#sirantha jax

[gothicmagpie]

Sasha puffs out a breath, driving the machine with his frustration. “So he’s putting his baggage on me? How is that fair?”

“Life’s not fair, kid.” I want to smack my head against the wall as soon as the words come out of my mouth. I’ve officially become an old person.

—from Endgame, by Ann Aguirre.

[strxnged]

chapter 34 of killbox made me tear up. what the heck man.

[strxnged]

OMG IT JUST FELL???? BRO THATS GOTTA BE... FATE??? id have purchased it too, and i'm glad it was worth it. i think ive heard that title before too

ok so the series doesn't have a formal name it's kind of just the "sirantha jax" series (that's the main character's name). she's a "jumper," which means she has a gene that means she can phase spaceships into a place called "grimspace" and travel very far distances—but only with an intimate connection to a "pilot". she was framed for crashing this really important ship with a bunch of people on it, so the first book starts with her in prison mourning the pilot who died in the crash who happened to be her significant other. BUT then she gets broken out of jail by a broody quippy pilot named March who is the Man Of All Time (i'm sooooo not normal about him) and they basically do some anarchism and save the world or whatever. and fall for each other. also there's a snarky immortal guy, a socially awkward insect sidekick, a lesbian engineer, and a kindhearted geneticist. and more to come i expect the character introductions go so hard in these books

okay that was a lot but basically tl;dr romance was great in first book pacing is fun and the sci-fi vibes are tastefully bewitching

ok here comes a book ramble because you asked for it. so i literally went into the library last summer and was like hm i want a book i want a sci fi book. the first book on the top left of the sci fi section had an interesting title, so i picked it off the shelf. beautiful & badass-looking woman on the cover. flipped it over read the description, went, oh damn fast paced sci fi enemies to lovers adventure? yes please? AND I WAS SO RIGHT THIS BOOK CHANGED ME FR.

(i proceeded to forget about it for a year after reading it because school but i'm about to go get the third book from the library tmrw because i am invested in this silly sci fi series. ramble over. book is grimspace by ann aguirre btw)

isn't it awesome when you just get a book for the cover or the title or whatever and you're NOT disappointed? do you have any books where that's happened to you?

OH MY GOD YES!!! THATS LITERALLY THE BEST FEELING.

It wasn’t because of the cover but I remember, one time, I bought a book because it had fallen to the floor behind me randomly.

The book was This Is Where It Ends by Marieke Nijkamp and like it wasn’t even on a super full shelf, no breeze or anything. It somehow fell and I was the only person in the aisle. I bought simply because of that and it ended up being such an amazing book.

But like one that I DID buy for the cover was Crave - Tracy Wolff and, you know despite the fact that it was a little wattpadish is was so fun to read and I had a good time. Sjmsmsmsmsn I like bought the second book the next day.

Anyways, I know I could just look at your post history but what was the series called and what’s it about?

[juneability]

231220 ♡ wednesday, winter break! goals for the day 🌙

send in scholarship vouchers

write a journal entry

work on january setlist w brother

more notion setup for next semester

tidy room & closet

vg enemy design sketch x2

deep clean desk!!!!!?

read up to ch30 — killbox (sirantha jax)

write more chapter outlines for original dystopia

start on secret santa fic or sumeru longfic

print new (chopin? jazz? bossa nova? ost?) sheet music to sightread on piano

finish transcribing "bring her back" by dpr in musescore 4

rb this post at the end of the day for an update :)

[oneshallop]

First Drift | AO3

Their first drift was born out of fear and desperation.

Shepard watched him tread up the cockpit. Vakarian was big, even for a turian, and the convex swell of his armor seemed to enlarge as he stepped further into her space. He touched a hand to the side of his visor. The glass filmed, then retracted.

“What do you think?” he said. Shepard couldn’t read his face but she understood the words. There was grim acceptance in that tone. 

It was the first time that he’d looked at her, and she’d looked at him, and they’d known with complete synchronicity what the other was thinking.

Shepard wanted Vakarian’s three-pronged hand away from the cockpit.

Another blow to the ship, this time so bad that Shepard actually lurched with the impact. Vakarian was braced against the console. He didn’t budge.

Shepard pressed her lips together into a hard line. Kicking the chair around, she unclasped the helmet and slid it free. The curve of polyplystic was cool in her hand.

She threw the helmet at Vakarian, jerking her head towards the empty console. “Come on.”

Shepard hadn’t piloted a ship in some time. While flying was much like the proverbial bicycle, the complex set up was not. Scanning the dashboard, she decided to ignore everything apart from the basics and hooked the cable into the shunt in her wrist. The helmet’s hydraulics hissed as they engaged somewhere near her jawbone. She was breathing a dead man’s air.

The AI flickered to life. “Configuration unknown. Procedure not recommended. Do you wish to continue?”

The Areto was a Human warship. Shepard dredged her initiation sequence from the recesses of her memory and rattled it off accordingly. “Shepard: verify.”

Although she’d been expecting it, she still started when his voice came through. “Vakarian: verify.”

“Crew members verified. Please hold as we initiate the neural connection.”

Shepard closed her eyes. The fluid flowed cool around her neck, pooling up her cheeks. She fought the panic and forced herself to breathe it in. There was that strange dissonance: the cool caress of the gel against the numb burn on her brain. Then, like a switch flipped, Shepard dropped.

Lightning flashes: twenty, thirty years of memories—strings flying over the edges of the consciousness. Shepard was brushing by a life that was as infinitely complex as her own. She even had it easier: Vakarian had more experience than she did in the pilot’s chair. Years of contact in the bridge had callused him. He packaged his life better.

Shepard learned many things about her partner in that split-second. Garrus Vakarian was a soldier through and through. He had enlisted because that had been expected of him; he had excelled because that, too, had been expected of him. He felt solid to Shepard, stable somehow—he believed that, in the end, wrongs would right themselves and that friends would come through. But if Vakarian was over-trusting, there was also a grit that ran to the bone: something stark and determined and maybe even grim.

An alkaline soup rolled around the caverns of her mouth. Wind rushed across hard-backed carapaces, the sensation both strange and familiar to her.

But the bind was reciprocal. Millions of threads were flying out from Shepard too, and it had been three years since she had last jumped. Here, the first cigarette she’d shared with a mate: the grimy paper salty on her lips, the smoke catching at her lungs with the first inhalation. Then, a dull pull at her side, and she knew that wasn’t good, but she needed to get to her next point—

There was a big hand cradling her face. It was as gentle as Shepard had never known. She turned her face into it, the long line of her nose tucking into the curve of the palm—

Enough.

Shepard didn’t have Vakarian’s finesse. She couldn’t pinpoint the exact thread that she wanted to cut. Instead her ringing word froze all hundred thousand threads in the void between them.

The silence echoed with the absence of energy. Shepard felt like she had run a thousand miles. Her chest was heaving up and down, and her heart hammering fast as a rabbit’s. There was a hard burn across her cheeks.

At least buy me dinner first, she thought inanely.

To her great surprise, there was a response: A drink? Assuming we get through this alive, of course. The words were tentative. They were a far cry from the rapid-fire dialogue Vakarian had thrown at her earlier in the cockpit. If he were human, he would’ve nodded at her: an awkward chuck of the head. His awkwardness made him 3D, and that made her uncomfortable.

Shepard cleared her throat. Alright Vakarian. You’ve got a pilot’s mind, am I getting that right?

Vakarian had been military since his age of majority. Comparing potatoes to carrots, he outranked her human qualifications by about a rank and a half. Shepard had no plans to defer to him—he had been on a human ship as a consultant—but he had more experience in the cockpit than she did. She wasn’t so proud that she wouldn’t use this.

Vakarian didn’t respond with words. Shepard felt rather than saw him engage with the wetgear: a cold wave that rippled down her body. Clink-clink-clink.

Tough guy, she thought, raising her eyebrows. She plugged in.

Grimspace bloomed before her.

Shepard had been asked what Grimspace looked like. She could never describe it. Grimspace was like a thousand colors flying by, wrapping around in an impossible three-sixty panorama. The implacable cosmos.

You good? Shepard asked him. Only she wasn’t asking him anymore—they were with each other now. She could feel his thoughts like her own.

Vakarian was considering the situation at hand. They were on a tiny foot-fighter, marooned off the side of the Eos system. Their pursuer had caught them by surprise. While Shepard’s previous pilot had been good enough to evade the first missile, the second had grazed the starboard side, taking off one of the back fins. The third—a bio-missile—had been fatal. The blue wave had short-circuited the electromagnetic signals of the bridge crew, killing all twelve of them almost instantly.

We won't outrun them in a straight chase, Vakarian concluded grimly.

An image came to Shepard. A ship moving in Grimspace, producing splintered and ghostly after-images.

Disbelief from Vakarian. You’re not serious.

The alien ship was coming up; Shepard could feel the burn at the back of her throat. She asked him: Are you in?

They waited until their pursuer had flitted into their periphery once more. Shepard fumbled for the dullness betwixt dimensions and latched upon it: she charted the way and Vakarian guided them out. They stumbled back into the greyness of normal time-space.

Next one, Shepard said to him.

Again, she felt for that notch in the fabric of reality; again, Vakarian pushed into the sliding crevasse of technicolor. They were making little jumps in and out of Grimspace. For their pursuer, it would look like they were jittering—instantaneous flashes that existed in past, present, and future.

They were losing their pursuer, but jumpers weren’t meant to navigate Grimspace like this. Shepard was tiring. Her physical body was panting in the cockpit. A blood vessel burst in her eye, a florid patch of red over pupil.

We have to move on, said Vakarian.

He plotted a path ahead. Distantly, Shepard felt their final location burning ahead of her like a tiny star. She moved through a tide as thick as molasses—faltered, froze, and then fell to her hands and knees.

Hands looped underneath her arms. Startled, Shepard looked up: Vakarian had come back for her. Half-supporting her, they stumbled together out into normspace.

In the cockpit, Shepard flipped the clasp under her chin and dragged the helmet off. The ozone stench shot painfully to the back of her skull. She massaged her temples as she checked their bearings.

And checked them again. “You’ve got to be kidding me.”

Vakarian looked up. The neural link was still on: Shepard could feel the astonishment radiating off him in waves. It was strange to think that even two hours ago she had thought his expressions unreadable.

They had come out somewhere in the Belt of Astaria. It would still take them some time to reach a Council world, but Astaria was a destination that should have taken a day of staggered jumping to reach. Neither of them could believe what they had just accomplished.

And this had only been their first drift.

[roguetimebot]

“March.”            “That a name or an order?” “Take your pick.”

-- Grimspace (Sirantha Jax Book 1) by Ann Aguirre

[jordanjacksonwrites]

Check out my review of Grimspace by Ann Aguire below! (New favorite sci-fi novel!)

Grimspace by Ann Aguirre My rating: 5 of 5 stars Grimspace was a book that I'd been hoping for for awhile before I finally came across it at my local library. It's a sci-fi novel with a significant romance subplot that improves and supports the story, and doesn't get too bogged down in sci-fi lore-speak that distracts from the characters and emotion. The characters are familiar and refreshing all at once, so I could feel like I knew everyone without feeling like I'd seen them a million times before. It also avoids some beats I'm particularly averse to, such as the "I am in perilous danger at feel very threatened by Love Interest Male, but cannot help but notice that he is hot and I am distracted." Instead, the protagonist has a reasonably tense and un-erotic first meeting, and later reflects (maybe in the second book?) that both she and her love interest are not particularly attractive. But you know what, that's dope. I was almost hesitant to start the next book, because I'd been left with such a positive impression of the first one, and liked how things turned out, that I almost didn't want to alter or change the experience I'd already had. Went out and bought the next book anyway. I'm stoked to see where it goes. View all my reviews

[reincarnatedasacupcake]

My favourite best friends in literature are from the Sirantha Jax series by Anne Aguirre. Like it’s such a sweet friendship that it makes my heart just fill up sooooo much. Like just let people be friends. Let them love and support each other.

Seriously thought this series just keeps getting better the more you read and wraps up so nicely in the end

not to sound like a homophobic straight dude but I think yall should just let some characters be Friends not everything has to be about romance

[strxnged]

vel is becomibg my blorbo very quickly

[just0nemorepage]

November Just One More Page BPC 📚 // Day 2 ➜ Currently Reading.

[gimmeromance]

Ask from a user who wants to remain anonymous:

Can you make this anon?

Lately I've been reading a bunch of romance and it's always with alpha males. I'd really love to read more romance like The Rakess with an alpha heroine where the woman is the dominant personality and the man is not. BDSM is fine so long as it is actually romance and not just erotica. I want to see women in heterosexual relationships being awesome and dominant and the dude totally being okay with it. (Like Kamala Harris and her husband Doug Emhoff.)

` 

Please help! It feels like romance tends to forget that het/bi/pan women with alpha personalities need love too.

Alpha females are definitely not the norm in most romance, you’re quite correct. We’re glad you already discovered The Rakess by Scarlett Peckham; that author has written a couple of submissive males in her BDSM historicals. Also weirdly enough, some old school historical romance totally gets into this trope - probably because Elizabeth Bennet/Mr. Darcy is the original Alpha Heroine/Beta Hero (unless you count the Taming of the Shrew which depending on the production and interpretation is viable.) And as you likely already know, OP, having an alpha personality doesn’t mean that the woman has to be unfeminine. It just means that in the relationship the woman is the dominant partner.

We’ve scoured around and found a few more you might enjoy!

Historical

The Duke Who Didn’t by Courtney Milan - M/F, Victorian Romance, Asian Romance (heroine is Chinese, hero is half-Chinese), alpha female, Open Door

Duke of Pleasure by Elizabeth Hoyt - M/F, Regency Romance, Open Door, heroine is a masked vigilante

Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen - M/F - Regency Romance, No Sex, Heroine is Gentry. Classic Romance.

Desire in Disguise by Rebecca Brandywine - M/F - French Revolution, Open door, heroine is a pirate, Old School Romance.

Skye O’Malley by Bertrice Small - M/F - Elizabethan England, Open Door, Interracial Romance, Old School Romance, CW: Rape, Domestic Abuse, and Sexual Slavery. Book 1 of a two book series. Heroine is Irish and head of her Clan and Captain of a fleet of ships.

An Extraordinary Union by Alyssa Cole - M/F - Civil War America, Open Door, Interracial Romance, CW: Slavery, Rape, Racism (all the racism). Heroine is a Spy

A Duke Will Never Do by Darcy Burke - M/F - Regency Romance, Open Door, CW: Alcohol Abuse, Withdrawal, Sexual Assault. Heroine is a Spinster.

An Eye for an Earl by Jean Wilde - M/F - Regency Romance, Open Door, CW: Rape, Sexual Assault, Heroine is a Courtesan.

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Fantasy

Tinker by Wen Spencer - M/F, Fantasy Romance, Mechanic Heroine, Elf Hero, Near-Future, Unknown Heat Level - book 1 of 4, HFN in Book 1.

The Stormbringer by Isabel Cooper - M/F. Fantasy Romance, Warrior Heroine, Epic Fantasy, Open Door. Book 1 of 3, each featuring a different couple, heroines are all warriors.

The Edge of the Woods by Jules Kelley - M/F Bisexual (MFC referenced having past relationships with women), Shifter Romance. Open Door - heroine is alpha wolf of her pack, hero is not a shifter

Moon Called by Patricia Briggs - M/F, Shifter Romance, Urban Fantasy Romance, Native American heroine, Interracial romance, Love Triangle, Open Door - book 1 of 13 (and counting) in the Mercy Thompson series

Trail of Lightning by Rebecca Roanhorse - M/F, Post Apocalyptic Romance, Urban Fantasy (Magic User), Native American Heroine, book 1 of 2 and likely more.

Alpha Night by Nalini Singh - M/F - Urban Fantasy (Shifter, Psychic), Book 19 of a 20 book and counting series, Heroine is the Alpha of her Pack.

Men Are Frogs by Saranna DeWylde - M/F - Contemporary Fantasy - Fairy Tale Retelling, Interracial Romance, Heroine is a Wedding Planner, Book 2 of a 3 book and counting series.

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Science Fiction

Finders Keepers by Linnea Sinclair - M/F, SciFi Romance, Smuggler Heroine, Open Door - you cannot go wrong with Linnea Sinclair. Her entire catalogue fits your ask. Try Gabriel’s Ghost or Games of Command or An Accidental Goddess, too.

Grimspace by Ann Aguirre - M/F, SciFi Romance, Pilot Heroine, Closed Door - book 1/6 in the Sirantha Jax series. Each book has an HFN and book 6 Jax and March get their HEA.

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YA Romance

You’ll actually find quite a lot of kickass heroines (and the heroes who adore them) in the YA genre. From Katniss in The Hunger Games to Celaena in Throne of Glass and Jaenelle in the Black Jewels trilogy. However, these are not always romance, in that they don’t always fulfill the promise of the HEA or even HFN (Jaenelle doesn’t get either, in particular). It’s very common for the HEA not to come until the end of the series, so bear that in mind when looking at the recommendations below (and any other YA series).

Graceling by Kristin Cashore - M/F. YA Fantasy Romance, Unknown Heat Level, Assassin Heroine - book 1 in a series of 4.

Grave Mercy by Robin LaFevers - M/F, YA Fantasy Romance, Open Door, Assassin Heroine - book 1 of a trilogy.

Cinder by Marissa Meyer - M/F, YA Science Fiction Romance, Open Door, Cyborg Heroine. Book 1 of a series of 4; each featuring a different strong heroine.

Hunted by the Sky by Tanaz Bhathena - M/F, YA Fantasy Romance, No Sex, Magic User Heroine, Book 1 in a Duology.

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Contemporary Romance

Vanessa’s Winter Romance by Christina Rose Andrews - M/F - Open Door - Interracial Romance, Law School Heroine, Black Heroine, Hispanic Hero, Beta Hero. (Bood 2 of a 3 book series)

Take a Hint, Dani Brown by Talia Hibbert - M/F - Open Door, Interracial romance, College Professor Heroine, Black Heroine, Muslim Hero, Bisexual Heroine, Beta Hero (Book 2 of a 3 book series)

Dirty Sweet Wild by Julie Kriss - M/F - Open Door, Disabled Hero (Amputee and PTSD), Sex Worker Heroine, Veteran Romance, Billionaire Romance (Book 2 of a 4 book series)

Tramps Like Us/Kimi wa Pet/You’re My Pet by Yayoi Ogawa - M/F - Open Door - MANGA Series, CW: Homelessness, Love Triangle. Heroine is a successful Business woman.

*These suggestions are not endorsements. Please read the description and the reviews to decide whether you want to read the books!

[ao3feed-shakarian]

First Drift

read it on the AO3 at https://ift.tt/2Lc1dlX

by oneshallop

Their first drift was born out of fear and desperation.

Words: 1464, Chapters: 1/1, Language: English

Fandoms: Mass Effect - All Media Types, Pacific Rim (Movies), Sirantha Jax - Ann Aguirre

Rating: Not Rated

Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply

Categories: F/M

Relationships: Female Shepard/Garrus Vakarian

read it on the AO3 at https://ift.tt/2Lc1dlX