Nathan Burton (2025)

(Not a review, just some notes to help me remember the things I've read. But written this way because it's the Internet, and some people will stumble across this page.)
This was an ARC from Library Thing (although the book was published in February). It was another book over 500 pages -- I need to stop requesting these. And while I won't hold the fact that I received a PDF file instead of an EPUB, it did lessen my enjoyment of the book. PDFs *suck* to read.
Renegrades reads like a season of a science fiction television show, such as Firefly but with fewer morals and more deadly sins but still a hint of conscience. The Desire is a crewed by five people and a robot who are for hire but also looking for an extra score wherever they can take advantage of a situation.
The chapters are like individual episode with continuing characters and themes which all come together in the last two chapters. Every chapter has something to contribute to the finale. The ending, however, was disappointing. It took a turn that wasn't exactly out of the blue, but it made it difficult to figure how Matthias's actual plan was supposed to go down before it all goes wrong. (Not as bad as the waterslide book ending, for sure!)
Matthias Mead is the captain, looking for his next score, which could be monetary or female. Nath is a former Earth Ranger with a chip on his shoulder. He's usually the more rational one with the bigger guns. Hayley owns the ship and has a gambling addiction, which gets her and the crew into trouble. The young twins, Haque and Watson, are from a moon of Saturn who eat a lot and have other skills.
The first assignment they get is to run security for the wedding of the head of a galactic crime syndicate who operates in all Nine Sectors. Matthias immediately hires extra help so he can run a side scam, stealing items of value from the rich invitees. In the end, Matthias, the lustful one, has an encounter with the bride in a bathroom (recording it with camera contact lenses). The Renegades are now on the run from the Marosky Syndicate as they are from the actual authorities (because not every job they take on is on the up and up). If that's not bad enough, they run into a few remainders of the ancient race of Primordians, who are actually more numerous than expected, and are deeply entrenched in Earth politics.
Jobs become harder to get and there's way too much time spent talking about recycling urine. You would think with an entire universe out there, they could find a lake somewhere and fill the tanks with fresh water.
As for those sins I mentioned: Nath represents Wrath, and don't get him started. He has his moment to shine. Greed is prevalent among all of them, but Hayley, who actually owns the ship, will take just about any bet and has a lot of gambling debts that the crew has to pay off. The twins, Watson and Haque, have Gluttony thanks to an operation done on their home planet, so they can eat a lot and not put on weight. Envy and sloth don't play much of a role, but pride goes without saying. This is a side exercise of my own even since someone once proposed that each of the cast of Gilligan's Island represented a Deadly Sin. In the case of the Renegades, there's only five crew members (and the twins are very similar) along with a robot but there are secondary characters that help out along the way.
This was another book that was just too long, and I pushed through to get to the end of it. At least, it was mostly entertaining, but, again, I was disappointed in the ending.