Former Special Forces soldier Joe Hanson was merely stealing satellite internet, but his signal confused Bantil who kidnapped him, thinking he was the hidden Galactic representative on Earth. Unfortunately that representative is corrupt and Joe ends up killing him to save his own life. In addition there’s a lawyer, Naomi Sato, who unknowingly has been working for the aliens without realizing it. That creates further problems and the only solution to to go to another solar system and correct the mistakes directly. Tom Briggs lighthearted tale about The Starship from Speculari (paper) is fun and sequels are promised.

If you’re looking for a classic alien landing in redneck farm, abduction, with lots of alien fighting then this book is for you. It couldn’t be more classic, and it’s done so very well.

Really enjoyed this book!

My thanks to Netgalley and the author for the advance copy in exchange for an honest review.

I read the book. It did not seem believable. Many of the premises in the book seem far fetched. The writing was good.

This character-focused space opera tells the story of an engineering-educated farmer who’s abducted and ultimately becomes the world’s representative of an alien federation of planets. The story includes two other individuals, a woman with a legal background and a human-appearing alien, who inadvertently killed an alien official. There are humored moments triggered by the comments of an AI with a 60’s acid-head communication style and bickering between the two humans. A voyage to the alien planet’s power center to retrieve access codes needed to impersonate the dead alien’s reports is littered with one challenging incident after the other. After overcoming these, the trio returns to Earth and takes over the dead alien’s diplomatic role.

The joy I experienced reading this book was similar to that of reading books by Vaughn Heppner, and Evan Currie. I’m glad I found a new Sci-Fi author to follow.