Starship Repo by Patrick S. Tomlinson : Review

Starship Repo is a fast-paced romp through the galaxy from Patrick S. Tomlinson.

Firstname Lastname is a no one with nowhere to go. With a name that is the result of an unfortunate clerical error and destined to be one of the only humans on an alien space station. That is until she sneaks aboard a ship and joins up with a crew of repomen (they are definitely not pirates).

Now she’s traveling the galaxy “recovering” ships. What could go wrong?

I’m honestly not that big of a science fiction reader, but every now and then I stumble across a book or author that just sounds too good to ignore. While I’ve never read anything by Patrick S. Tomlinson before, this book caught my eye the moment I saw the title and I knew I was going to read it. I’m glad that I did too because Starship Repo by Patrick S. Tomlinson was a fantastic read and probably one of the funniest books I’ve read so far this year. Any book that can keep my attention and make me laugh as this one did is well worth time or money.

It’s honestly taken me a little while to decide where to really start with this review because there was a lot that I enjoyed about this book, but I think the one thing that really stood out to me was all of its great characters. Lastname Firstname may seem like a ridiculous or lazy atempt at naming a character but there’s a pretty funny story behind it and it’s great listening to all the shit she gets from other people throughout the book. There is almost a ridiculous amount of different alien races to learn about in Starship Repo. Every member of the crew is of a different alien race and one of my favorite parts of the story was learning about all of them and reading about how they all came to work together.

I loved the whole story of Starship Repo, it had me laughing from beginning to end, but I think my favorite part about it is that it’s an episodic story. We visit a lot of world and characters over the course of the story and instead of focusing on what I consider the boring details of spaceflight we get to spend more time with these worlds and characters. I think it helps keep the story from feeling bloated and bogged down with too much information. Tomlinson does a great job of almost overpopulating the story but doing it in such a way that it works.

I’m definitely going to be checking out the rest of Patrick S. Tomlinson’s books in the near future and I really hope that this turns out to be a series and not a standalone story. I can’t remember the time that I smiled or laughed this much while reading a book and I was honestly sad when it was all over.

I would recommend this book to anyone who wants to read a great book that will make them laugh and smile the entire way through. I think Starship Repo is a book that is enjoyable whether you’re a hardcore science fiction reader or someone who’s never even touched the genre.

I received a free copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.