Space Team (Hutchison)
The full title of the book is Space Team: Screwing Up the Galaxy so you don't have to!, and I believe I got the capitalization and punctuation correct. An editor might've suggested different.
This book was downloaded as a freebie. If I remember correctly, it was probably one of those "first book in the series is free" deals, to get you to read one and buy the rest. Nothing wrong with that, so long as the books are good. Wellllllll ....
So how many books are in this series? I just checked, and it seems, as of this writing, that there are 13 of them. In three years.
If they're making money, more power to him. Maybe it's a model to try out for my own writing.
Okay, so the story starts off like some is trying too hard to be Douglas Adams or Terry Pratchet or just, you know, funny. It isn't too clever, but it's what's there, so let's so with it. Cal Carver is a criminal, and he's in prison, but a mistake was made and he's been set to a maximum security facility. His next mistake is ticking off the warden. Because there aren't any buses available to transfer him until the morning, he'll have to stay the night. And because Carver was a pain in the ass, the warden puts him in a cell with an overly-large cannibal, who Hutchison describes in great detail as the man has no pants on. Hutchinson waxes poetic about his member.
Anyway, just about the point where Cal is about to be killed in the cell (which the Warden could have easily have anticipated, so he's a pretty sucky guy himself because Cal wasn't that big a pain in the ass), the prison is attacked and Cal is abducted. By space aliens. Who mistake him for the cannibal. (Yes, I will keep referring to him as "the cannibal" because I'm too lazy to scroll through my kindle to find the name, and despite the number of books in the series, every site I checked has the same stupid two paragraph synopsis of the book.)
Next thing you know, we're in a room with the president of the galaxy and a bunch of other criminals, and we're playing, "I bet you're wondering why I called you all here." Seriously, he says that. Or something just like it.
Out of the entire galaxy, he needs this handful of weird criminals from various planets, to come together to be a team to go on a mission for him. To Hutchinson's credit, he does, at the end, give a rationalization for exactly why these people are here, and what they bring to the secret agenda that the president has.
Oh, and Earth was destroyed, quite by accident really. It wasn't like it was in the way so the Vogons destroyed it or anything. (And I'd already had the Hitchhikers-wannabe comparison in my head before he got around to telling us Earth was killed during the prison break.)
A lot of silliness, some of which isn't as silly as it could or should be, follows. They save the day. And they ride off together because they have no place to go.
Would I read more of this? If someone handed me a stack of books and I knew I was going to be stuck on a subway. Maybe.
In the end, it didn't suck, but it wasn't all that great.
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