensues. The author keeps the exposition light focusing on the action and dropping hints of the larger universe where necessary without having to go into detail. With other books featuring the pair, this is likely to be expounded on in other novels.

The formatting for the book works well, splitting the sections between the various points of view to give a more complete idea of what is going on. I didn’t notice an grammar or spelling mistakes. While I can’t comment on the validity of the various scripture quotes, I would expect them to be accurate. There is both a forward at the front of the book and an author’s note at the end explaining where the character came from, which could possibly have been combined, along with the usual links to more of the stories.

Overall, I enjoyed reading it and while it might be short, it was well worth the time. Fans of the genre should both enjoy this and the future novels if they keep up this standard.