It's the 25th Century and the British Space Empire faces the gathering menace of the evil ant-soldiers of the Ghast hive, hell bent on galactic domination and the extermination of all humanoid life forms.

Captain Isambard Smith is the square-jawed, courageous and somewhat asinine new commander of the clapped out freighter John Pym, destined to take on the alien threat because nobody else is available.

Together with his bold crew – a skull-collecting alien lunatic, an android pilot who is actually a fugitive sex toy and a hamster called Gerald – he must collect new-age herbalist Rhianna Mitchell from the New Francisco orbiter and bring her back to the Empire in safety. Straightforward enough – except the Ghasts want her too and, in addition to a whole fleet of Ghast warships, Smith has to confront void sharks, a universe-weary android assassin and John Gilead, psychopathic naval officer from the fanatically religious Republic of Eden before facing his greatest enemy: a ruthless alien warlord with a very large behind...

Published
May 6, 2008

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Chronicles of Isambard Smith

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6/10

Space Captain Smith by Toby Frost.

I always like to say something good about a book before I point out the negative.
It has a nice cover and I was able to read more than a full chapter for free. Being not entirely impressed I was hoping for more than that in the rest of the book

Toby should look at the small piece where he introduced Paul Devrin there are a number of paragraphs where he develops this character that almost hooked me. If only he had done this with the main characters or any number of his sidekicks. Sadly he did not and it digressed quickly even with this more evil sounding character, Paul.

There are few books that I don't finish.
I must admit that I haven't gotten much farther than the available free part so I won't belabor any points. I can't give away plot points because there was only one that I sort of noticed here.

I'm one of those people who do not judge a book by its cover or the blurb on the back. Rarely do I read the blurb that might be in the front. What I do; is read the first chapter and if it doesn't grab me I don't take it home.

I tried to give this the benefit of the doubt but perhaps the humor has missed me and perhaps the development of the characters is tied to that humor.

Either way even had I think its a bit over priced for the e-book I put it down after the end of the third chapter.

It's likely just me but this just didn't do it for me.

The three stars if for that one bright light in the dark character of Paul Devrin.

J.L. Dobias

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