Starship Grifters

Rex Nihilo thinks he savvy and smart and no amount of evidence to the contrary will convince him otherwise. Luckily, this robot sidekick (and keeper), Sasha, is able to navigate a safe-ish path for both of them…. most of the time.

This was a very, very fun book. The humor reminds me a bit of Douglas Adams but better because nearly all of it is delivered in Sasha’s dead straight manner. She is a robot after all. This book is clever. The dialogue is witty, the characters are fleshed out, the plot is carried through. And I snicker-snort laughed my way through it. Sasha is the perfect character to deliver much of the humor in this book in that straight, matter-of-fact voice of hers.

Sasha is one of those nearly independent thinking show more robots. Someone somewhere at some time decided it was a bad idea to have sentient robots roaming the galaxy, so a governor was installed in them that monitors for individual and original thoughts and if any are detected, the robot is shut down for 15 seconds and a small part of its memory wiped. So, every time Sasha is on the verge of an independent thought, she shuts down for 15 seconds only to come back to it with no recall of what she was thinking or about to say. This little gimmick added to the humor of the book quite a bit.

The story starts off with a card game in which Rex unwisely bets his entire wealth, as little as it is. Then we wins some hands, and a few more, and the rich guy he’s up against starts making ludicrous bets – his ship, and then a planet he owns. Rex wins, much to the amazement of nearly everyone, just in time for a ruckus to start. Rex and Sasha flee in the newly won space ship, Flagrante Delicto. Meanwhile, Sasha who is always cogitating if not outright thinking, has discovered that Rex’s new planet is actually in arrears on some taxes. So he is now in a great amount of debt. The kind of debt that attracts bounty hunters.

But he has bigger problems that that right now (at least until Pepper Melange in her ship Bad Little Kitty shows up). As circumstances evolve, he gets sucked into the conflict between the Malarchian army and the revolutionary Revolting Front. He makes promises he can’t possibly keep to both sides. Rex is a total scoundrel and Sasha keeps him alive and sometimes makes him look competent.

There were just so many fun parts in this book. At one point, Sasha takes a pretty heavy hit to the face, which does some damage to her face plate. She and the guard start up a conversation about armor and what works best for both protecting and damaging. I swear, they were flirting! And Sasha deserves a fun date.

The ending had a surprise twist that was cleverly done. There’s definitely more going on with some of these characters! I’m really hoping for more Sasha/Rex adventures.

The Narration: Kate Rudd was perfect for this book. Since everything is told through Sasha’s eyes, Rudd maintained this polite yet just-the-facts voice for the entire book. It was perfect for delivering the humor. Of course she did character voices for whenever someone else was speaking and she kept them all quite distinct. There’s an evil villain who is described as having a screechy voice and Rudd did that one quite well – definitely a screech but not so much that it got on my nerves. I also liked her sexy voice for Pepper. show less

Starship Grifters
(Rex Nihilo #1)
by Robert Kroese

This is a hoot and a half! This author is so funny! Rex is a real low life but a funny one at that. He has a robot named Sasha that is hilarious but doesn't mean to be. She is my favorite in the book! Rex gambles away nearly everything but then makes a comeback and wins a planet! The guy who lost it seemed awful happy about losing. Seems the planet came with a lot of debt. Which comes with those wanting to be paid.
It is a wild and funny romp with a great cast of unusual characters, funny situations, ( I am giggling just thinking about some of them), and terrific dialogue! I giggled my way through this book!
I am definitely going to follow this series! It's too good to pass up!

STARSHIP GRIFTERS BY ROBERT KROESE

In a world of calamity, ineptitude, and moral horror, its good to have light reading. Starship Grifters by Robert Kroese fits the bill for those looking for a beach read or temporary distraction. The novel chronicles the adventures and misadventures of Rex Nihilo and his robot sidekick Sasha. Sasha (short for Self-Arresting near-Sentient Heuristic Adroid) narrates Starship Grifters, aided in part by her inability to lie. This comes in handy, since Rex is unable to tell the truth.

Rex is a con artist, gun runner, and scoundrel. When he’s not gambling, he has a martini in hand and witty rejoinder. If he wasn’t messing up things in the 31st century, he’d most certainly either be a big-shot Hollywood show more producer or President of the United States.

Starship Grifters main plot revolves around Rex aiding the Revolting Front. These heroic revolutionaries struggle against the oppressive Malarchian Empire. Through hook and crook, Rex ends up convincing the Malarchian regime he knows the existence of a planet (which actually doesn’t exist) and turning over the much-coveted cloaking technology (which also doesn’t exist). There hasn’t been this big of a kerfuffle over non-existent WMDs since Gulf War 2: Dubya’s Bogus Iraqi Adventure.

Along the way we meet General Issimo, the Revolting Front’s bombastic military genius. We also come across Pepper Mélange, a buxom bounty hunter on the Bad Little Kitty. (To be fair, Rex and Sasha fly around in Flagrante Delicto.) There’s a prison planet named Gulagatraz and the Revolting Front makes their home on the world of Schufnaasik Six. It’s all a bit silly. Yet it is silly in the best way. The plot (and various subplots) creak away like the best Wodehouse. Bertie Wooster and Rex Nihilo both have the same inverse ratio of confidence to intelligence. Both also swill more martinis than an entire Mad Men season.

By novel’s end, there have been numerous twists and turns. Kroese ties up everything in a nice little bow. It also left me wanting for more. Starship Grifters is the second novel of the Rex Nihilo series. It falls between Out of the Soylent Planet and Aye, Robot.

The dialogue is sharp, the action fast-paced, and almost everyone is heroically ill-equipped for the task at hand. Starship Grifters makes for fast and fun reading. Highly recommended. show less

What did I just read? And why did I like it so much?

Starship Grifters is a crazy story about a gambling, alcoholic, con-artist and his robot assistant that accidentally become owners of a planet that put them deep in debt and smack-dab in the center of a conflict between the current galactic empire and the rebels who want to overthrow it.

There are character names like Rex Nihilo and General Issimo, the Malarchy Empire, and the prison planet Gulagatraz. There are borrowed quotes from The Hitchhikers Guide To The Galaxy and Star Wars, as well as plenty of other similarities and ... parodies. If Ex Nihilo means out of nothing, then does Rex Nihilo mean king of nothing? There were probably other names that had plays on words that I didn't show more catch.

Taken piecemeal, that would make this book seem quite silly and derivative. However, on the whole it all works. I got caught up in the story, and the absolute wonder of how Rex Nihilo spins his yarns to con people, and the witty, snarky banter between him and his robot assistant Sasha.

If Douglas Adams and Mel Brooks wrote Star Wars as an episode of Leverage, and JJ Abrams and Michael Bay directed and produced it for the SyFy channel, you might end up with something close to Starship Grifters.

And that twist at the end... just another crazy whiskey tango foxtrot moment in a book full of fun moments.


Starship Grifters was provided to me by the author for review. Thanks! show less

Ah, space farce. Not a common genre and not many can do it well. Starship Grifters is a cut above—with more hits than misses—yet not without its flaws. It landed some big laughs and that was a treat.

The Holy Grail* of space comedy is The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy series, of course. Frankly, nothing can touch it. Douglas Adams was a literary treasure, like Flann O'Brien, and I loved all his works including the Dirk Gently series and his final book Last Chance to See about endangered species—there couldn't be a more meaningful end to his life and career. How can you top that? You can't. Adams had a big heart to match his comedic genius; his charm put him into a class of his own. Starship Grifters can't compete. But given show more that...a worthy effort that falls closer to Space Balls than Hitchhiker's. In fact, like Space Balls, Starship Grifters gets a lot of mileage satirizing such Star Wars tropes as the Death Star that can be blown up with a single shot and the plucky rebel forces.

The main character, Rex Nihilo, falls into the "loveable rogue" stereotype although a little more rogue and little less loveable than some. Think a dumber yet more cunning version of Han Solo blended with an homage to Harry Harrison, the pulp sci-fi author of the Stainless Steel Rat series. The result is a frappé of stupidity, narcissism and derangement rather than the serious James-Bond-style scheming of the Stainless Steel Rat. Rex is the comedian of the story (for the most part) while his sidekick, the android Sasha, is the straight...errh... straightrobot. The story follows Rex and Sasha as they try to outrace galactic debt collectors while scamming money out of billionaires, the fascist military, and the rebels alike. Rex has no morals or common sense, but he's clever and a great talker, frequently outwitting his enemies.

Unfortunately, except for Sasha, almost every single character in the book is irremediably stupid. Just plain DUBM. It makes for some very funny situations, but I would also call it a flaw in the book. Ironic, yes, that the android was the brains...but by the end of the book the stupidity of the majority of the characters (the female bounty hunter being an exception) started to feel a bit too easy. It made the plot devices easier to pull off when you weren't dealing with anyone with two brain cells to rub together. And it also made the comedy a bit too obvious at time. Another flaw arose in the voice of Sasha--too many occurrences of sarcasm or "wit" that seemed inappropriate for an android, even one that bordered on sentience. Just didn't feel right. And my last criticism is that the tone wasn't 100% nailed. The comedy tended to fluctuate between the truly absurd (things that only make sense on paper as jokes), the merely ridiculous (things that could happen but are quite farfetched), and character-driven witty dialogue (realistic situations) And then there's the very end of the book where the tone shifted abruptly.

But I dwell, I dwell on the negative. It really is a solid comedy overall. If you like silliness, space opera, Space Balls, and/or Star Wars (but not religiously), then you will probably like Starship Grifters. 3 1/2 stars.

*And by "Holy Grail" I mean Monty Python's Quest for the Holy Grail. show less

This was a bit of Sci-Fi humor, in the same mostly-untapped vein as the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy.

In spite of the cover's old-timey pulp look, I recognized many more references to the original Star Wars movie than any other Sci-Fi property. The story isn't terribly compelling, and the humor often made me smile rather than laugh, but I still liked it.

A grifter is con man. If you met one in real life you would hate him. Yet this is PG Wodehouse in space and rules are turned on their head. Unlike Bertie Wooster who is simple yet likable bumbler, the main character in Starship Grifters, Rex Nihlo is bumbling sociopath whom we are supposed to root for. His saving grace is that the people he tries to scam make him look like a saint. Ultimately Kroese convinces us to laugh at his mis-adventures. Saha , the robotic replacement for Jeeves, is Rex's robotic side kick. She is constantly tiring to cover for his master's short comings. Unlike Jeeves she cannot lie, nor by design can she reach full sentience. If she comes close to thinking for herself she is programed to shut down. Shutting down show more at critical moments becomes a running gag throughout the story. Despite a basically unlikable main character the book is hilarious. There are ripoffs of practically ever major science fiction movie. There are characters that decisions remain so true their natures that you actually root for while they remain funny. This maybe the best entry way into science fiction that I could recommend for those who have never bothered read a science fiction novel. Although I did not like the main character, I enjoyed book. I will look for more of Robert Kroese's books. show less