Disclaimer:
I follow this author on youtube and got this book for free on his website . I do not know the author personally, but I was predisposed to liking the book as I enjoy his content on other platforms.

Link to my philosophy on reviewing books.

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Overall Thoughts:

Overall this book was a fun campy sci-fi adventure. You really have to suspend a lot of disbelief on the science front to enjoy this book, but if you can do that, it's a good read. This gave me huge Star Trek the Original Series meets Doctor Who vibes. The main character is earnest, and easy to love. The morality is a bit more black and white than what I usually enjoy, but grounding my expectations in the realm of campy sci-fi, I was able to let that slide. The world building is interesting if you ignore science. I really enjoyed the blending of common sci-fi tropes with modern tech. The main character flies through space for his day job, but his mom still has a landline phone. The settings were well thought out and I was able to easily visualize them.

Deeper Dive:

My biggest complaint about this book was that it felt disjointed. It's fairly short, but there were three distinct parts to the story, and they didn't blend together well. Particularly near the middle, there is a large plot point that comes out of nowhere and doesn't seem to have any bearing on the rest of the story. The first third and the last third make sense together, but there is an intermission that doesn't really land for me and interrupts the flow of the action.

There are some cheesy scenes in here, both cheesy dialog and action. For me, this went along with the campy flavor of the book, but readers who can't stomach cringy dialog might want to pass on this one.

There is also some heavy leaning on the 'evil race is evil and does evil things' trope in this book. This again calls back to the black and white morality issues. The book has a tight point of view focused on one character. It's easy enough for me to hand wave this as the character's perspective, but it was a bit overblow at times. I think it can be bundled into the campy nature of the story, but it was present throughout and got a bit uncomfortable in some places.

This is the first book in a series. It does read like a complete story. It doesn't necessarily lead me into the next book very cleanly. I don't know if I'll continue with the series, but I will read more by the author.