Classic Science Fiction book review: "An accidental Goddess" by Linnea Sinclair.

 

"An Accidental Goddess" by Linnea Sinclair is an amusing combination of Space Opera, fantasy, and romantic comedy.

It is set in the same universe as "Wintertide" by the same author but published under the pen-name Megan Sybil Baker, but that was a fantasy romance, this one is set a thousand years later when the Raheirans have become an advanced star-travelling civilisation.

At the start of "An Accidental Goddess," Captain Gillaine Davre, Raheiran Special Forces, (Gillie to her friends) wakes up in a strange sickbay.

Gillie's last memories prior to this had been of a battle. Her ship had been attacked by a large warship from the Fav'lhir, a star travelling race hostile both to her own Raheiran people and to the Khalaran allies she had been working with. The battle had ended when the enemy ship blew up, close enough to hers to knock her unconscious and damage her vessel.

Her ship's AI informs her that something, presumably the explosion, has also thrown them three hundred and forty two years, and sixteen hours, into the future. Part of her mission had been technical support to the Khalarans how to build a large space station. 

That part was obviously a success: she's now on a large Khalaran space station. The Khalarans had found her damaged ship, with it's unconscious pilot, drifting in space shortly after their arrival in the current time period, and brought them into the station to be patched up: the ship into a repair bay, and Gillie in sick bay.

Being thrown 342 years into the future was quite enough of a shock, but not long after her arrival on Cirrus station, , Gillie gets an even worse one. In the intervening centuries the Khalarans have started worshipping her as a Goddess, and one of the first places she finds on the station is a huge temple dedicated to her, complete with a giant holographic statue. When she uses one of her own favourite phrases, people think she's quoting the Goddess - because someone had written down her favourite quips and the "Rules for life" she and some friends had put together in a drunken evening in a bar, and turned them into a book of Holy Scripture.

This gives Gillie a double problem. The Khalaran Admiral commanding the station, Mack Makarian, is understandably curious about what this mysterious captain and her equally mysterious ship are doing in his sector, who attacked her, and why. But she can't tell them who she really is - if they think she's an impostor pretending to be their Lady Goddess, it'll land her in even worse trouble than being suspected of being a smuggler or a spy.

If she convinces the Khalarans that she's someone they regard as an incarnate Goddess, she has to either pretend to be a deity, which apart from being massively unethical could seriously distort their culture, or tell them their religion is a mistake which probably won't land well either.

And as if that wasn't bad enough, the Fav'lhir and all manner of traitors and spies are plotting harm to the Khalerans, the station, and Admiral Makerian. Gillie has to find a way to stop them without revealing who she is.

The result is a most amusing comedy of errors.

You can buy this book from Amazon at:

An Accidental Goddess: A Novel : Linnea Sinclair: Amazon.co.uk: Books

Very amusing, I recommend this book.

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