Grimspace

Sirantha Jax lost everything when her spaceship crashed. Her pilot and lover died, as did several important passengers, and Jax may be the one to blame. She was the navigator, the one responsible with seeing the ship safely through Grimspace, the dimension that allows ships to travel between star systems. Very few people are capable of becoming navigators. It requires a special gene and, even with that gene, not everyone can take Grimspace. Most navigators burn out pretty quickly. Jax is old for a Grimspace jumper, but she doesn't think she's burnt out yet. She doesn't believe she could have caused the crash either, but the Corporation doesn't care about her reasoning. They're holding her responsible and they control the galaxy. It doesn't help that Jax can't remember the crash at all, just the bloody aftermath. Held in a Corporation facility for evaluation, Jax knows it's just a matter of time before they declare her insane and lock her away forever. Death seems like the only option until a stranger infiltrates her sealed quarters with an offer she can't refuse. He'll help her escape if she agrees to join a group of rebels. They want to take the Corporation down, but they can't do it without navigators and they've picked Sirantha Jax, once the darling of the Corp., as their jumper.

Readers looking for a fast-paced and entertaining space-opera will be pleased with this novel. It has a touch of noir to it- Sirantha is darkly funny as she deals with the blows fate sends her way and March, the mysterious man who rescues her, is the perfect straight-man for her high-jinks. Other characters offer intriguing plot threads as well- the alien slave whose biology was changed so that he must belong to someone or die, the deposed-princess-turned-engineer, the pacifist doctor, the pirate king... just to name a few. With shades of Firefly (quirky, rebellious colonials and a tyrannical, corrupt central power), Pitch Black (a hero with a dark, mysterious past and a planet of carnivorous critters that relentlessly hunt humans) and Andromeda (a scrappy but damaged heroine - think Beka Valentine after her Flash addiction--and a slipstream-like method of travel) there's a lot here for a science fiction fan to love! The sequel, Wanderlust, is already available.