2015 SF/romance, first of a series. Rose McKenzie was kidnapped from
Earth and was kept as a prisoner and experimental subject aboard a
space battleship, until she managed to escape. Dav Jallan doesn't know
why this battleship has turnd up in his region of space, or why its
crew is dead, but…
And this is romantic SF, so naturally they instantly get the
hots for each other. But also this is romantic SF written seriously,
so Rose has post-traumatic triggers from her imprisonment, not to
mention a big secret about just what's going on.
Although it's treated very mildly here, the premise for this series,
to be continued each book with different characters, is in fact the
development of a three-sided relationship—between a male person in
this spacefaring culture, a female abductee from modern Earth, and the
illegal AI that was built into each of the battleships. (It's supposed
to be locked down and unable to rebel, but we know how well that
always works.) This particular story comes in in the middle of events,
but the AI is still in the process of learning about things and
developing its own code of ethics, something I always enjoy.
There are also interesting, if perhaps implausible, background
details; for example, this culture regards music as rare and special,
so whenever Rose casually sings while she's doing something everyone
stops and listens to what for them is the Best Singing Ever. (They've
also apparently lost the ability to lie, though that's not made
entirely clear and they still have spies and infiltrators.) The Class
5 battleship is significantly more powerful than any other individual
warship in service, so everyone wants it, including its original
builders, as well as Dav's superiors.
It's a simple world with fairly simple characters, and the author's
influences are clearly TV and filmic SF rather than written, but
there's enough here to elevate the book from by-the-numbers generic
romance (SF or otherwise).