In Fury Born - David Weber

GoodReads Summary: Imperial Intelligence couldn't find them, the Imperial Fleet couldn't catch them, and local defenses couldn't stop them. It seemed the planet-wrecking pirates were invincible. But they made a big mistake when they raided ex-commando leader Alicia DeVries' quiet home work, tortured and murdered her family, and then left her for dead. Alicia decided to turn "pirate" herself, and stole a cutting-edge AI ship from the Empire to start her vendetta. Her fellow veterans think she's gone crazy, the Imperial Fleet has shoot-on-sight orders. And of course the pirates want her dead, too. But Alicia DeVries has two allies nobody knows about, allies as implacable as she is: a self-aware computer, and a creature from the mists of Old Earth's most ancient legends. And this trio of furies won't rest until vengeance is served.

• (--) The beginning of the book puts a lot of backstory, all in the wrong places: You're in the middle of a conversation, the conversation stops, a lot of stuff is thrown at your face and... the conversation just continues. Where did you stop? What where they were discussing?
• (--) In between backstories, there is a bunch of characters. Characters and more characters are thrown in the story, perform something small, disappear for a while, and suddenly appear again and who the heck was that? Did they mentioned them before? Worse, some names are so close you don't even know if it is a new character or an old one.
• (-) The first battles are too long and provide nothing about the future.
• (--) I don't have a problem with mixing scifi with fantasy, but you have to build an universe for that (sad to say, but something akin to "Bright"), but when you suddenly add a Greek spirit... everything seems to fall apart.
• (+) Some points are really well constructed. For example, there is a discussion between three characters and you don't need descriptions to know who's talking; their tone and words make things clear.
• (=) The pacing only gets convincing the end, when everything is done.

Honestly, it could be a good story, if the spirit was removed, the backstories cleaned out, some stuff that doesn't affect anything in the long run (pointing that they happened, with short summary would suffice) and make it shorter would be a real improvement.