Release Day
Feb 25, 2025
St Martins Press
My review
5 Stars
The beginning is hilarious, humans and another alien race get stranded on a planet (with low technology) that they are trying to convince join them. Above in the sky the ships from booth visitors fight and explode each other. Now the two envoys are stranded on a planet that they must win to their side before their backups arrive.
I had a lot of fun with this book because the author created a situation where two humans are left alone to deal with an entire planet of aliens (different types), but only one has to deal with diplomacy and a very funny sentient translator. I like Neera a lot. She is like a dragon left undisturbed in a cave until she's not and makes her appearances (not very diplomatic ones) occasionally giving her partner a hand.
At the same time, this futuristic setting is highly tainted with an elevated sense of honorable acts to follow rules (their alien rules). It's a very cool mashup of ideas from court intrigue and honorable duels (very French and British regal times vibe), but at the same time, we never know if our main character is going to be assassinated in the next paragraph (he, too, fears it). There are plenty of attempts, lots of political moves, decisions, games to play, and badass action with humor in writing and character personalities, which is characteristic of the author's style.
From the publisher:
"A new standalone sci-fi novel from Edward Ashton, author of Mickey7 (soon to be a major motion picture from Director Bong Joon Ho).
Dalton Greaves is a hero. He’s one of humankind’s first representatives to Unity, a pan-species confederation working to bring all sentient life into a single benevolent brotherhood.
That’s what they told him, anyway. The only actual members of Unity that he’s ever met are Boreau, a giant snail who seems more interested in plunder than spreading love and harmony, and Boreau’s human sidekick, Neera, who Dalton strongly suspects roped him into this gig so that she wouldn’t become the next one of Boreau’s crew to get eaten by locals while prospecting.
Funny thing, though—turns out there actually is a benevolent confederation out there, working for the good of all life. They call themselves the Assembly, and they really don’t like Unity. More to the point, they really, really don’t like Unity’s new human minions.
When an encounter between Boreau’s scout ship and an Assembly cruiser over a newly discovered world ends badly for both parties, Dalton finds himself marooned, caught between a stickman, one of the Assembly’s nightmarish shock troops, the planet’s natives, who aren’t winning any congeniality prizes themselves, and Neera, who might actually be the most dangerous of the three. To survive, he’ll need to navigate palace intrigue, alien morality, and a proposal that he literally cannot refuse, all while making sure Neera doesn’t come to the conclusion that he’s worth more to her dead than alive.
Part first contact story, part dark comedy, and part bizarre love triangle, The Fourth Consort asks an important question: how far would you go to survive? And more importantly, how many drinks would you need to go there?"
Comments