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Darkship Thieves
(aka: Darkship Renegades)

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Darkship Thieves (Literature)

Darkship Thieves and its sequel Darkship Renegades are Science Fiction novels by Sarah A. Hoyt. Set in a solar system after a massive revolt against genetically engineered Mules who ruled the Earth, it features Thena, the daughter of one of the ruling Good Men, who finds herself accidentally in a ship from Eden, where some refugees from the revolt have lived for generations. Kit, its captain, saves her but insists on bringing her back, for safety.

A Few Good Men is set in the same universe and is affected by the same events.


Tropes included:

  • After-Action Healing Drama: Thena rushes Kit off to Doctor Bartholemeu after Joseph tries to kill him. Given that she doesn't know the way there, and Kit can only communicate it telepathically, it gets difficult.
  • Arranged Marriage: Thena tells Kit she's always been expecting this, despite the immense pressure her father would bring to bear.
  • Bury Your Gays: This trope is a plot point — Max kept his orientation a secret, so his identity thief doesn't realize he's given himself away by ignoring the lover, Nat. Still, the book ends with one gay man dead and the other consumed by his need for revenge.
  • Commonality Connection: Kit and Thena bond a bit over their common dealings with bureaucrats.
  • Damsel in Distress: Thena in the opening.
  • Dark and Troubled Past: Kit's first wife died in a situation that made it look like he murdered her, and he won't clear his name.
  • Day Hurts Dark-Adjusted Eyes: Thena, after the radiation burns, first thinks her vision has suffered when she removed the goggles. In reality, she's just not seen the light for long. It takes her many blinks to actually see.
  • Distressed Dude: Kit, after his Heroic Sacrifice.
  • Driven to Suicide: Kit is thinking of killing himself after Mercy Killing Thena.
  • Evil Cannot Comprehend Good: When Thena's father has captured both Kit and Thena, it does not occur to him that Kit has hostage value until she threatens to kill herself if he harms Kit.
  • Fallen Princess: Thena is the daughter and heiress of one of Earth's ruling Good Men. Then she has to flee his ship and ends up in a different culture.
  • Grand Theft Me: Nat is convinced that his lover Max has been possessed by the recently deceased father's ghost. He's right: Max was a clone of the father created specifically so that the elder could discard his old body and transplant his brain into a younger, healthier one. The father had achieved near immortality by murdering his sons over and over. But he screwed up in this generation by not realizing Max had a secret, gay relationship with Nat and thus acting out of character to him. The protagonists learn that the entire society is founded on this. The ruling oligarchs are the men who figured out how to do this and have been ruling the planet together for centuries.
  • Heroic Sacrifice: Kit is willing to be taken captive to save Thena.
  • If You Kill Him, You Will Be Just Like Him!: Thena wants to kill her father, both for justice and because he wants to transplant his brain to her body. She fails. Kit points out that it proves being his clone didn't make her like him.
  • Ironic Name: The "Good Men" who rule Earth... aren't. Lampshaded by the title of A Few Good Men.
  • It's All About Me: Thena's father, more and more clearly as the book progresses. At one point, Thena makes a plan to escape him that centers on the key fact that he will regard losing control of her as no different from her death.
  • Just the First Citizen: Earth is ruled by "Good Men".
  • King in the Mountain: Thena observes that her welcome back to the lair was like this.
  • Matter of Life and Death: In Darkship Renegades, Thena reflects on how treating the mentally ill started only after it became feasible; before, when they could threaten the existence of the tribe, they were probably killed.
  • Meaningful Rename: Thena tells Kit he doesn't have to change his name when they marry, but he insists.
  • Mercy Kill: Thena urges this on Kit after she's burned by radiation.
  • The Mutiny: Subverted. The opening of the book has Thena waking up to find herself being attacked by people she knows are her father's armsmen, and during her escape she sees her father lying inert on a medical table. For more than half the book, she believes that her father's crew mutinied and were out to kill both him and her. She's wrong. The crew didn't mutiny — her father sent them to take her captive so his mind could be transplanted into her body, thus preserving his life at the expense of hers.
  • Obstructive Bureaucrat: No one's ever brought back an Earthworm — err, Earther. A bureaucrat refuses landing permission on that ground.
  • Revenge: Thena pledges revenge for her dead eight "brothers" — the clones before her that her "father" murdered for a transplant. Nat also pledges to exterminate the Good Men for Max's death.
  • Species Loyalty: Thena's father complains about her lack of loyalty to her genetically engineered species. Given that said species has been living by cloning its own members and then murdering them to transplant brains into them, she doesn't take it very seriously.
  • Talking in Your Sleep: In Darkship Renegades, Thena comments that Kit is prone to muttering in his sleep.
  • Try and Follow: Athena flees through powertrees because she needs something the mutineers won't follow.
  • Xanatos Speed Chess: Thena observes that she always has a Plan B, and often a Plan C, and all too frequently she has to resort to Plan F.

Alternative Title(s): Darkship Renegades

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