Willful Child
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4.3 • 7 Ratings
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- £0.99
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- £0.99
Publisher Description
These are the voyages of the starship, A.S.F. Willful Child. Its ongoing mission: to seek out strange new worlds on which to plant the Terran flag, to subjugate and if necessary obliterate new life life-forms, to boldly blow the...
And so we join the not-terribly-bright but exceedingly cock-sure Captain Hadrian Sawback - think James T Kirk crossed with ‘American Dad' - and his motley crew on board the Starship Willful Child for a series of devil-may-care, near-calamitous and downright chaotic adventures through ‘the infinite vastness of interstellar space’...
The bestselling author of the acclaimed Malazan Book of the Fallen sequence has taken a life-long passion for 'Star Trek' and transformed it into a hugely entertaining spoof on the whole mankind-exploring-space-for-the-good-of-all-species-but-trashing-stuff-with-a-lot-of-hi-tech-kit-along-the-way type over-blown science fiction adventure. The result is smart. inventive, occasionally OTT and often very funny - a novel that both deftly parodies the genre and pays fond homage to it.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Bestselling fantasy writer Erikson (the Malazan Book of the Fallen series) takes a break from gritty epic fantasy to deliver this heavy-handed Star Trek parody. Capt. Hadrian Alan Sawback, commander of the Terran Space Fleet starship Willful Child, is pugnacious and perpetually one half-step away from a sexual harassment suit. His ship's ongoing mission is "hairy, fraught, and on occasion insanely dangerous," a good match for a captain who can't abide the "hell of routine." When a rogue AI named Tammy commandeers the Willful Child's computers, Sawback and crew dive headlong into adventures beyond the Known Rim, encountering officially designated "Strange New Worlds" replete with vaguely Greek looking ruins, mysterious portals, Muppet-like aliens, and even a super-chicken soldier in a mechanized battle suit. After decades of humorous commentary on Star Trek, most recently John Scalzi's award-winning Redshirts, Sawback and his crew come very late to the party. That tardiness, coupled with heavy-handed plotting and thinly sketched characters, make this feel more like a parody of parodies (particularly Futurama's egomaniacal Captain "Zap" Brannigan) than a satire of the show itself.
Customer Reviews
Excellent change of topic
I have read all the other books and delighted in the this book with a clever premise, a strong main character and good plotting.
Not Good!
I've read all of Eriksons books, and this is the first one I've ever thought of putting down, I stuck with it hoping that it would improve, but it didn't! Very poor show!