When I was eleven I read Alanna: The First Adventure for the first of what would turn out to be many, many times. It was no coincidence that also aged eleven I had an epiphany. The epiphany was as follows: girls can be badasses, too. (Well, maybe the wording was slightly different - I was eleven - but you get the gist). 
 Alanna showed me that girls can swear and fight and do anything a boy can do - and if she works very, very hard, she might be able to do any of those things better than anyone else. That's why, fifteen years later, any novel that features a lady showing the boys how it's done gets my instant and immediate approval. It's a message that a lot of girls need, whether those girls are eleven or twenty-six or fifty-five or... you see where I'm going with this. 
 Fortune's Pawn got my instant and immediate approval. 
 This does not mean I thought the book was perfect. It doesn't even mean that I loved the gun toting, stubborn, sometimes idiotic, shoot-first-ask-questions-later heroine as much as Alanna. But I was appreciative straight away. 
 The badass in question is Devi Morris. Devi is a hard headed, hard muscled mercenary with her sights set on becoming one of the highest ranking soldiers that exists on her planet of Paradox. Trouble is, to become one of these Devastators requires skill, decoration and a lot of experience. The first two she's got in droves. The third is questionable. So she does what any ambitious soldier would do and gets a job on a supposedly cursed ship with a reputation for going through hired security like tissue paper. 
 Devi is tough and brutal and she takes no prisoners. She's a bit flirtatious, and she ignores superiors sometimes. She's ambitious and unapologetic. In this first novel, there's a few hints of a softer side and an interesting backstory but the emphasis is most definitely placed on how much of a hard ass she can be. This is not necessarily a bad thing, because it allows moments such as this: 
 "Don't think for one second you can tell me what I want," I said, my voice shaking with anger and frustrated passion. "Don't you dare assume you can tell me what I think. I'm my own person, I make my decisions. I'm the only one who knows what I want." My eyes narrowed. "And I fight to get it." 
 Did that send anyone else weak at the knees? 
 The other characters are unfortunately less rounded than Devi. I'm certainly interested in more than one - the terrifying Xenomorph-like Hyrek; the creepy waifish Captain's daughter, Ren; but there's very little substance to them in this novel. I hope it's because it's the first in the trilogy. 
 But it's easy to see why the secondary characters take the back seat. From page one, it's all go. It's a classic space opera with exciting battles, a lot of explosions, romance, betrayal, invisible monsters- even a time honored exploration of a creepy ghost ship which reeks of possible scary aliens that might jump out of the dark at our heroine at any moment. Suffice to say, it's a hard one to put down. And the finale. The smart thing to do would be to buy the trilogy all in one go, because this DEMANDS to be continued as soon as humanly possible. 
 Read it for the fun, the action, the cool soldier girl who beats up someone twice her size without breaking a sweat. Just don't go in expecting something very character led like The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet. So long as you're willing to be swept up in the tidal wave of explosions and punching and WTF-moments, you'll have a terrific time.