A Game of Battleships
is the fourth Space Captain Smith adventure, and sees the eponymous
hero once again accompanied by his lunatic friend Suruk the Slayer,
cowardly alcohol-enthusiast pilot Polly Carveth and love interest
space hippy Rhianna.
The British Space
Empire is seeking to sign a treaty so that the civilised races of the
galaxy can stand together against the deranged forces of Ghast, New
Edenites and Lemming-men. Unfortunately, the enemy has a seemingly
unstoppable new battleship and are rather keen to use it...
The style of comedy is,
as you would expect, in line with the first three books, and has many nods to the past and
British stereotypes. My favourite new addition was undoubtedly the
fairly brief appearance of a Hellfire space fighter's autopilot, who
has all the restraint and serenity of a Klingon on crack.
There are occasional
formatting issues (new paragraphs not indented) but these are minor
and infrequent.
Although the enemies
are not new, there is some new mockery of the EU and French, which
(as one might expect) I rather liked. The spawn of Suruk (check the
cover's lower left corner) are also a nice little addition.
It's an enjoyable read,
and if you liked the earlier instalments (reviews/interviews here)
then you'll like this. There will be at least one more Space Captain
Smith book.
Thaddeus
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