Will Save the Galaxy for Food by Yahtzee Croshaw
Like many, I know the name Yahtzee Croshaw from the “Zero Punctuation” game review videos he did for The Escapist. These were hilarious, manic, irreverent flash animations that appealed even to those of us who don’t much care for video games. Fortunately, this audio book was narrated by the author, so I got the same cheeky sardonic humor.
This book was a lot of fun. The main character is an out-of-work star pilot who, like most of the others of his kind, has had a rough time of it since quantunneling made star piloting obsolete. So he hires tourists to take them out “into the black” and recount legends of his star piloting days back when he used to rescue planets from evil masterminds and explore brave new worlds. A woman named Worden offers him a job, and desperate for cash, he takes it. Too late he realizes that he’s now required to pretend to be Jacques McKeown, the author who ripped off all the stories of the star pilots, pretending they were his own. The main character and all his star pilot buddies hate Jacques McKeown and have only spared McKeown his life because no one knew who he was. So all his friends have turned on him.
The narrator, now known as McKeown are supposed to take the spoiled rich son of an evil Terran multi-billionaire out for his own adventure, but things happen at every turn. Worden decides to take over the ship. They encounter hostile aliens. They get kidnapped by pirates and McKeown meets his hero. Everyone betrays everyone and nothing is quite as it seems. I haven’t had this much fun in a space romp since the Stainless Steel Rat series. I liked the main character, and I liked Jemimah well enough, but let’s be honest, this is science fiction popcorn. No one really grows or changes as a character, with the possible exception of McKeown. It’s tightly plotted and there are twists and turns galore, but they’re not exactly deep. It’s a funny, tightly-plotted space romp. That’s what it’s billed as, and that’s exactly what you get.
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