Book Review: Starship Grifters by: Robert Kroese
I rated this book four out of five stars.
What a fun read, I was laughing on out loud on page two. This book is full of humor, and the authors comedic range is impressive. What made it even more fun was a nice adventure story to go with it.
What I liked:
1) The comedy, hands down one of the best comedies I have had the pleasure of reading in recent years. Kroese does not hold back and uses everything from play on words, ridiculous situations, character banter, slapstick, and irony. The book is equated to The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy, and I agree. Some of the situational humor was better, and so well constructed it reminded me of comedic playwright Neil Simon.
2) The characters were well defined, crazy but still relatable. I liked how we are given opinions about Rex, but allowed to draw our own ideas about him. I thought it was a great choice to not construct the narrative through his point of view.
3) I was so pleased to see the author treating me the reader as smart. We are given details about what is relevant and the narrator routinely breaks the fourth wall, which I enjoyed. The exposition narrative about creatures, places, and things were kept short with enough information to picture what is taking place. There were no dog trails or irrelevant information tempting me to skip down the page.
There was only one thing that bothered me, the authors injections of religious, or I should say anti-religious philosophies. I wont even say I didn’t like it, it was just distracting. While I was reading these things took me out of the story. While I tolerated this, it really felt like the author was exerting his own opinions since they were put forth in such a way they did not flow with the comedic theme in the book. Some were postured as jokes, but others were clearly not.
