Lex Talionis

Lex Talionis, R.S.A. Garcia, Dragonwell Publishing, 2014

A young woman is brought into a spaceport hospital, having been brutally beaten and sexually assaulted. She also has amnesia. All she remembers is Lex Talionis - The Law of Revenge. She also seems to have acquired an alien creature called an oux, rescued from an interstellar zoo, and who physically heals her, almost instantly. Colin, the doctor who runs the clinic, tries very hard to not fall in love with her, but does not succeed. After several weeks, she regains her memory.

She is Shalon Conway, heir to Conway Enterprises, and niece to Gilene Conway, the most powerful woman in the galaxy. Shalon's parents died in a spaceship crash when Shalon was a child, and, publicly, Shalon also died in that crash.

Shalon has been a senior commander in an interplanetary war. After winning a war against A Conway Enterprises subsidiary, former allies became enemies. She is going to another planet in a ship full of Troopers (the interstellar police), arranged by another senior commander. What she doesn't know is that, because she is a Conway, her actual fate is to become someone's sex slave. The crew of the spaceship are in it just for the money, so they decide to "sample" her before delivery. That is when she is repeatedly sexually assaulted. Things go very badly for the crew; Shalon gets her revenge.

Shalon knows that publicly announcing that she is alive is a very bad idea; Aunt Gilene would make sure that she suffers an untimely demise, so Shalon takes her time. How does she appropriately get back at Gilene Conway for killing her parents? Does the author leave room for Part 2?

For any author, this is an excellent novel. The fact that this is the author's debut novel brings it to the level of Wow. It has lots of good writing, and is very much recommended.