Terminal Alliance, the first book in Jim C Hines’ new Janitors of the Post-Apocalypse series, can be summed up in one word: fun. It’s a humorous take on military science fiction, a departure from his previous fantasy novels. I’ve read Hines’ rather excellent Magic Ex Libris series so seeing him turn his hand to my genre of choice was great news. However, there is always the question when an author deliberately adds in humour of whether it complements the story or just gets in the way. Fortunately, Terminal Alliance falls into the former category, though not without a few bumps along the road.
In his hilarious new sci-fi series, Jim C. Hines introduces the unlikely heroes that may just save the galaxy: a crew of space janitors.
The Krakau came to Earth to invite humanity into a growing alliance of sentient species. However, they happened to arrive after a mutated plague wiped out half the planet, turned the rest into shambling, near-unstoppable animals, and basically destroyed human civilization. You know–your standard apocalypse.
The Krakau’s first impulse was to turn around and go home. (After all, it’s hard to have diplomatic relations with mindless savages who eat your diplomats.) Their second impulse was to try to fix us. Now, a century later, human beings might not be what they once were, but at least they’re no longer trying to eat everyone. Mostly.
Marion “Mops” Adamopoulos is surprisingly bright (for a human). As a Lieutenant on the Earth Mercenary Corps Ship Pufferfish, she’s in charge of the Shipboard Hygiene and Sanitation team. When a bioweapon attack wipes out the Krakau command crew and reverts the rest of the humans to their feral state, only Mops and her team are left with their minds intact.
Escaping the attacking aliens–not to mention her shambling crewmates–is only the beginning. Sure, Mops and her team of space janitors and plumbers can clean the ship as well as anyone, but flying the damn thing is another matter.
As they struggle to keep the Pufferfish functioning and find a cure for their crew, they stumble onto a conspiracy that could threaten the entire alliance… a conspiracy born from the truth of what happened on Earth all those years ago.
The early chapters in Terminal Alliance follow Marion ‘Mops’ Adamopoulos and her team of janitors as they clean up, repair, and maintain the Pufferfish from all the nasty incidents and accidents of day-today shipboard life. It’s when the Pufferfish docks with a rescued carrier that things go wrong: the Krakau command crew are left mysteriously dead and the rest of the humans aboard have reverted to a feral state. With nobody to turn to, Mops and her misfit team have to somehow secure the crew and take command of the ship, a ship not designed for anyone but the ruling Krakau to control. With the help of an old Krakau commander, and despite harsh orders to deal with the feral humans, Mops manages to put some pieces of a puzzle together and they make their way to a neutral space station to find out more…
Now, I liked Mops as a character, as well as her rag-tag janitorial crew, but I found the story to be initially somewhat lacking. It was interesting, and the idea of feral humans ‘cured’ by an alien species and then used as an indentured workforce was definitely something I wanted to read more about, as was the plague that affected Earth in the first place. But the explanations and detail were thin on the ground. Hines does tackle this throughout the story, letting us know little bits of information here and there, but as it’s also something that is central to the story he can’t give too much away too early. It’s another balancing act that Terminal Alliance carries out, though one that can often be more annoying than rewarding.
I must admit to being a little slow on the uptake when I started Terminal Alliance. Hines throws the reader in at the deep end and you have to build the picture of the galactic situation as the pages and chapters pass. On one hand it’s very frustrating to have this many questions early on about the history of the world, yet on the other hand it works perfectly as a way to encourage you to keep on reading. It’s unfortunate that it takes so long for things to really get going, but by the time you hit the halfway mark it’s full steam ahead and, if anything, it means you’ll want to keep on turning those pages even more.
I do love some good, funny science fiction, yet I find there is a fine line that needs to be walked carefully. Hines does pull it off with Terminal Alliance, giving the reader something that is both funny and serious, poking fun at established tropes yet using them well throughout the story. Whilst the slow first half can feel like a grind, the payoff in the second half makes it worth the perseverance. Entertaining and amusing in equal measure, there’s enough love for the genre seeping through the narrative to make this worth your time. Roll on the sequel.
Publisher: DAW
Author: Jim C Hines
November 2017, 358 Pages
Hardcover, ISBN: 9780756412746
Review copy received from the publisher
© 2018 Mark Chitty | @chitman13
