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Corsair
In the early 2020s, two young, genius computer hackers, meet at MIT. One, Elizabeth Santiago, dreams of technology and space travel. The other, David Schwartz, is just looking to make a quick buck.
Nearly ten years later, David is setting himself to become a billionaire by working in the shadows for international thieves, while Elizabeth works in intelligence preventing international space piracy. With robotic mining in space becoming a lucrative part of Earth's economy, her job has become increasingly stressful.
David and Elizabeth fight for dominance of the computer systems controlling ore drop placement in international waters. If David can nudge a shipment 500 miles off its target, his employers can get there first and claim it legally in the open sea. Each one intuits that the other is their real competition but can't prove it. When Elizabeth loses a major shipment, she leaves government employ to work for a private space company to find a better way to protect shipments. But international piracy has very high stakes and some very evil players, and both Elizabeth and David are in for a world of trouble.
Nearly ten years later, David is setting himself to become a billionaire by working in the shadows for international thieves, while Elizabeth works in intelligence preventing international space piracy. With robotic mining in space becoming a lucrative part of Earth's economy, her job has become increasingly stressful.
David and Elizabeth fight for dominance of the computer systems controlling ore drop placement in international waters. If David can nudge a shipment 500 miles off its target, his employers can get there first and claim it legally in the open sea. Each one intuits that the other is their real competition but can't prove it. When Elizabeth loses a major shipment, she leaves government employ to work for a private space company to find a better way to protect shipments. But international piracy has very high stakes and some very evil players, and both Elizabeth and David are in for a world of trouble.
336 pages, Hardcover
First published May 5, 2015
36 people are currently reading
1,105 people want to read
About the author
James L. Cambias
62Ìýbooks264ÌýfollowersI grew up in New Orleans, was educated at Chicago, and currently live in New England.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 147 reviews
May 21, 2015
Review from Tenacious Reader:
Corsair is a thrilling and fun adventure full of space pirates and hackers, the kind of book that grabs you and holds you down (willingly) until it is all told. This book is pretty short, but it’s an addictive “page turner� that finished before I knew it. I say “page turner� in quotes because in actuality, I listened to this one as an audiobook so there were no actual pages involved. But I am really happy I did. There are some books that are just very well suited for audiobooks, and this was certainly one of them. The story and names are all very easy to follow while listening and the narration was very good, relaying the story clearly without ever becoming the focus of the listener (meaning, I heard the story well told). The style of Corsair reminds me a bit of Scalzi or Richard Morgan’s Altered Carbon, but with this book, most (if not just about all) of the story is set here on earth rather than in space.
David Schwartz and Elizabeth Santiago meet while taking classes at MIT in the not so distant future. They are both incredibly bright, but incredibly different. David is a bit “creative� or “generous� with his moral compass, and Elizabeth is pretty much a straight shooter. So not surprisingly, their courses in life diverge soon after meeting.
Fast forward 10 years, we find Elizabeth entered the military and is now working to fight space piracy and David has continued his less than legal approach to life. And it appears he has done quite well for himself. Their paths meet again as they both get pulled in to a nefarious plot for the ultimate space piracy. I knew it would happen, based on the initial meeting (and the blurb), but I really enjoyed seeing how they were brought together again in different ways (form different sides) by this plot.
I like David, he’s just a fun, care-free type of guy. The kind of character that just amuses me and is hard for me to not like. He’s certainly not perfect, as any law enforcement official could tell you, and he could stand to give other people a bit more consideration instead of always thinking of himself. But I can’t help it, I still like him, as egotistical as he may be. Elizabeth is set on doing the “right� thing, even when that may not match procedure (she wound up working for the military with a focus on fighting space piracy). There’s an interesting look into the politics involved, and how sometimes the procedurally correct thing may not be the “right� thing overall. I know that’s not a new idea, but I still enjoy it and the conflict it can create. As different as these two characters are, I found myself rooting for both of them, which can be fun when they may or may not want the same thing.
Overall, this was a very enjoyable read, full of action and suspense with touches of humor.
Corsair is a thrilling and fun adventure full of space pirates and hackers, the kind of book that grabs you and holds you down (willingly) until it is all told. This book is pretty short, but it’s an addictive “page turner� that finished before I knew it. I say “page turner� in quotes because in actuality, I listened to this one as an audiobook so there were no actual pages involved. But I am really happy I did. There are some books that are just very well suited for audiobooks, and this was certainly one of them. The story and names are all very easy to follow while listening and the narration was very good, relaying the story clearly without ever becoming the focus of the listener (meaning, I heard the story well told). The style of Corsair reminds me a bit of Scalzi or Richard Morgan’s Altered Carbon, but with this book, most (if not just about all) of the story is set here on earth rather than in space.
David Schwartz and Elizabeth Santiago meet while taking classes at MIT in the not so distant future. They are both incredibly bright, but incredibly different. David is a bit “creative� or “generous� with his moral compass, and Elizabeth is pretty much a straight shooter. So not surprisingly, their courses in life diverge soon after meeting.
Fast forward 10 years, we find Elizabeth entered the military and is now working to fight space piracy and David has continued his less than legal approach to life. And it appears he has done quite well for himself. Their paths meet again as they both get pulled in to a nefarious plot for the ultimate space piracy. I knew it would happen, based on the initial meeting (and the blurb), but I really enjoyed seeing how they were brought together again in different ways (form different sides) by this plot.
I like David, he’s just a fun, care-free type of guy. The kind of character that just amuses me and is hard for me to not like. He’s certainly not perfect, as any law enforcement official could tell you, and he could stand to give other people a bit more consideration instead of always thinking of himself. But I can’t help it, I still like him, as egotistical as he may be. Elizabeth is set on doing the “right� thing, even when that may not match procedure (she wound up working for the military with a focus on fighting space piracy). There’s an interesting look into the politics involved, and how sometimes the procedurally correct thing may not be the “right� thing overall. I know that’s not a new idea, but I still enjoy it and the conflict it can create. As different as these two characters are, I found myself rooting for both of them, which can be fun when they may or may not want the same thing.
Overall, this was a very enjoyable read, full of action and suspense with touches of humor.
August 23, 2015
Another excellent SF thriller from this author.
It starts with an interesting aerospace engineering arms race and continues into a tightly written thriller dealing with stolen spacecraft, terrorists and organized crime.
It starts with an interesting aerospace engineering arms race and continues into a tightly written thriller dealing with stolen spacecraft, terrorists and organized crime.
January 13, 2016
I haven't finished this, I just realized I hated it all if a sudden and refused to continue any further. There's basically nothing positive to say about this book, and the audio book narrator's whiny voice for all female characters (they're not infrequent) didn't help...
December 13, 2015
I do fucking love science, but my major was Linguistics, so until I read Charles Stross's mining, I thought that He3 mining on the moon, the trope all the SF authors are using nowadays to justify space mining, sounded plausible.
Well, it isn't (if you believe Charles Stross). But does it really matter? Only to the degree of hardness you demand of your SF. It is kind of a bummer that there really may be no viable economic incentive to actually get us off-planet, but I think SF authors can still get away with mining (heh) the lunar He3 trope for a while.
Anyway, this is James Cambias's second novel, and I'm enjoying his stuff, which is basically modern space opera with just enough of a veneer of scientific plausibility to make it hold up as well as, well, anything Heinlein and Asimov and that gang wrote back in the day.
In Corsair, we are dealing with a near-future (2030s) Earth which is disappointingly similar to the present day, just with faster bandwidth and various multinational corporations now mining Helium-3 on the moon. There are also "He3 pirates" who use drones and hacking to hijack a small percentage of the remotely operated He3 shipments and divert them off-course, where they can be picked up somewhere in the ocean and sold for enormous profits. So far neither nations nor companies have come up with a good solution to these pirates, other than to write off the losses as the cost of doing business.
David Schwartz is a brilliant but amoral hacker, thieving and conning his way aimlessly through life, when he hooks up with Elizabeth Santiago at MIT. Their brief fling becomes a rivalry years later, when David is "Captain Jack, the Space Pirate," and Elizabeth is a U.S. Air Force officer trying to persuade her superiors that she has a solution to space piracy.
Elizabeth and David are both flawed people who make the rather straightforward plot more interesting. Elizabeth outright lies to get her way, with disastrous results on her career, and by the turning point she's become an almost hysterical alcoholic trying to convince the people she's screwed over to actually trust that she knows what she's talking about. Meanwhile, David seems to be nearly sociopathic in his indifference to other people for most of the book, and his genius at coming up with clever schemes is rivaled only by his stupidity in not recognizing what other people are up to and that they may be lying to him. He takes a job working for some shadowy Middle Easterners who want him to pull off a big hijacking scheme, except it turns out that they are actually the remnants of the global jihadist movement. With oil waning in importance, they need to do something big and spectacular to make the major powers take notice of them again, and David is basically being gulled into facilitating a lunar 9/11. The fact that he doesn't see this coming, or that his employers obviously do not intend to let him live one second longer than he is necessary, is obvious to everyone but David long before he's finally clued in by the discovery of a fridged girlfriend.
The climax is a down-to-the-wire mix of chase scenes, firefights, and Hollywood hacking.
If not wholly plausible in every detail, I still enjoyed this book a great deal as a tense mix of techno-thriller and space opera. James Cambias's background as an RPG writer shows - all the characters are interesting collections of talents and flaws, and you can imagine a GM somewhere throwing twists in the narrative and making sure every character has something to do, even the almost irrelevant college girl who decided to go sailing around the world and was dropped into the plot seemingly at random.
Well, it isn't (if you believe Charles Stross). But does it really matter? Only to the degree of hardness you demand of your SF. It is kind of a bummer that there really may be no viable economic incentive to actually get us off-planet, but I think SF authors can still get away with mining (heh) the lunar He3 trope for a while.
Anyway, this is James Cambias's second novel, and I'm enjoying his stuff, which is basically modern space opera with just enough of a veneer of scientific plausibility to make it hold up as well as, well, anything Heinlein and Asimov and that gang wrote back in the day.
In Corsair, we are dealing with a near-future (2030s) Earth which is disappointingly similar to the present day, just with faster bandwidth and various multinational corporations now mining Helium-3 on the moon. There are also "He3 pirates" who use drones and hacking to hijack a small percentage of the remotely operated He3 shipments and divert them off-course, where they can be picked up somewhere in the ocean and sold for enormous profits. So far neither nations nor companies have come up with a good solution to these pirates, other than to write off the losses as the cost of doing business.
David Schwartz is a brilliant but amoral hacker, thieving and conning his way aimlessly through life, when he hooks up with Elizabeth Santiago at MIT. Their brief fling becomes a rivalry years later, when David is "Captain Jack, the Space Pirate," and Elizabeth is a U.S. Air Force officer trying to persuade her superiors that she has a solution to space piracy.
Elizabeth and David are both flawed people who make the rather straightforward plot more interesting. Elizabeth outright lies to get her way, with disastrous results on her career, and by the turning point she's become an almost hysterical alcoholic trying to convince the people she's screwed over to actually trust that she knows what she's talking about. Meanwhile, David seems to be nearly sociopathic in his indifference to other people for most of the book, and his genius at coming up with clever schemes is rivaled only by his stupidity in not recognizing what other people are up to and that they may be lying to him. He takes a job working for some shadowy Middle Easterners who want him to pull off a big hijacking scheme, except it turns out that they are actually the remnants of the global jihadist movement. With oil waning in importance, they need to do something big and spectacular to make the major powers take notice of them again, and David is basically being gulled into facilitating a lunar 9/11. The fact that he doesn't see this coming, or that his employers obviously do not intend to let him live one second longer than he is necessary, is obvious to everyone but David long before he's finally clued in by the discovery of a fridged girlfriend.
The climax is a down-to-the-wire mix of chase scenes, firefights, and Hollywood hacking.
If not wholly plausible in every detail, I still enjoyed this book a great deal as a tense mix of techno-thriller and space opera. James Cambias's background as an RPG writer shows - all the characters are interesting collections of talents and flaws, and you can imagine a GM somewhere throwing twists in the narrative and making sure every character has something to do, even the almost irrelevant college girl who decided to go sailing around the world and was dropped into the plot seemingly at random.
November 28, 2017
Seriously seriously disappointing. Cardboard, cliched characters, obvious “tricks�, plot holes, hackneyed geek wish fulfilment fantasies, unbelievable police processes, naive good & evil, simplistic motivations, etc. etc. etc. That’s twice I’ve read work by Cambias and I should have paid attention to my notes from the first time, and this was worse.
May 17, 2017
The final third of this book saved this from being a 1-star read.
July 19, 2016
I enjoyed Cambias' first book A Darkling Sea. It wasn't perfect, but it was a unique world with unique aliens, and Cambias has this amazing ability to get into his characters' heads and have different characters interpret the same situation differently. So I had to give his next book a try.
Corsair is a very different premise. In the near future, the moon is being mined for helium. This has opened the door to a new type of crime: space piracy! From the comfort of his lavish hotel room David Schwartz, aka the nefarious Captain Black, hacks the satellite signal and redirects the treasure to a splashdown location of his choosing. Captain Black is being obsessively pursued by Captain (literal Captain) Elizabeth Santiago, whose superiors don't want to invest in a weaponized satellite to fight the piracy. And, for some reason, we're also following Anne Rogers, who's piloting her little boat around the Gulf of Mexico. Logically, she's going to intersect the story at some point, right?
The most common criticism for A Darkling Sea is that the language is a bit dry (insert obvious joke about the whole book taking place underwater). Mr. Cambias must have taken this criticism to heart, beacause Corsair has a lot more personality. It's fun, sometimes funny, with great characters you enjoy following.
For me, the only problem with this book is; there's an introductory heist in the opening chapter, and then the rest of the book is build up and execution of another heist. After the excitement of the opening chapter, it gets a bit plodding. But the book is only a little over 300 pages, so it's still a quick read.
Corsair is a very different premise. In the near future, the moon is being mined for helium. This has opened the door to a new type of crime: space piracy! From the comfort of his lavish hotel room David Schwartz, aka the nefarious Captain Black, hacks the satellite signal and redirects the treasure to a splashdown location of his choosing. Captain Black is being obsessively pursued by Captain (literal Captain) Elizabeth Santiago, whose superiors don't want to invest in a weaponized satellite to fight the piracy. And, for some reason, we're also following Anne Rogers, who's piloting her little boat around the Gulf of Mexico. Logically, she's going to intersect the story at some point, right?
The most common criticism for A Darkling Sea is that the language is a bit dry (insert obvious joke about the whole book taking place underwater). Mr. Cambias must have taken this criticism to heart, beacause Corsair has a lot more personality. It's fun, sometimes funny, with great characters you enjoy following.
For me, the only problem with this book is; there's an introductory heist in the opening chapter, and then the rest of the book is build up and execution of another heist. After the excitement of the opening chapter, it gets a bit plodding. But the book is only a little over 300 pages, so it's still a quick read.
April 12, 2016
This was a fast and enjoyable read. Neither main character was particularly admirable; in fact, David was essentially an arrogant a-hole who hadn't grown up. Took almost dying for him to begin growing up by the end of the book. Elizabeth Santiago was much more complicated; totally obsessive and willing to break all sorts of rules --begs the question: what the heck was she doing in the military?
Liked the diverse cast, and how one of the main protagonists was a woman who wasn't just a yes-sir, no-sir kind of person, but was a messy, driven person who makes mistakes and doesn't make apologies for herself. Interesting, but both protagonists share characteristics, both being willing to bend rules for their own purposes.
Liked the diverse cast, and how one of the main protagonists was a woman who wasn't just a yes-sir, no-sir kind of person, but was a messy, driven person who makes mistakes and doesn't make apologies for herself. Interesting, but both protagonists share characteristics, both being willing to bend rules for their own purposes.
December 24, 2016
One awesome space-pirate (via virtual reality) book. Combined that with good characters, experimental space craft and a mission to the Moon and you've got a winner. Has plenty of action for anyone that is a space opera lover. I will be looking for more books by Cambias in the future.
August 22, 2019
Cambias has done a swell job writing a believable future. The science and tech he portrays (as well as the society it is put to use in) are natural progressions of current technology. Never once did I find myself thinking that any aspect of the world was unbelievable or even fantastical. This aspect of the book kept me intrigued throughout.
His characters, however, didn't quite hold up as well. As a whole, they were believable enough, but occasionally people did things seemingly for no reason other than to advance the plot. Without delving into spoilers, suffice to say that many characters defied common sense, much less logic, in their dealings with other characters.
Despite this, and a bit too much jumping around between said characters in the beginning, the overall story is still quite good and believable. I found myself drawn in completely by the last third of the book or so, while the various storylines combined in a great climax. I would recommend this to any fan of hard sci-fi, or anyone looking to try out hard sci-fi for the first time.
His characters, however, didn't quite hold up as well. As a whole, they were believable enough, but occasionally people did things seemingly for no reason other than to advance the plot. Without delving into spoilers, suffice to say that many characters defied common sense, much less logic, in their dealings with other characters.
Despite this, and a bit too much jumping around between said characters in the beginning, the overall story is still quite good and believable. I found myself drawn in completely by the last third of the book or so, while the various storylines combined in a great climax. I would recommend this to any fan of hard sci-fi, or anyone looking to try out hard sci-fi for the first time.
March 16, 2015
Publisher: Tor
Publishing Date: May 2015
ISBN: 9780765379108
Genre: SciFi
Rating: 4.0/5
Publisher Description: In the early 2020s, two young, genius computer hackers, Elizabeth Santiago and David Schwartz, meet at MIT, where Schwartz is sneaking into classes, and have a brief affair. David is amoral and out for himself, and soon disappears. Elizabeth dreams of technology and space travel and takes a military job after graduating. Nearly ten years later, David is setting himself to become a billionaire by working in the shadows under a multiplicity of names for international thieves, and Elizabeth works in intelligence preventing international space piracy.
Review: Lately, publishers have been pushing this preview “excerpt� novella crap. Just ARC the dam thing already. But no. They already know its good so they throw out a teaser. What’s the fugging point? This is written by one of my favorite authors and he still delivers in spades. I will post a full review when I get a FULL COPY!
May 14, 2015
Near future/near space thriller. It doesn't exactly have a space pirate, more like a hacker. It's written in that succinct vintage writing style a la John Scalzi, without a lot of over-explaining of what people are thinking or what things and people look like, coming in at a slim 336 pages. It does have some flashbacks though. It has a great beginning, but then goes back in time to set things up. It's got some smart science and plenty of humor and decent characterizations. The standard gunplay I wasn't too excited about. But hey I actually finished it, so it's got enough going for it.
July 29, 2018
Software space pirates vs. The Authorities! Eh, pretty good but unmemorable. To the point that I just started (inadvertantly) rereading it (7-2018), only to think, hmm, looks awfully familiar. 2.5 stars, courtesy round-up but don't expect anything path-breaking. But it does have a cracking-good opening! Captain Black the Space Pirate, at the absolute pinnacle of the tekno-badass pyramid! Sadly, it's downhill from there, or so I now recall. Totally anodyne cover-art, too.
The Cambias book to read is his first, "A Darkling Sea", which is first rate. Here's my take, and Jo Walton's: /review/show...
The Cambias book to read is his first, "A Darkling Sea", which is first rate. Here's my take, and Jo Walton's: /review/show...
May 22, 2016
3.5 stars. This was definitely a solid read. Not as good as his first novel which I loved. The plot worked best for me; the characters were a bit lacking. They just weren't fleshed out in my view, which made it hard to care about what was happening at times. Still a good read with lots of interesting ideas. I liked the space pirates idea. I look forward to more books by Cambias.
April 14, 2019
Good ideas abound, and one decently-defined female protagonist. But it is too clearly a space opera version of “Ready Player One,� with more grownups.
I continue to like Cambias’s work, and will read his next one.
I continue to like Cambias’s work, and will read his next one.
February 13, 2018
Remote-control piracy using a video-game metaphor may not sound exciting, but it turns out to be very exciting as Corsair interlaces three lives into a 3D-Chess match of intrigue, revenge, anarchism, terrorism, and more. The prose is crisply written (I am so jealous!) and the climax wasn’t telegraphed in any way. I did anticipate some of the twists in the plot, but I was completely blown away by the way James L. Cambias brought these lives and events together at the conclusion of the story.
It is difficult to say which of the three main characters would be the main protagonist. Captain Black the Space Pirate is the most interesting, Elizabeth the legal authority (at least for a while) offers a marvelous counterpoint, and Anne the nautical adventuress from Oklahoma (of all places) provides a character to represent the “Everyperson� in the story (albeit a courageous and clever “Everyperson�). At first, Cambias brought Captain Black and Elizabeth’s objectives together in a logical fashion, but Anne’s story seemed a bit out there. When she is thrust into the story, she plays a pivotal role as the only true innocent in the story.
Captain Black, aka David Schwartz, is as clever a rascal as the pseudonym or nom de guerre he chooses for his escapades would be expected to be. He always seems two or three jumps ahead of law enforcement or rivals, but one senses from the beginning that his hubris might be as detrimental to him as it was for protagonists in classical Greek plays. One wonders whether he will gouge his eyes out as a modern Oedipus, plot against his mother as a male Electra, or allow a popular warrior’s body to rot on the battlefield as does Creon.
Indeed, Elizabeth is guilty of both hubris and obsession when she triggers her tragic fall from military mission controller to civilian consultant to alcoholic. And then, just when we think she is irredeemable, Cambias throws us almost a boomerang instead of a curve. To be honest, the original vignettes about Elizabeth intrigued me, but I didn’t like her until her tragic flaw appeared. I thought she was just involved in a vendetta, but the story was more complicated than that.
Corsair was a fresh style of science-fiction to me. Cambias is likely to become known as a master of the genre. This is one of those books that could also make a marvelous video game background.
It is difficult to say which of the three main characters would be the main protagonist. Captain Black the Space Pirate is the most interesting, Elizabeth the legal authority (at least for a while) offers a marvelous counterpoint, and Anne the nautical adventuress from Oklahoma (of all places) provides a character to represent the “Everyperson� in the story (albeit a courageous and clever “Everyperson�). At first, Cambias brought Captain Black and Elizabeth’s objectives together in a logical fashion, but Anne’s story seemed a bit out there. When she is thrust into the story, she plays a pivotal role as the only true innocent in the story.
Captain Black, aka David Schwartz, is as clever a rascal as the pseudonym or nom de guerre he chooses for his escapades would be expected to be. He always seems two or three jumps ahead of law enforcement or rivals, but one senses from the beginning that his hubris might be as detrimental to him as it was for protagonists in classical Greek plays. One wonders whether he will gouge his eyes out as a modern Oedipus, plot against his mother as a male Electra, or allow a popular warrior’s body to rot on the battlefield as does Creon.
Indeed, Elizabeth is guilty of both hubris and obsession when she triggers her tragic fall from military mission controller to civilian consultant to alcoholic. And then, just when we think she is irredeemable, Cambias throws us almost a boomerang instead of a curve. To be honest, the original vignettes about Elizabeth intrigued me, but I didn’t like her until her tragic flaw appeared. I thought she was just involved in a vendetta, but the story was more complicated than that.
Corsair was a fresh style of science-fiction to me. Cambias is likely to become known as a master of the genre. This is one of those books that could also make a marvelous video game background.
January 13, 2022
Corsair by James L. Cambias is a Science Fiction novel set in the very near future. It surprised me in that the events in the book could very well come true within the time remaining from now until 2031 when the events of the book take place. The current technology would also support this story.
In this one, mankind has returned to the moon both as nations and as private enterprises. Small bases have been set up to mine helium-3 which is sent back to earth in robotic spacecraft where it splashes down in the ocean to be recovered by various companies and nations for use in generating cheap power. Where someone can find a new way to make money someone else can find a way to steal it. Enter, Space Pirates! These pirates however operate robotic spacecraft of their own which alter the course of the helium-3 bearing spacecraft to another splashdown location where they have ships waiting to retrieve it. Thus a battle is being waged by the government and the companies involved to stop the piracy once and for all.
A very entertaining read and very realistic also.
In this one, mankind has returned to the moon both as nations and as private enterprises. Small bases have been set up to mine helium-3 which is sent back to earth in robotic spacecraft where it splashes down in the ocean to be recovered by various companies and nations for use in generating cheap power. Where someone can find a new way to make money someone else can find a way to steal it. Enter, Space Pirates! These pirates however operate robotic spacecraft of their own which alter the course of the helium-3 bearing spacecraft to another splashdown location where they have ships waiting to retrieve it. Thus a battle is being waged by the government and the companies involved to stop the piracy once and for all.
A very entertaining read and very realistic also.
January 27, 2022
A dollar store find. Near future SF. two young computer geeks/hackers meet at MIT. One goes a nefarious route, the other goes into government employ. But a career ending move throws our civic minded hacker into private industry, while our neferious dude becomes very prosperous pursuing various nefarious hacking schemes. The two find themselves in direct completion, figurtively wrestling over control of space mined ore being dropped into earth's ocean for further processing. A decent story action packed with very believable near future technology.
August 4, 2015
A rollicking good SF adventure story set in the very near future.
When I saw that this involved Space Piracy, I had visions of space battles, landing teams shooting things out with scrappy defenders, and so on. But, pardon the pun, this is more grounded. On earth, a team of hackers and engineers take over satellites. While not as intrinsically exciting, it's a lot easier to wrap your head around (and a little less standard fare).
Instead, the action comes from two fronts: 1. on Earth, with guns, etc. and 2. where it counts -- with people. It's watching Schwartz squirm under the thumb of his employers, try to weasel out of repercussions of his actions; or seeing Santiago try to deal with the new realities of her career, or her efforts to find a way to capture Schwartz while keeping said career. It's also the explosions, guns, knives and hand-to-hand combat that surround these two.
Cambias keeps things light and steady moving. His style is engaging, he makes you care about both the good guys and the bad -- well, most of the bad. Not the really bad guys. There's some good action, decent characters, the requisite amount of twists and turns -- a splash or two of suspense. Corsair's technical enough to believe that it's feasible, but not enough that anyone would confuse it with realistic -- or a Clancy novel.
It's a good, solid, entertaining read -- not the best SF I've read this year -- or even in the last month -- but it did its job, and I was satisfied with it. I'll keep an eye out of more from Cambias.
When I saw that this involved Space Piracy, I had visions of space battles, landing teams shooting things out with scrappy defenders, and so on. But, pardon the pun, this is more grounded. On earth, a team of hackers and engineers take over satellites. While not as intrinsically exciting, it's a lot easier to wrap your head around (and a little less standard fare).
Instead, the action comes from two fronts: 1. on Earth, with guns, etc. and 2. where it counts -- with people. It's watching Schwartz squirm under the thumb of his employers, try to weasel out of repercussions of his actions; or seeing Santiago try to deal with the new realities of her career, or her efforts to find a way to capture Schwartz while keeping said career. It's also the explosions, guns, knives and hand-to-hand combat that surround these two.
Cambias keeps things light and steady moving. His style is engaging, he makes you care about both the good guys and the bad -- well, most of the bad. Not the really bad guys. There's some good action, decent characters, the requisite amount of twists and turns -- a splash or two of suspense. Corsair's technical enough to believe that it's feasible, but not enough that anyone would confuse it with realistic -- or a Clancy novel.
It's a good, solid, entertaining read -- not the best SF I've read this year -- or even in the last month -- but it did its job, and I was satisfied with it. I'll keep an eye out of more from Cambias.
February 11, 2016
Stuck in a waiting room? While everyone else is watching looped infomercials on invisalign braces or high blood pressure, grab a copy of Corsair and enjoy a fun read that will make you forget where you are. No, it's not deep - but it has great action, multi-level intrigue, cat and mouse wars, and near future scenarios (2020-2032)that keep the imagination alive and the desire to see-what's-next turning the pages. The future still has McDonalds, Westinghouse, Coca-Cola and Lockheed Martin - but also robotic mining on the moon, billion dollar helium payloads, and space pirates. Each character proceeds tunnel-visioned into pursuits that send them headlong into each others lives. The women characters stand on their own, which is a nice surprise. The bad guys are kinda funny (and creepy in their remove from decent reality). I found myself rooting for the thief, amoral as he was. One of those action-packed stories that would have you munching popcorn happily while seeing it at the movies.
December 25, 2020
A few authors follow a great first novel with an ever better second one. Cambias is in that rarefied territory. Corsair has all the hard science of the first book, but is way more fun. It's all about a space pirate hijacking shipments of Helium3 from the moon. He thinks he's the biggest badass ever to hack the supposedly unhackable and mostly he is. You'll love Captain Black the Space Pirate and his equally geeky GF, an Air Force captain. Cambias has a gift for the well-turned phrase, but no spoilers. This is good old-fashioned space opera and you could use some of that right now.
Read
February 15, 2020This is just not doing it for me, DNF at about 40%. It's not bad, but for me it did not feel as high-paced and exciting as a lot of people are making it sound and it was a lot more juvenile than I expected (and liked). If you like snarky people and high-tech heists then you will probably like this book.
Shelved as 'unfinished-reads'
June 21, 2015Considering how much I love Firefly, I'm not at all sure why I continue to struggle with books about space pirates. Some of it might just be my generally not liking stories along those lines, but this, while well-written and well-paced, failed to grab me. Just not my cup of tea.
December 26, 2021
Recent Reads: Corsair. James Cambias' near future space piracy novel is post-Musk rocketry SF. Cheap launches mean money in disrupting traffic of resources from Moon to Earth. In a battle of hackers and satellites, organised crime has plans. It's time to fight back. Recommended.
March 27, 2015
Reviewed for RT Book Reviews May 2015 issue:
July 16, 2017
It’s the early 2020 and people are starting to harvest helium from the moon, we follow a series of characters, one of them is a space pirate and the other is determined to capture the space pirate. I picked this up at a book sale and thought the premise was interesting. I was really excited to read this, I went in expecting epic fight scenes, witty remarks, fantastic world building but unfortunately, I was met with none of those.
There were a few problems that stopped me from fully enjoying this book, one of them is the writing style. This is the first time I’ve read his book so I’m not quite sure if his other books ae written this way. This book is written in the third person point of view and constantly switches between characters, both minor and major. I’m usually okay with multiple point of views but the problem with Corsair is that the point of views are too short and sometimes unnecessary. I was pulled out of the book because of that and it made it easy to put down. I felt that the characters needed some work because some of the dialogues were cliché and their actions sometimes seem predictable or made no sense. The characters were shallow and sometimes they spoke like children, other times like adults, which was really confusing to read.
The author’s writing style is also a lot of telling not showing, which left readers no room for their own imagination. This is, however, my personal preference as a writing style like this isn’t a bad thing. The author also uses a plethora of technical terms, sometimes I gained some knowledge from it, other times I had absolutely no clue what they were talking about. So for someone who is not well versed in science and robotics, it was tough to read.
All in all, the premise was definitely interesting, the author certainly has a flair for imagination, but it lacked execution, otherwise, it would have been a perfect read.
There were a few problems that stopped me from fully enjoying this book, one of them is the writing style. This is the first time I’ve read his book so I’m not quite sure if his other books ae written this way. This book is written in the third person point of view and constantly switches between characters, both minor and major. I’m usually okay with multiple point of views but the problem with Corsair is that the point of views are too short and sometimes unnecessary. I was pulled out of the book because of that and it made it easy to put down. I felt that the characters needed some work because some of the dialogues were cliché and their actions sometimes seem predictable or made no sense. The characters were shallow and sometimes they spoke like children, other times like adults, which was really confusing to read.
The author’s writing style is also a lot of telling not showing, which left readers no room for their own imagination. This is, however, my personal preference as a writing style like this isn’t a bad thing. The author also uses a plethora of technical terms, sometimes I gained some knowledge from it, other times I had absolutely no clue what they were talking about. So for someone who is not well versed in science and robotics, it was tough to read.
All in all, the premise was definitely interesting, the author certainly has a flair for imagination, but it lacked execution, otherwise, it would have been a perfect read.
September 25, 2022
5/5 a favorite
Finished 100%
A fantastic science fiction short story. The science is harder than most, even while leaning on hacking, and is an important part of the story. The story and characters are short, sweet, and high-quality.
Disclaimer: My ratings reflect my enjoyment of the book unless stated otherwise. The scale from 1 through 5 is disliked, okay, liked, greatly liked, and loved. The scale is not set with 3 as 'okay' because preserving a normal distribution and "using the whole scale" while reviewing is more important to me than aesthetics (also Å·±¦ÓéÀÖ recommends this scale).
Characters: 4/5 really liked
The novel follows several main characters whose stories intertwine later on. They are all varied and easily identifiable based on what they say and do. I liked Captain Black. Note that my opinion for this review on 2022-09-24 is colored, as I am coming out of a dark period of several months of reading translated webnovels with atrocious writing and characters.
World: 2/5 okay
It was fine. While being set in the modern world, there was nothing blatantly illogical nor annoying. There were some aspects of events that were questionable, but they did not detract from the overall experience. The science is not revolutionary and is not the focus.
Story: 3/5 liked
I liked it. It was nice. There was action, adventure, drama, and it was all done well. The ending was good. Overall this was a very nice book.
Finished 100%
A fantastic science fiction short story. The science is harder than most, even while leaning on hacking, and is an important part of the story. The story and characters are short, sweet, and high-quality.
Disclaimer: My ratings reflect my enjoyment of the book unless stated otherwise. The scale from 1 through 5 is disliked, okay, liked, greatly liked, and loved. The scale is not set with 3 as 'okay' because preserving a normal distribution and "using the whole scale" while reviewing is more important to me than aesthetics (also Å·±¦ÓéÀÖ recommends this scale).
Characters: 4/5 really liked
The novel follows several main characters whose stories intertwine later on. They are all varied and easily identifiable based on what they say and do. I liked Captain Black. Note that my opinion for this review on 2022-09-24 is colored, as I am coming out of a dark period of several months of reading translated webnovels with atrocious writing and characters.
World: 2/5 okay
It was fine. While being set in the modern world, there was nothing blatantly illogical nor annoying. There were some aspects of events that were questionable, but they did not detract from the overall experience. The science is not revolutionary and is not the focus.
Story: 3/5 liked
I liked it. It was nice. There was action, adventure, drama, and it was all done well. The ending was good. Overall this was a very nice book.
November 20, 2018
I have unresolved feelings regarding piracy which Cambias agitated.
I did an intensive study of piracy at the university: it impacts international commerce even to this day (20 Nov., 2018), which is a little further in the future.
My interest was not directly in liquor or import/export of guns or prescription medication, just to see how this story ran! By the way, the link for shipping internationally here is .
I must have given away the pirated animanga that I had in the past, due to my not knowing where it is right now. (I believe I had more pirated than what I got from proper retailers due to it being cheaper.)
To me, it makes more sense to pay taxes, since you get something back eventually, such as better infrastructure and more college grants. However, if you don't want to, it is your choice, as well. I am not holding a gun to your head.
I did an intensive study of piracy at the university: it impacts international commerce even to this day (20 Nov., 2018), which is a little further in the future.
My interest was not directly in liquor or import/export of guns or prescription medication, just to see how this story ran! By the way, the link for shipping internationally here is .
I must have given away the pirated animanga that I had in the past, due to my not knowing where it is right now. (I believe I had more pirated than what I got from proper retailers due to it being cheaper.)
To me, it makes more sense to pay taxes, since you get something back eventually, such as better infrastructure and more college grants. However, if you don't want to, it is your choice, as well. I am not holding a gun to your head.
June 16, 2020
Overall, quite an engaging book. Well-paced, well-executed, and funny. Reads a bit like a script for an effective (albeit forgettable) action flick. Overall, a thoroughly enjoyable, quick read.
I had two issues with the book. The minor one is that the book didn't really delve deeply into the topics it could have, especially around the implications of relatively simple space travel, etc. On the contrary, it was too cliche, using tropes from 80s Hollywood films (everyone suddenly knows how to duck when they're being shot at, the protagonist makes the most pivotal decision in the book to save her boyfriend and not because a huge part of the global economy and well-being is at stake - really?!). The more serious issue is the banal sexism - from the protagonist warning someone not to mess with her because she hasn't had sex and is about to be on her period (which really doesn't even make sense, btw), to pervasive sexualisation of every single (!) female character in the book. Shame - easy things to fix and address, without making the book less effective.
I had two issues with the book. The minor one is that the book didn't really delve deeply into the topics it could have, especially around the implications of relatively simple space travel, etc. On the contrary, it was too cliche, using tropes from 80s Hollywood films (everyone suddenly knows how to duck when they're being shot at, the protagonist makes the most pivotal decision in the book to save her boyfriend and not because a huge part of the global economy and well-being is at stake - really?!). The more serious issue is the banal sexism - from the protagonist warning someone not to mess with her because she hasn't had sex and is about to be on her period (which really doesn't even make sense, btw), to pervasive sexualisation of every single (!) female character in the book. Shame - easy things to fix and address, without making the book less effective.
January 2, 2024
This book is terrible. It's written like bad fanficion. All the women are interchangeable and are nags and get jealous of other women. The women are also only there to further the plot of men.
The main self insert is a piece of trash that supports pedophilia and is a misogynist. (Thinks calling a man a "woman" is an insult.
Speaking of pedophilia, Cambias seems to love it as well. All the people to call it out in the book are women who are nags which means we should dismiss their views. And David doesn't care which is the attitude we are supposed to side with. One of the women ends up with some old dude in the end because it seems that Cambias is the type that like to prey on women around 18-20 instead of saying in his own age group.
It's a really gross book with the most boring plot around. Really REALLY lowers my opinion of TOR as a publisher. Scalzi also seems to love this book, and I was waffling on him as well so I'm just gonna toss him into the "like pedophilia" pile.
The main self insert is a piece of trash that supports pedophilia and is a misogynist. (Thinks calling a man a "woman" is an insult.
Speaking of pedophilia, Cambias seems to love it as well. All the people to call it out in the book are women who are nags which means we should dismiss their views. And David doesn't care which is the attitude we are supposed to side with. One of the women ends up with some old dude in the end because it seems that Cambias is the type that like to prey on women around 18-20 instead of saying in his own age group.
It's a really gross book with the most boring plot around. Really REALLY lowers my opinion of TOR as a publisher. Scalzi also seems to love this book, and I was waffling on him as well so I'm just gonna toss him into the "like pedophilia" pile.
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