This novel really grows on you the more you read it. The characters are skilfully developed as is the interplay of their relationships set against the turbulent background. The apparent villain of the piece evolves into a dark hero in this very well worked out plot. I really enjoyed it, which is all the more remarkable as I am not generally, a fan of Sci-fi. Looking forward to this author's next oeuvre !

A really good story on its own, absorbing right to the end. Also with an interesting set of alien cultures and hooks for things to come. Now just need to wait for the next one...

Brilliant, intriguing, with lots of splendid action, leaving me wanting to read the next book by Max Nowaz.

The Arbitrator by Max Nowaz reads like it was written by someone whose entire understanding of women comes from pornography and resentment. Jim Brown is pitched as a complex antihero, but he's really just a power fantasy for men who think "alpha male" is a personality type -- a drug-addled brute who gleefully rapes his way through the plot and is somehow rewarded with a redemption arc anyway. The women exist solely to be brutalised, seduced, or to plead with Brown for mercy. When Gina arrives to beg for the lives of her father and fiance, the "bargain" she strikes is exactly the one you'd expect from writing this transparently misogynistic. Every female character is either a victim or a prize. None of them are people. The prose itself is no salvation. It stumbles from scene to scene with all the grace of a man falling down stairs, cluttered with pointless description, dead-end subplots, and dialogue that exists purely to explain things the narrative couldn't be bothered to show. Sentences bloat with unnecessary words, then collapse under their own weight. Nothing is earned, nothing lands. It reads like a first draft that was never revised, just decorated with the occasional overwrought metaphor and shipped. Nowaz seems to believe that depicting sexual violence with breathless enthusiasm and wrapping it in clumsy, meandering prose makes his story "dark" and "mature." It doesn't. It makes it read like incel fan fiction with a sci-fi coat of paint and the literary finesse of a terms and conditions page. Avoid.