I’m not a huge player in the ship wars, but I will admit to being pretty strongly team #Stormpilot (yes, I know, the common parlance now is #FinnPoe but I like the OG better). Like so many others, I was really, really disappointed a certain studio and its parent company couldn’t see their way clear to giving the people (and by people, I mean me) what they (again, me) wanted (and no, that corner-of-the-screen lady kiss, while cute, didn’t make up for it).

So, yes, I was pretty excited when I heard about Emily Skrutskie’s Bonds of Brass (the first book in what’s set to be a trilogy).

There are parts of this alternatively sweet, exciting, brutal, and sweeping LGBTQIA+ space opera that are clearly Stormpilot fanfic, and I have absolutely no quarrel with that. The key players: Ettian, a mysterious pilot from a war-torn planet, molded into a soldier by the conquerors; and Gal, a dashing, charismatic rule-breaker who somehow always seems to get away with it.

I mean, come on.

Skrutskie, however, plays enough mix and match with character traits that we aren’t simply rehashing the Finn and Poe bits of the sequel trilogy. We’re meeting new characters who are a bit like some boys we know and love and also different enough to be engaging in their own right. The parts of the adventure that are new blend seamlessly in, giving Ettian and Gal their own lives – and their own stories – rather than running through a Finn and Poe “What if?” It also keeps the reader going to discover what will happen next, especially once their “Rey” – the unpredictable and deliciously snarky Wen Iffan – arrives to complicate matters irreparably.

I would offer that while Bonds of Brass isn’t aimed at a specific audience as far as I’ve been able to find, it reads YA. That is not a criticism; there is a lot of really good YA in the world right now and much of my own reading has tended to lean in that direction the last six months or so. Keep in mind, however, that we’re dealing with teenagers and first love and two young men, one of whom is on his own for the first time and the other of whom is hiding the fact that he isn’t. One of whom is strangled by unresolved trauma and the other of whom is balanced at that very precarious point in life where he wants to strike out on his own but is also still desperate to please his parents.

Remember that when you’re experiencing these things for the first time – like Gal and Ettian are – the scale seems so huge that you tend to get tangled in and buried by things an adult would be be able to sort out easily. Be patient with them.

My only issue with Bonds of Brass is that it needed a bit more editing, which is on the publisher rather than the author. There were words and phrases that were repeated several times in close proximity throughout, which is something that always yanks me right out of the story. And the first half of the book would have been well served by being condensed a bit.

That said, I’d still recommend Bonds of Brass to anyone who’s looking for a good space opera with strong LGBTQIA+ romance and a big old shocker of an ending. Can’t wait for the next entry in the series.