Space Team: A Comedic Sci-Fi Adventure by Barry J. Hutchison

Space Team is a series of novels that were recommended to me and I’ll be honest – I wasn’t completely sold by the cover but the reviews were good. So I thought I would give the first book a go. The next day, after finishing it, I bought the other 8 books in the series and then immediately started book 2. Space Team is great fun and very, very readable.

The protagonist is Cal Carver, a low-level con man and trickster who ends up, through various shenanigans, as the captain of the spaceship Shatner (named after the legendary human space warrior). His crew are a huge cyborg, a sort of horny wolf-girl, a hot blue alien chick, and a green blob that can shapeshift. They are hired by the ruler of a lot of the galaxy to go on a dangerous mission and, well, things go majorly tits up.

I know it doesn’t sound like it will tackle particularly deep scifi concepts. And it doesn’t (although some of the later books get deeper and look at parallel universes and so on). Where Space Team shines is the fact that it is genuinely funny without getting stupid. It is well written and incredibly entertaining with great characters. Cal has the wit of Deadpool mixed with Zaphod Beeblebrox and the situations and adventures are consistently exciting.

I have been reading some pretty epic and colossal books recently and the light yet fun enjoyment of reading Space Team was exactly what I wanted. The fact I immediately started book two shows how much I liked the series. It was a bit like bingeing something on Netflix – Just. One. More.

As you can probably tell I really liked Space Team! I had never heard of Barry J. Hutchison before but he is actually quite an accomplished writer. I have since bought a lot more of his stuff. If you want light-hearted and funny space adventure, you should definitely check it out.