Tony James Slater

I really didn’t expect this. The previous book, “Warden’s Vengeance” in the “Ancient Guardians” series wasn’t very good - the pacing was problematic, typos all over the place and the characters didn’t develop at all.

Along came “Warden’s Fate” and with it, the final instalment in the series, Tony is back! Gone are (most of the) typos, the characters actually make sense and get sufficient room to grow.

Back as well is Tony’s humour and good-natured kindness in his show more story. The action is still there and this book is another page-turner but the pacing is much more even and “rounded”. We actually get to enjoy the book, its scenes and people which is really, truly nice.

There are lots of good ideas, presented in an engaging, suspenseful way and, mostly, in actually really well-chosen words.

Especially important to me: Tony gets the emotions right this time - we really feel with Tris, Kyra, Lukas and everyone else.

Of course, this isn’t high literature and it doesn’t have to be because this book is over-the-top action, fun, and just great entertainment!

I pretty much enjoyed every page which makes this book, astoundingly, a full five stars read - and I don’t even like the Science Fiction genre!

As much as it surprises myself, I’m most likely to actually read this crew’s further adventures.


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Reading this book is a bit like trying to look away from a train wreck that is a very funny train wreck indeed. Slater volunteers to help at a wildlife rescue place on a remote farm in Ecuador, and the whole book is filled with him describing things I never want to do but loved reading about. Would I want to be bitten by a crocodile? Nearly electrocuted when touching electric fencing, on purpose? Slashed by an angry ocelet? Well, no, but Slater has a knack for comedic writing. A good feature show more of the kindle version is you can see photos of all the animals he writes about, photos available on his website too. As he reflects when heading back to London “I’d been bitten, clawed and mauled by more species of life than most people can name. Blinded, electrocuted and nearly shot.” Armed bandits on the farm, descriptions of his fellow volunteers and the enigmatic Johnny who owns the farm and has a passion for rescuing captive wildlife, and Slater’s lovely Ecuadorian girl friend named Lady round out the story. show less

This is the third book of the science fiction series “The Ancient Guardians” and – in a good way – it's more of the same compared to the two earlier books. But this book has a few things going for itself.

First and foremost, that’s its author, Tony Slater: I first learned about Tony when one of his books, the highly recommended “Kamikaze Kangaroos! 20,000 Miles Around Australia. One Van, Two Girls... And an Idiot” was free for a limited time on Amazon. Of course, it was the show more last part of the title that made me take it.

It was a hell of a ride – quite literally for Tony and metaphorically for me because Tony is not only a semi-insane traveller and writer but has a very decent sense of humour, never shy to make a joke on his own expense. Meanwhile, I’ve read every single book he has published and I ended up liking all of them!

Why? Because we're all a bit of Tony: He’s clumsy, does daft things during his travels, and has the most surreal accidents (a bear ate his pants...) I’ve ever read about. Tony being a nice guy, though, whom you wish to succeed: you hope for him when he meets his sister’s best friend, Roo, and likes her a lot, you cheer for him when they become a couple and you would have liked to congratulate them on their wedding day. And even if you’re Superman and, thus, Tony’s opposite, you can’t help but feel for him when he semi-fails again.

So, when Tony informed us about his writing a) a science fiction book, b) doing it to show his sister he can, and c) doing it in spite of never having written anything but his travel memoirs, I was sceptical. “Earth Warden” had a cheesy cover and a nice-enough but somewhat flimsy story – and yet it held promise.

“Warden's Folly”, the second volume, still featured the same kind of cover art but the protagonists were developing, the story grew in a good way and I actually really enjoyed it – despite not reading science fiction at all. In fact, I liked this book so much I asked Tony when the next volume, this book, would finally be published – and, just as I had hoped, Tony answered pretty quickly because he is a nice guy and very approachable.

I was not disappointed in this book: The story is pretty simple – Earth has been abandoned by its former inhabitants in favour of us – humanity as we know it. The Lantians (the (mostly) good guys) and the Lemurians (the (mostly) bad guys), said former inhabitants, were warring against each other and decided they both had to leave Earth to prevent its destruction. The Lantians founded the paramilitary order of the “Wardens” and from its ranks installed an Earth Warden to guard Earth.

For a long time everything’s fine but, of course, things eventually go south and Warden Lord Anakreon (Kreon), his friends Kyra and Blas need to pick up Tristan (Tris), Tony’s alter ego, up from Earth to follow into his father’s – Mikelatz, another famous Warden – footsteps and save the universe from the antagonists, especially the Black Ships whom we don’t really know (yet).

All of this is nothing out of the ordinary; what makes it special is Tony’s trademark tongue-in-cheek humour, the “classic” science fiction feeling that we know from stuff like “Star Wars” and his basic good-naturedness that resonates throughout the entire book and, actually, the series so far.

I do have one small gripe with this book specifically: It’s somewhat gorier than its predecessors and mostly needlessly so. I do get that Tris sometimes uses humour (““Rest in pieces,” he murmured.”) to deflect and mask his true feelings in front of his friends but the solution to tricking an iris scanner is rather tasteless. Some humour just falls flat for me but your mileage may vary, of course.



All in all, I recommend “The Ancient Guardians” to anyone who has read at least one of Tony’s travel book because if you like his style of writing and the hilarious stories in those, chances are good you’ll like his science fiction stuff as well.

If you’ve never heard of Tony, start with the afore-mentioned “Kamikaze Kangaroos” – my daughter enjoyed it so much, Tony & Roo, that her entire class at school got to learn about your adventures!



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The new year’s first review and, again, it’s a difficult one to write. In part because I did somewhat enjoy this latest instalment of “Ancient Guardians”. On the other hand, though, in spite of being a page-turner, I was constantly shifting between liking and hating this book.

First of all, it’s more of pretty much exactly the same as in the previous books - Tris is fighting for peace in the universe, tagging along are Kreon, Kyra and the others. There’s a new babysitter as well show more who remains pretty bleak and shallow, though.

The gore is back as well - not quite as annoying as in the third book but it’s still there, it’s still annoying and completely superfluous. I’m convinced it’s included for the kick some guys get out of such stuff.

Back in force as well are the typos, ungrammatical sentences, bad formatting, etc.; while I really think self-publishing is a great thing, one should at least make better use (or try to engage better) beta readers:

“One the one hand, a man like Gerian would demand the best when it came to his guards;”

Mistakes like that are just annoying and you’ll find lots of them - much more than in the previous books.

Exactly the same is also Tony’s tendency not to miss any cliché:
Blood-thirsty monsters with razors on their hands? Check!
Killer robots? Check!
Murderous emperors & their clones? Check!

We’ve seen all of that before in science fiction films or read it in other books - just usually in a more original way. The way Tony works with his material more and more feels like he has simply reached the limits of his writing skills.

Tony writes hilariously brilliant travel literature but I grow weary of his juvenile kind of story-telling. Once the novelty had worn off, the mediocrity began to shine through.

Tony very, very clumsily tries to address issues of morality when he makes Tristan kill someone but it doesn’t get beyond the most trivial observations:

“ had seen the darkness in him, and had called him out on it. And Tris had killed him for it.”

Another huge issue for me was that our heroes - as likeable as they may be - seem to have no real discernible talents beyond very specific “attributes” - Kreon is pretty much “bullet-proof”, Kyra is a great pilot, Ella’s talents as actually witnessed seem to be mostly restricted to the bedroom - in spite of her claim to be a fearsome assassin priestess - and Tris acts first and thinks afterwards. But at least he has his glaive and now a brain implant.
While they’re supposed to be high and mighty, what actually saves them is mostly dumb luck or the author’s liberal use of deus-ex-machina moments which Tony is at least not shy to acknowledge:

“Luckily, he had a miracle on speed-dial.”

There are tons of minor issues like the practically indistinguishable formatting mess that telepathic conversations are or stating the obvious: ““Guess we’re going that way,” Kyra said. And they did.”


And, still, “Warden’s Vengeance” with all its faults is a suspenseful, exciting book that I both loathe and like. Thus, I’m going to finish this series and will avoid any further fiction by Tony.

I suggest you simply pretend Tony never wrote anything but his wonderful travel memoirs which I can only highly recommend.




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