Review: Space Rogues

Space Rogues by John Wilker
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Fans of Farscape may be disappointed

The Epic Adventures of Wil Calder, Space Smuggler was okay. It seemed to be a mixed rip-off of several sci-fi shows, but most of the inspiration (a nice word for it) seemed to be Farscape. Basically, the book reads like Farscape fan fiction. A human astronaut ran into trouble testing an FTL drive and got lost in space only to be picked up by a ship of criminals. And the primary antagonists are the Peacekeepers, who are a corrupt mercenary policing force who fly around the galaxy in Peacekeeper carriers. Does it sound familiar yet?

However, just ripping off Farscape doesn't make it a bad book. Hell, I would love a good Farscape rip-off with all the same creative writing, witty dialog, and intricate world-building of the source material. However, this is not it. The writing is relatively simple, the characters are one-dimensional, the dialog is basic, the plot didn't come together smoothly. While I think the author intended there to be humor, I didn't find much of it funny or amusing. Perhaps this book was meant for a YA audience. Also, the majority of the book was written in the present tense, which just made the entire narrative sound weird. Who writes in the present tense?! But I did finish the book, so I can't say it was so bad that I had to give up. After getting through the entire thing, I can say it was just okay. Not good or great. But okay. There are six more books in this series, so maybe it gets better?

In the audio version of the book, KC Johnston matches the book's mediocrity with an okay performance. I've listened to other books narrated by Johnston that were better (both the book and the narration), so I know that he does better work. I think the narration suffered from some of the odd pacing, dialog, and present tense.

This audio was given to me free, and I voluntarily gave this review.

View all my reviews