Like Firefly, if Zoe was the Captain

I got the audio book for The Palace Job because of fun reviews from emmalita and lowercasesee. Sometimes I think the more fun part of the Cannonball is reading reviews to get new books to read. The only problem with listening to the audio book is you have to look up all the spellings for the fantasy names. The Palace Job is about a rag-tag group of misfits who plan to rob Archvoyant Silestin (a competent and formidable bad guy…hooray!). There’s a war between the Empire and the Republic, which has ended. Loch is our heroine, and she was accused of desertion during the war with her second, Kail. The merry misfits also include a failed wizard, a unicorn with a thing for virgins, a monk, a safecracker, a death priestess with a talking Warhammer, and an ordinary kid who you know is not ordinary.
So this book seems highly Firefly influenced to me. At least, I thought of that show while reading the book. (Except in a fantasy setting with magic instead of tech) I always thought the crew of Firefly would run so much more smoothly if Zoe was the Captain. Zoe was always two steps ahead of everyone else. Plus she could fight better than Malcom Reynolds. I thought of Zoe as soon as Loch was described. This book also has a person tasked with hunting down Loch and Kail and their crew, in the form of Justicar Pyvic. (And to parallel Serenity, he has a similar reaction to learning the truth about the Captain as The Operative.)
Firefly similarities aside, this book has double and triple crosses, political intrigue, a prophecy that doesn’t quite resolve itself like I thought it would, and a lot of humor to cut through the tension. Although this book seems like it resolved itself neatly, there are two others that followed. I liked this fun book quite a lot, and look forward to reading the next two books.