Book Review: The Big Yaya, The Hotel Exotica Book 1, Steven Savanna
Science Fiction/Mystery: The Big Yaya, The Hotel Exotica Book 1, Steven Savanna
Lucas Honey is a detective with an unusual beat. Rather than belonging to any police force, he is the in-house detective for The Hotel Exotica chain, the largest and fanciest chain of hotels in the known galaxy. When events might put the hotel’s public image at risk, or more importantly open them up to some sort of liability, the man they call to look into things is Lucas Honey.
So, when a senator in the midst of a tryst with a younger woman ends up dead, Lucas gets the call. Were this just a matter of an older politician having a heart attack whilst engaging in adultery, that would be one thing. What killed the senator, though, was an explosion. As far as anyone can tell from the evidence, the woman he was enthusiastically consorting with simply exploded.
Of course, people don’t just explode. There were no signs of any accelerant, no fragments of any bomb, no damage indicating the bomb came from anywhere else. No residual explosives were found in what was left of her body. She certainly was not wearing the bomb, or anything else. Somehow, she exploded and the senator was killed by the blast.
It is possible, if unlikely, that the woman herself was the target. But Lucas cannot find any evidence that she had any enemies. Actually, he can’t find any evidence that she existed more than a few hours before her untimely and abrupt end. Her name is in no database, her genes show no family members, her ID is fake and untraceable, and she is on no security cameras prior to that day. In a world where surveillance is ubiquitous and registration is mandatory, the woman was completely off the grid.
Then, another man dies the same way, on a different planet but also in a Hotel Exotica. The pressure is on Lucas to solve this mystery, to discover what connects these cases, and hopefully to determine whether the hotel chain could be sued for anything. After all, priorities matter.
Steven Savanna has created a fun world with quirky characters and science-fiction driven plots. Granted, this series is not particularly “sciencey” in its fiction. Then again, the genre does not exist to educate readers on the theory of relativity or the impossibility of interspecies conception. It is fun, creative, entertaining, with just enough mystery and sci-fi to keep the reader’s attention. The perfect novel it may not be, but it is a great book for escaping reality on a lazy weekend afternoon and just enjoy the challenges of an interstellar detective trying to break an interplanetary conspiracy. Not to mention, protect his hotel chain from liability.
Priorities.
Book Review: The Big Yaya, The Hotel Exotica Book 1, Steven Savanna