BOOK REVIEW | THE FOURTH CONSORT | EDWARD ASHTON
Description
A new, standalone SciFi from the author of Mickey7 (soon to be a major motion picture #Mickey17 from Bong Joon-Ho and starring Robert Pattison)!
Dalton Greaves is a hero. He’s one of humankind’s first representatives to Unity, a pan-species confederation working to bring all sentient life into a single benevolent brotherhood.
That’s what they told him, anyway. The only actual members of Unity that he’s ever met are Boreau, a giant snail who seems more interested in plunder than spreading love and harmony, and Boreau’s human sidekick, Neera, who Dalton strongly suspects roped him into this gig so that she wouldn’t become the next one of Boreau’s crew to get eaten by locals while prospecting.
Funny thing, though—turns out there actually is a benevolent confederation out there, working for the good of all life. They call themselves the Assembly, and they really don’t like Unity. More to the point, they really, really don’t like Unity’s new human minions.
When an encounter between Boreau’s scout ship and an Assembly cruiser over a newly discovered world ends badly for both parties, Dalton finds himself marooned, caught between a stickman, one of the Assembly’s nightmarish shock troops, the planet’s natives, who aren’t winning any congeniality prizes themselves, and Neera, who might actually be the most dangerous of the three. To survive, he’ll need to navigate palace intrigue, alien morality, and a proposal that he literally cannot refuse, all while making sure Neera doesn’t come to the conclusion that he’s worth more to her dead than alive.
REVIEW
The Fourth Consort is a first contact story in which a group of intrepid ambassadors from a group called The Unity are attempting to bring an alien race into the fold of a supposedly benevolent consortium of likeminded planets.
However, when their rivals The Assembly turn up on the scene, things go from bad to worse. In the midst of negotiations both ships of the representatives of the competing factions are destroyed, leaving them on an alien planet.
Two of the three representatives, Dalton Greaves, a human who has been employed by The Unity, and Breaker, a being commonly known as a stick man are taken to the city of the alien race. An insectoid type life form that resembles ants.
Whilst there, Dalton has to traverse the complex society, assassinations, strained relationships with the Unity’s enemies and being made consort to the queen.
This is a fun little sci fi adventure that moves at a fast pace from the very first page. We are thrown into the story almost immediately with absolutely no preamble and then join the characters as they attempt to survive whatever is thrown at them.
Whilst the book is generally good, the story never seems to move below surface level. There are no particular depths to the story and it is what it is. Similarly, the characters do not have much depth and can at times be a little one dimensional with hardly any reason for their motivations. However, Edward Ashton’s storytelling is good and the book is largely enjoyable.
On the whole, if you want an enjoyable story that throws plenty of adventure at the reader, this fulfils all those expectations. However, don’t go looking for anything deeper. That’s about all I have to say about it really, I enjoyed it but I wasn’t particularly over enthused about it.
A new, standalone SciFi from the author of Mickey7 (soon to be a major motion picture #Mickey17 from Bong Joon-Ho and starring Robert Pattison)!
Dalton Greaves is a hero. He’s one of humankind’s first representatives to Unity, a pan-species confederation working to bring all sentient life into a single benevolent brotherhood.
That’s what they told him, anyway. The only actual members of Unity that he’s ever met are Boreau, a giant snail who seems more interested in plunder than spreading love and harmony, and Boreau’s human sidekick, Neera, who Dalton strongly suspects roped him into this gig so that she wouldn’t become the next one of Boreau’s crew to get eaten by locals while prospecting.
Funny thing, though—turns out there actually is a benevolent confederation out there, working for the good of all life. They call themselves the Assembly, and they really don’t like Unity. More to the point, they really, really don’t like Unity’s new human minions.
When an encounter between Boreau’s scout ship and an Assembly cruiser over a newly discovered world ends badly for both parties, Dalton finds himself marooned, caught between a stickman, one of the Assembly’s nightmarish shock troops, the planet’s natives, who aren’t winning any congeniality prizes themselves, and Neera, who might actually be the most dangerous of the three. To survive, he’ll need to navigate palace intrigue, alien morality, and a proposal that he literally cannot refuse, all while making sure Neera doesn’t come to the conclusion that he’s worth more to her dead than alive.
REVIEW
The Fourth Consort is a first contact story in which a group of intrepid ambassadors from a group called The Unity are attempting to bring an alien race into the fold of a supposedly benevolent consortium of likeminded planets.
However, when their rivals The Assembly turn up on the scene, things go from bad to worse. In the midst of negotiations both ships of the representatives of the competing factions are destroyed, leaving them on an alien planet.
Two of the three representatives, Dalton Greaves, a human who has been employed by The Unity, and Breaker, a being commonly known as a stick man are taken to the city of the alien race. An insectoid type life form that resembles ants.
Whilst there, Dalton has to traverse the complex society, assassinations, strained relationships with the Unity’s enemies and being made consort to the queen.
This is a fun little sci fi adventure that moves at a fast pace from the very first page. We are thrown into the story almost immediately with absolutely no preamble and then join the characters as they attempt to survive whatever is thrown at them.
Whilst the book is generally good, the story never seems to move below surface level. There are no particular depths to the story and it is what it is. Similarly, the characters do not have much depth and can at times be a little one dimensional with hardly any reason for their motivations. However, Edward Ashton’s storytelling is good and the book is largely enjoyable.
On the whole, if you want an enjoyable story that throws plenty of adventure at the reader, this fulfils all those expectations. However, don’t go looking for anything deeper. That’s about all I have to say about it really, I enjoyed it but I wasn’t particularly over enthused about it.
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