SciFi/Fantasy Book Review: Terminal Alliance by Jim C Hines

SF/F Review: Terminal Alliance by Jim C Hines: https://t.co/fbzqltT217 Short Review: 8 out of 10 (1/3)

— garik16 (@garik16) November 16, 2017

Short Review (cont): A Space Opera meets Comedy tale featuring a bunch of human janitors, some of the last survivors of the human race, having to learn to fly a battleship and unravel a galactic conspiracy. Lot of fun. (2/3)

— garik16 (@garik16) November 16, 2017

As I've said before, sometimes one wants to read a book that is not interested in really deep questions as the core element of the plot, but one that is just plain fun.  Even one involving Toilet Humor.  Well, Terminal Alliance, if you couldn't tell by its series title: "Janitors of the Post-Apocalypse," is such a book.  That said, while the book is definitely on the "very silly" side of the scale, it manages to do so in a way that actually works really naturally, and never feels off as a result.  This is a humorous scifi book done extremely well, and it's easy to appreciate that once in a while.

One note before the jump: I listened to this as an e-audiobook from the library.  Despite my enjoyment of the book itself, the audiobook reader is NOT good - while her voices are solid for each of the characters, when she is reading general narration it tends to sound like the computer generated voices an old apple would speak on request and it was extremely jarring.  This book is worth a read, but the audiobook format is not really one I'd recommend as a result.

More after the Jump:

----------------------------------------------------Plot Summary-----------------------------------------------------
In the future, Humanity has basically destroyed itself by creating a virus that caused all humans on Earth to descend into little more than basically feral cavemen, and often cannibalistic feral cavemen.  However, the aliens known as the Krakau came to Earth and developed a cure for the virus, which they have been giving to humans at a slow rate, to try to reintroduce them into the galaxy.  In return, Humans form the core of the Krakau Alliance's military corp, as Humans are incredibly tough and hard to break, making them perfect warriors.

Lieutenant Marion "Mops" Adamopoulos is NOT one of these warriors.  Rather, she's the head of the maintenance/janitor crew on the EMC Pufferfish, a Krakau warship, and her team - consisting of second in command Marilyn Monroe ("Monroe"), Sanjeev Kumar ("Kumar"), Wolfgang "Wolf" Mozart, and the Glacidae technician Grom, are in charge of the upkeep of the ship, and not in fighting (humans named themselves after famous ancient humans in this future).   And then there's "Doc," Mop's wisecracking AI.

But when a dangerous bioweapon turns all of the human crew of the Pufferfish back into "ferals," except for the janitorial crew, it falls to Mops and her team of janitors to somehow use their talents to discover what really happened to her crew and who is responsible....and the investigation may lead to uncovering a galactic conspiracy.  Of course, that's if their team doesn't kill THEMSELVES first trying to learn how to operate a ship instead of janitorial tools....
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Terminal Alliance is a book filled with humor, but it really works because each of the characters is really well defined and developed.  Mops is the over-capable leader, but still one who cares about hygiene as well as doing what's right;  Monroe is the former soldier a bit haunted by his past, but who wants simply to be capable and helpful; Wolf is overly aggressive and always wants to fight as the default option; Kumar likes autopsies and science but is a clean freak; Grom grumbles a lot and likes their video games; etc.  These characters are fun to be with, which makes their adventures excellent.

The humor of this book often comes rapid fire and doesn't always work, but there are far more hits than misses in the jokes of the book (A recurring joke about an equivalent to Microsoft's "Clippie" is the biggest miss as it feels very dated).  You'd think seeing the characters always find solutions to their problems that involve their expert plumbing skills would be tiring, but Hines always manages to find inventive and often funny ways for these to work quite well.  And the interludes at the start of each chapter with humorous stories are often pretty funny. 

Really, if I had a problem with this book, it's that the one non-human non-AI member of the main crew, Grom, doesn't really get a motivation for staying with the team.  The rest of the team is working to save their human crew, but Grom stays with them even though they should have less incentive and all the drawbacks of joining with the team's actions.  Yet this is weirdly never addressed.  Again, this is a fun book and Grom is a fun character, but I kept waiting for someone to address this and no one ever did.

In short however, this is an extremely fun book, and while this is apparently the first in a trilogy, the book doesn't have a cliffhanger ending (some sequel hooks, but not a cliffhanger) and ends quite nicely.  I'll definitely be looking forward to book 2, just not as an audiobook.