Willful Child: The Search for Spark

Willful Child, Book 3

By: Steven Erikson

Narrated by: MacLeod Andrews

Length: 7 hrs and 24 mins

Publisher's summary

The New York Times bestselling author of the acclaimed Malazan Book of the Fallen series, continues his hilarious science fiction series - parodying and paying homage to exploring the final frontier - with Willful Child: The Search for Spark.

These are the adventures of the starship A.S.F. Willful Child. Its ongoing mission: to seek out strange new worlds on which to plant the Terran flag, to subjugate and if necessary obliterate new life-forms.

We join the not terribly bright but exceedingly cocksure Captain Hadrian Sawback and his motley crew on board the Starship Willful Child for a series of devil-may-care, near-calamitous and downright chaotic adventures through the infinite vastness of interstellar space.

Steven Erikson has taken his lifelong passion for Star Trek and transformed it into a smart, inventive, and hugely entertaining spoof on the whole overblown mankind-exploring-space-for-the-good-of-all-species-but-trashing-stuff-with-a-lot-of-high-tech-gadgets-along-the-way adventure. The result is a novel that deftly parodies the genre while also paying fond homage to it.

©2018 Steven Erikson. (P)2018 Brilliance Publishing, Inc., all rights reserved.

Hey, It's still Zapp Brannigan and GladOS

It’s the third book, so let’s get right to it; did you like the previous ones? If yes, then continue the series.

With this release, I feel that Steven Erikson has found his footing with the series. The first book was a little too misogynistic in the beginning for me to recommend it to any women. Thankfully, none of that is here. The second book was a bit preachy at times, but I still say that’s the point and not something to complain about. This too has been toned down. So yeah, this book, though a bit shallow is just pure entertainment while maintaining commentary on current events in a very tongue-in-cheek, self-aware manner.

Really, what I’m saying is that I really hope Erikson continues the series.

With the caveat of that first little bit in the first book being a little too slimy, I still whole-heartedly recommend this book to fans of humorous sci-fi, Star Trek, Futurama, and GladOS.

Narrator is a genius

The narrator, MacLeod Andrews, is so good, this should be tagged as a full cast production!

Too good at bad guy voices

The guy reading does the bad guy voices sounds so gross I almost stopped listening. Story’s fine, one of my favorite authors but constant slurping and fart sounds drove me insane.

Hilarious

There are moments in this book that will double you over in laughter. There is also heavy handed social, political and religious commentary.

funny end to a hilarious series

This series plays with all my favorite sci-fi tropes, especially the ones from Star Trek. It made me laugh out loud several times. The story is kind of a mix of short stories (the characters even call them episodes) rather than one cohesive plot, which I think is funny but also keeps the story from becoming stale. It's pure ridiculousness, and fans of sci-fi who need a good laugh will love it.

Addition

Wonderful satire and I will leave you to find out the satire of what as it is more fun to find out as you read. Enjoy!

Better Tha Space Team

No offense to my old fav but this is on a whole new level. This should be animated #Netflix. The reader is perfect and as good as Bray and Kaffer (yeah I said it). More stat! It can't end like this! Excellent social satire wrapped in hilarious ridiculocity.

Loved the first book, disappointed in this one

This book felt more disjointed and a bit of a rehash of the first book in this series. I found it tedious at times. The narrator was good at the different voices but I sadly hated some of the characters. The chicken voice in particular.

a laugh a minute and Perpetual smiling

MacLeod Andrews has to be the greatest multi-character narrator in the entire universe! I cannot wait for book number four to come out!

Did he get paid by the word?

I enjoy the light-hearted nature of the past books. I just couldn't get into this one as there would be tangents where it would just be a long random string of words describing 'first impressions' of people or their someone's thoughts that just went on and on... and on and on... oh and still going... The first couple of times it was humorous, but it kept happening and got old. I had to walk away. Will look forward to the next book and maybe can come back to this one later.