The next adventure in the Intergalactic Archives series from Audie Award-winning author Ash Bishop brings more swashbuckling action, will they or won’t they romance, murder, and a ruthless galactic mafia.

Someone’s got to clean up the cosmos. It might as well be them.

Former Intergalactic Exterminator Russ Wesley has found a new gig at Intergalactic Waste Management, LLC alongside old allies, in what promises to be a cushy job processing space debris on a state-of-the-art salvage vessel. But when he finds the dead body of a good friend stashed among the space wreckage, Russ is determined to learn how and why she died. Once again teaming up with Nina Hosseinzadeh and Steven Applebum, their investigation takes them back-and-forth between the criminal underbelly and the upper crust of intergalactic society, where their quest for the truth turns the murderer’s attention in their direction.

My Review:

I picked this up because I enjoyed the previous book in this series, Intergalactic Exterminators, Inc. Which I reviewed for Library Journal but didn’t here at Reading Reality.

I’ve decided that I need to review this second book here just so that I can process it fully inside my own head – and maybe get it out of my brain a bit more.

The story in this book, just like it was in the previous, is the kind of out-of-the-frying-pan-into-the-fire, crazy madcap romp that can be a fun time when one is in the mood for such a thing. Which I was because the book I just finished was seriously dark and this was my antidote.

So, what is it? Like the first book in the series, it’s about a gang of misfits with a spaceship, doing a dirty job and hoping to, if not make it rich quick because that ship has already sailed – pun intended – at least make enough of a living to keep the ship flying.

And yeah, that sounds a bit like Firefly but Russ Wesley a) isn’t the captain of this particular ship and b) isn’t nearly as noble as Malcolm Reynolds. Fictionally, Russ Wesley is a LOT more like Fergus Ferguson from the Finder Chronicles than he is Reynolds. Both Ferguson and Wesley are chaos magnets and both are always on the cusp on their universes going to shit with them in the middle. The difference is that Fergus does his damndest to avoid the chaos however he can, while Wesley jumps into feet first with a “Yippee-Ki-Yay” every chance he gets.

In other words, Wesley is an admitted adrenaline junkie while Fergus tries his damndest not to let his drug of choice – meaning adrenaline – get so close he can’t resist.

Speaking of unwilling admissions, both are from Earths that refuse to acknowledge that the rest of the galaxy is out there, inhabited, interesting and potentially dangerous. Meaning both hide a lot of what they know when they come home – which isn’t often because those kinds of secrets are hard to keep.

The story this time around, for Wesley, is that the events of the previous timeline are coming back to haunt him and all his friends. Because someone really is out to get them – and is even picking them off one-by-one.

An intergalactic megacorporation is guilty of some really dirty deeds that are not being done dirt cheap. And won’t be fixed cheaply either. Even worse, they’re trying to fix their previous expensive screwup with an even more expensive – and expansive – cover up.

All they need to do is kidnap Steven Applebum, the self-aware robot that Wesley and company rescued in the first book from this same evil empire. Since Steven’s rescuers are more than willing to rescue him again, the corporate assassins are going to need to kill all of Steven’s friends first.

The bloodbath is going to be epic – one way or another.

Escape Rating B: I recognize that all of the above is a bit scattershot, but it’s pretty much how I feel about the book itself. On the one hand, it was a lot of fun while I was reading it. On the other hand, it seemed like it was a bit all over the place and had a lot of arrows in its quiver – and not all of those arrows hit their target.

The first book was a bit more focused, as it followed Wesley’s quest to find a way to stay alive and keep his memories intact after his exposure to the wider galaxy. Not that there aren’t plenty of other characters involved, but it had a clear throughline that stuck.

This story is all the consequences of the first. The crew of Intergalactic Exterminators has been forced to change their name and focus to Intergalactic Waste Management to get away from the notoriety – and they don’t all succeed.

Someone really is out to get them, at a level of corporate skullduggery with mayhem that is surprisingly similar to Full Speed to a Crash Landing. Wesley, in particular, is a criminal who is being criminal in order to get in the way of a corporation that is putting profits ahead of the end of the universe – or at least the end of a universe that anyone would want to live in.

Although it must be said that Wesley does simply like living on the edge. He comes by that honestly as he inherited the tendency from his grandfather, who is still around being an intergalactic con man and whose story is semi-entwined with this one. Howsomever, the elder Wesley’s story, along with Russ Wesley’s almost-romance, didn’t quite blend into the whole.

Steven Applebum and the murderous corporate assassins is the part of the story that worked. Russ Wesley’s poke into the corporate assassins and following the trail of the corporate shenanigans behind them mostly worked.

Other parts didn’t quite blend into the whole of the thing, but I still had a fun time while I was there. Which hopefully explains the B rating I ended up at.