Customer Reviews

Hal Spacejock 4: No Free Lunch

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(0)
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1 star:		(0)

 

 

The Hal Spacejock books are satirical action tales about a not-entirely-competent freighter pilot (Hal) and his too-serious robot partner (Clunk). I've reviewed the other three books in the series, and my sense all along has been that they're entertaining reads, but that the silliness was occasionally too strong for my taste. There would be scenes where the jokes felt like they interfered with the stories, or broke my suspension of disbelief. They're easy, enjoyable reads, but each time I ended up giving four stars out of five.

Hal 4, ironically, is a five-star book. Haynes has improved with each of his novels (which is exactly how it should work).

This time, Hal joins up with a young peace force officer on her first assignment, while also trying to deal with a rival freighter pilot. Hal makes an interesting deputy, and I was surprised at how well the romantic subplot between him and the peace officer worked. Naturally, the assignment leads them into all sorts of nastiness, and things roll along at a good clip. If you've read any SF at all, you'll probably figure out some of the mystery long before our investigators, but the book also threw in some twists I wasn't expecting.

This book works. The humor flows with the story, and the story is the most cohesive and engaging of all four books. At least one of the twists at the end did feel a bit too coincidental for me, but that was a minor thing. I won't tell you how it all wraps up, but it left me curious to read book five.

If you're curious, Haynes has also made the first Hal Spacejock book available as a free download at http://www.spacejock.com.au/Hal1Download.html