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The Intergalactic Archives #2
Intergalactic Waste Management, LLC
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.
“Ash Bishop is a wild collision of Douglas Adams and Terry Pratchett . . .” —Jonathan Maberry, NY Times bestselling author of Cold War and Red Empire
“A sense of fun infuses every line.” —Russ Nickel, lead writer, Helldivers 2
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.
For readers who enjoy The Kaiju Preservation Society by John Scalzi, The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet by Becky Chambers, and The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams.
“Ash Bishop is a wild collision of Douglas Adams and Terry Pratchett . . .” —Jonathan Maberry, NY Times bestselling author of Cold War and Red Empire
“A sense of fun infuses every line.” —Russ Nickel, lead writer, Helldivers 2
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.
For readers who enjoy The Kaiju Preservation Society by John Scalzi, The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet by Becky Chambers, and The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams.
- GenresScience FictionFiction
400 pages, Hardcover
Published December 2, 2025
8 people are currently reading
2701 people want to read
About the author
Ash Bishop
3 books204 followersAsh Bishop is a lifetime reader. He loves all genres but has a particular affinity for mystery, science fiction and fantasy.
Ash was born in Bloomington, Indiana where his dad taught at Indiana University. His family moved to Orange County, California when he was very young, and he spent his formative years among the mean streets of Irvine. He attended college at UCSB, then the National University of Ireland, Galway. Ash is also a graduate of San Diego State University with an MFA in Creative Writing. He currently lives in Southern California with his family and numerous pets.
He spent a good number of years as a high-school English teacher and an adjunct college professor, but he's also done a few less important, though slightly more glamorous, things. He worked in the video game industry, and educational app development; he currently acts as a script supervisor for a major Hollywood studio, and he even used to fetch coffee for Quentin Tarantino during the production of Jackie Brown.
Ash can't get enough of fellow sci-fi authors Philip K. Dick and John Scalzi, but he also likes the classics, thanks to all those years teaching F. Scott Fitzgerald and Edith Wharton. He plays at least an hour of Magic the Gathering a day and considers a revival of Logan's Run and Robotech among his dream projects. He is currently running a very loquacious level-8 Bard through The Rise of Tiamat (alongside three friends and a cruel, unforgiving DM).
Intergalactic Exterminators, Inc. is his first published novel. The Horoscope Writer, a murder mystery, will be released in the Summer of 2023.
For more information, check out www.linktr.ee/ashlbishop or www.ash-bishop.com
Ash was born in Bloomington, Indiana where his dad taught at Indiana University. His family moved to Orange County, California when he was very young, and he spent his formative years among the mean streets of Irvine. He attended college at UCSB, then the National University of Ireland, Galway. Ash is also a graduate of San Diego State University with an MFA in Creative Writing. He currently lives in Southern California with his family and numerous pets.
He spent a good number of years as a high-school English teacher and an adjunct college professor, but he's also done a few less important, though slightly more glamorous, things. He worked in the video game industry, and educational app development; he currently acts as a script supervisor for a major Hollywood studio, and he even used to fetch coffee for Quentin Tarantino during the production of Jackie Brown.
Ash can't get enough of fellow sci-fi authors Philip K. Dick and John Scalzi, but he also likes the classics, thanks to all those years teaching F. Scott Fitzgerald and Edith Wharton. He plays at least an hour of Magic the Gathering a day and considers a revival of Logan's Run and Robotech among his dream projects. He is currently running a very loquacious level-8 Bard through The Rise of Tiamat (alongside three friends and a cruel, unforgiving DM).
Intergalactic Exterminators, Inc. is his first published novel. The Horoscope Writer, a murder mystery, will be released in the Summer of 2023.
For more information, check out www.linktr.ee/ashlbishop or www.ash-bishop.com
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Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews
December 11, 2025
so this is probable a three star read but I dropped it because it's really a continuation of the first book and while I can tell from my review of the first book that I liked it - I could not remember a thing about the story. I even read many goodreads reviews of the first book - especially spoilers- hoping to jog my memory - alas - not a clue. So I was really in the dark and a bit confused about much of the plots/characters in this second book. I couldn't even remember Russ and Nina - the main characters.
Oh Well.
Oh Well.
January 10, 2026
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.
Originally published 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.
Originally published at Reading Reality
December 2, 2025
This review originally published in Looking For a Good Book. Rated 3.0 of 5
Russ Wesley has taken a new job with Intergalactic Waste Management, LLC. It looks like it will be a totally mindless, cushy job clearing space debris while riding around in a state-of-the-art salvage processing ship. And if that wasn't sweet enough, he's working with Nina Hosseinzadeh again - a friend whose company he enjoys and someone he can trust to have his back as he has hers.
But when a job is too good to be true, it probably has a dark side that simply has been revealed yet.
That dark side appears when Russ discovers the dead body of a friend, hidden among some space wreckage. He's determined to do right by the memory of his friend and vows to learn how she died and get get some closure for her.
Waste management comes in contact with some scummy individuals and Russ and Nina's investigation brings them in contact with some of the slimiest criminals in the quadrant as well as some of the upper-crust elite. After all, everyone has garbage.
I picked up this book because it looked fun. A great cover and a clever premise promised in the title - those involved in waste management are often overlooked but they tend to see everything, especially the things we don't want others to see. And I was in the mood for a fun, space opera adventure.
Unfortunately this didn't quite satisfy as much as I'd hoped.
First off, this is a follow-up to Intergalactic Exterminators, Inc (another clever premise) which I had not read. I suspect a good deal of character development was explored in the first book.
There's a valiant attempt to bring a lot of action to the story and it starts right at the beginning with the first chapter and Russ plunging to his death. I love thrusting the reader into immediate action and then letting the reader catch up as the story moves, but the problem I had was that he action never felt thrilling. This is primarily because the action is being told to us - we're being presented an action story rather than brought in and involved in it. Take for instance this paragraph (again, right at the beginning of the first chapter):
Russ looked down as the ground rushed up. The deep, endless ocean wasn’t blue. It was clear, like water flowing out of a kitchen sink—albeit choppy, violent, and rising toward them very quickly. Disposable EFlyers tended to crack open when they landed on sand. He wondered what they did when they landed in liquid. “S-s-stabilizers seem like something important to have,” Russ said.
If the ground is rushing up (or, more precisely, if Russ is rushing down), do we need an explanation of what 'clear water' means? Do we also need to know that the flyers tend to crack when they land on sand before he wonders what happens when the land in water? This paragraph about 'rushing' could have moved a lot quicker.
And essentially that's the problem I had throughout. Clever and potentially fun, the book took too long to get anywhere.
Looking for a good book? A space opera adventure should never drag, but Intergalactic Waste Management, LLC by Ash Bishop moved like a waste management truck - slow and steady, stopping regularly and never picking up steam. Characters and concept are clever but needed to not be held back.
I received a digital copy of this book from the publisher, through Edelweiss, in exchange for an honest review.
Russ Wesley has taken a new job with Intergalactic Waste Management, LLC. It looks like it will be a totally mindless, cushy job clearing space debris while riding around in a state-of-the-art salvage processing ship. And if that wasn't sweet enough, he's working with Nina Hosseinzadeh again - a friend whose company he enjoys and someone he can trust to have his back as he has hers.
But when a job is too good to be true, it probably has a dark side that simply has been revealed yet.
That dark side appears when Russ discovers the dead body of a friend, hidden among some space wreckage. He's determined to do right by the memory of his friend and vows to learn how she died and get get some closure for her.
Waste management comes in contact with some scummy individuals and Russ and Nina's investigation brings them in contact with some of the slimiest criminals in the quadrant as well as some of the upper-crust elite. After all, everyone has garbage.
I picked up this book because it looked fun. A great cover and a clever premise promised in the title - those involved in waste management are often overlooked but they tend to see everything, especially the things we don't want others to see. And I was in the mood for a fun, space opera adventure.
Unfortunately this didn't quite satisfy as much as I'd hoped.
First off, this is a follow-up to Intergalactic Exterminators, Inc (another clever premise) which I had not read. I suspect a good deal of character development was explored in the first book.
There's a valiant attempt to bring a lot of action to the story and it starts right at the beginning with the first chapter and Russ plunging to his death. I love thrusting the reader into immediate action and then letting the reader catch up as the story moves, but the problem I had was that he action never felt thrilling. This is primarily because the action is being told to us - we're being presented an action story rather than brought in and involved in it. Take for instance this paragraph (again, right at the beginning of the first chapter):
Russ looked down as the ground rushed up. The deep, endless ocean wasn’t blue. It was clear, like water flowing out of a kitchen sink—albeit choppy, violent, and rising toward them very quickly. Disposable EFlyers tended to crack open when they landed on sand. He wondered what they did when they landed in liquid. “S-s-stabilizers seem like something important to have,” Russ said.
If the ground is rushing up (or, more precisely, if Russ is rushing down), do we need an explanation of what 'clear water' means? Do we also need to know that the flyers tend to crack when they land on sand before he wonders what happens when the land in water? This paragraph about 'rushing' could have moved a lot quicker.
And essentially that's the problem I had throughout. Clever and potentially fun, the book took too long to get anywhere.
Looking for a good book? A space opera adventure should never drag, but Intergalactic Waste Management, LLC by Ash Bishop moved like a waste management truck - slow and steady, stopping regularly and never picking up steam. Characters and concept are clever but needed to not be held back.
I received a digital copy of this book from the publisher, through Edelweiss, in exchange for an honest review.
December 11, 2025
I loved this book. So fun. I like how the author takes subtle, and not so subtle, pokes at current culture. Even better than the first one.
February 17, 2026
Fun context, good writing, action, but maybe I should have read the first in the series first to have a stronger character connection (lots of names right off the bat).
Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews