Laser-sharp zingers and out-of-this-world puns pile up at an astronomical pace in this sci-fi spoof from the author of Witches Be Crazy. "Draws liberally from the grand tradition of Firefly, Monty Python , and Spaceballs ."— Publishers Weekly
Never meddle with unidentified spying objects . . .
The year The Future. Mars and Earth are like that divorced couple who don’t exactly like each other but have at least stopped fighting in public. Floating somewhere in between them, amid all the garbage and Gene Roddenberry’s ashes, a transport vessel called the SS Jefferson is homeward bound. Its crew might have even made it on time for once, too…
Captain Cox is no stranger to encountering the odd pickle in space, but when a tantalizingly derelict ship crosses paths with the Jefferson, he unwittingly parks in the middle of a NASA-ty interplanetary squabble. Faced with a marauding Martian and a squad of snobby secret agents, Cox and crew embark on a mad scramble across the solar system, to save themselves from either murder-via-space rifle of imprisonment in the notorious Guantanamo Docking Bay. Maybe they’ll also get around to dealing with the biological weapon that accidentally wound up in their fridge, too.
Join Logan J. Hunder ( Witches be Crazy ) in a riotously funny send-up of spaceships, space exploration, and all the stories we tell about both. Discover adventure, love, loss, gain, losing what was gained, gaining some of it back, and all the different ways the Outer Space Treaty can be violated.
Logan J Hunder is a 20-something year old Canadian author from Victoria, British Columbia. After graduating college with a degree in Criminal Justice, he directed his writing abilities towards novels where his insistence to crack jokes would be less frowned upon. His debut story, Witches Be Crazy, has received praise at the Los Angeles International Book Festival.
In addition to penning novels, Hunder is also a proudly serving member of the Canadian Navy.
Astro-nuts was certainly a fun read, although at times quite possibly politically incorrect or a tad harsh to its characters. But if you want to have a laugh, you quite surely will!It's a story that just keeps on moving – it's full of action and adventure at quite a fast pace. Most of the characters are quirky and quite characteristically comical – especially the Captain and the villain of the book. Although when you start reading, you might think you've got it all figured out, you're not quite correct – the author definitely has quite a few things up his sleeve that might surprise you in the end. I know it sure had more twists than I expected! However, I found the ending to be quite a let down – it didn't really explain things, or rather, it didn't really make sense. I thought it to be a little heartless too. If not for this, I would have certainly given it 4 stars!
Astro-Nuts is definitely out of the box from what I normally read. The story did totally remind me of Spaceballs, and I thought it was hilarious in that utterly ridiculous kind of way. If you take Star Wars like super serious, then you might not appreciate this kind of humor. It's more for those light hearted space adventure readers. It's a fun read either way. Thanks to NetGalley for an arc in exchange for an honest review.
I received a free copy in exchange for an honest review.
I love comedic sci-fi. But this . . . this, I did not love. It read like it needed another editing pass or two to clean up the awkward phrasing, tighten the jokes, and flesh out the characters. And I wasn't laughing, or feeling entertained by, ANY of the jokes, which was kind of the death knell for the whole thing; it felt like it was trying too hard to be clever, and ended up not being clever at all.
As always, your mileage may vary. But for me, this just didn't click.
Review: As the sub-title suggests, “SciFi with zero gravitas”, this is a space farce along the lines of Hitchhiker’s Guide. The first half of this novel could have been a real funny space opera with added seriousness to draw you into the characters. What eventually becomes a part of the embedded story line is flimsy personas, glib rhetoric and anecdotal situations.
The author is clearly a student of pop culture and adds a heaping dose to Astro-Nuts, even though it is set far in the future. He does a great job of marrying what is current into a futuristic assemblage of wry wit and humor.
I am slightly ashamed to admit that I really enjoyed reading this novel. Note to author: Glock’s don’t have hammers that “cock” and triggers that go “click, click, click”, when empty.
This is a sloppy book full of bad jokes, which is exactly what the author seems to have been aiming for. Read at sufficient speed, it's fun. Full marks to Hunder for realizing that not everyone who goes to space is going to be a strategic and tactical genius, or even above average.
I'll forgive "free reign" for "free rein," but I can't overlook calling Sir Alpha Bravo and Sir Charlie Delta as Sir Bravo and Sir Delta. They would be Sir Alpha and Sir Charlie.
The characters were mostly forgettable, although Tim & Kim were OK, and Banks reminded me of Pratchett's Cohen the Barbarian (ever occur to you that an 80-year-old barbarian must be pretty good at his job?). The plot was flimsy but had some nice turns toward the end.
This book is a bit Fforde and Hitchhiker's Guide, and I loved that. At essence, this is a quest story, but more in the vein of Space Balls. I laughed out loud at parts, particularly at certain turns of phrase. (The situations were also comical but not necessarily laugh out loud). The ways the characters speak and the descriptions of the settings are just funny. I strongly recommend this book for someone who enjoys an outer space adventure book or absurd humor. Thoroughly enjoyable.
Thanks to NetGalley for the ARC in exchange for an honest review.
I thought the humour in this book was perfect and the story quite funny. I would relate it to Tom Holt style but with more violence. I will look out for more books by this author.
A bit rambling at the front end with all sorts of characters and references and then we get into the main story arc. Very sarcastic characters and silly situations. And some truly funny parts keep you going.
The plot is intentionally lame and the characters are skin deep, but that all leaves lots of room for puns, jokes, silly bits, and some deadpan one-liners. There are some slightly edgy bits camouflaged by broad humor, and a few priceless set pieces shoehorned into the action. It's the sort of book you should try to read as fast as possible, because pausing to actually think about any of it is frustrating and pointless. Think of it as an endless string of zingers floating around in the narrative equivalent of zero gravity and you'll have a fine time.
(Please note that I received a free ecopy of this book without a review requirement, or any influence regarding review content should I choose to post a review. Apart from that I have no connection at all to either the author or the publisher of this book.)
I love comedy sci-fi, but I didn't love this one. I didn't finish it because I couldn't get into. There were some funny jokes, but I didn't get hooked by the story. I started itching to do something else every time I picked it up. It's unfortunate because I thought I'd love it.
Logan Hunder’s novel “Astro-nuts” is a comedic voyage around the imagined future of our solar system. The comedy is everywhere you look, but is primarily rooted in the parody of known sci-fi clichés.
The parody is where the author excels. It is clearly their forte, and if it were compared to an art form, Logan would be Leonardo Da Vinci. The riffs are so effective throughout that I’m inclined to explore the author’s other works. I can happily attest to several moments I genuinely began laughing. One of those moments came fairly early.
After being informed about a mysterious object, which assumedly will drive the story, the reader is introduced to the crew of the SS Jefferson. Captain Cox quickly became a favourite character. I caught some Seth MacFarlane vibes emanating from Cox, so much so that I frequently read Cox’s dialogue in Seth’s voice. Much of this story shared many qualities with “The Orville” - unsure if the author is a fan.
Much like Star Trek, the story is best enjoyed as an ensemble of the main crew characters. That being said, my favourite chapter was one that focused on Captain Cox. In contrast, my least favourite chapter featured a lengthy conversation in exaggerated British linguistic styles. It was a bit much to read over such a span.
Occasional descriptions seem to preoccupy the action, yet still allowed for a clear mental picture to develop the scenes. It was around the end of chapter two, going into chapter three, that it became a page-turner for me, and I had begun visualising the story. It was rare from that point on that I felt pulled out of the story, but there were some instances that did happen.
The metaphors are abundant, and they’re good metaphors, but didn’t always add a lot to what had already been explained. The author is a living library of cultural knowledge, as evidenced by a lot of the metaphors and references, but I sometimes wondered if they could have more specifically targeted the sci-fi genre.
I don’t naturally read in an overemphasised voice, so I was caught off guard by some of the times when characters spoke sarcastically, and it required me to review the odd line. Some things were treated very silly.
There are a lot of notable authors, films, series, anime, themes, and games that are considered titans of science fiction. Understandably, not all of them could attend this party, but it would’ve been nice if a few more made the guest list, not necessarily for comedic value, but even just a connection.
The influence of “Spaceballs” is acknowledged, and it’s a film which almost exclusively serves as a Star Wars parody. The story of “Astro-nuts” has a similar flow.
The story probably won't hit on all the marks everyone would look for, but still passed the marksmanship test with flying colours. I ultimately laughed at several moments, which is uncommon in my reading. The characters really do grow on you, and I found it to be a pace that kept picking itself up. There was some tension, as I was brought to the end of my rope wondering about the engineer. The inclusion of parody and satire in literally every paragraph is a feat of its own. It was fun, and I didn’t feel there was anything that would rub anyone the wrong way.
🚀👨🚀🧪 Astro-Nuts by Logan J. Hunder Genre: Science Fiction/Comedy Length: 384 pages Bizarreness Rating (out of 5): 🔫🔫🔫🔫🔫 My Rating: ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
Summary (excerpt from Goodreads): The year The Future. Mars and Earth are like that divorced couple who don’t exactly like each other but have at least stopped fighting in public. Floating somewhere in between them, amid all the garbage and Gene Roddenberry’s ashes, a transport vessel called the SS Jefferson is homeward bound. Its crew might have even made it on time for once, too…
Captain Cox is no stranger to encountering the odd pickle in space, but when a tantalizingly derelict ship crosses paths with the Jefferson, he unwittingly parks in the middle of a NASA-ty interplanetary squabble. Faced with a marauding Martian and a squad of snobby secret agents, Cox and crew embark on a mad scramble across the solar system, to save themselves from either murder-via-space rifle of imprisonment in the notorious Guantanamo Docking Bay. Maybe they’ll also get around to dealing with the biological weapon that accidentally wound up in their fridge, too.
Review: I'm not even sure how to explain what I just read. To be honest, if you're not a big sci-fi nerd like me, and also know lots of nerdy space pop culture things, this might not be for you. You have been warned. BUT, if you ARE, definitely give this one a read. I laughed out loud several times and loved how bizarre the crew of The Jefferson was. Captain Tim Cox almost gave off Inspector Clouseau (from Pink Panther) or Leslie Nielsen (The Naked Gun series) vibes, both of which are my kind of humor. If any of the above resonates with you, I think you would enjoy this space misadventure! 🤓
“Astro-Nuts” was a overall good book, (but as I stated in the title of this review it wasn’t nearly as good as “Witches be Crazy”). It was a fun lighthearted sci-fi novel. It was a very funny book and I really enjoyed the way Logan J Hunder writes. The plot line was not great at all, there was even a middle section that drags on over several chapters. That part was somewhat difficult to get through, but push through it and you can enjoy the book as a whole and the wittyness that comes along with it. I would still recommend this book if you like Logan J Hunder as a writer or if you like goofy/weird sci-fi books, but other than that I don’t think I would go out of my way to recommend it to everybody. This is the reason as to why I gave it a 3 star rating. Happy reading!
I didn’t enjoy this book. I found a lot of the humor juvenile and the dialogue silly. The characters weren’t compelling and the story wasn’t well paced. The characters weren’t particularly sympathetic, especially the main protagonist. A lot of the story line was just silly. Several times during the first half of the book, I would stop reading it but then went back in the hope that it would improve. At about halfway through, I threw in the towel and stopped reading. This is especially disappointing because I had enjoyed Witches be Crazy by the same author. Disclosure: I received a complimentary copy of this book via Netgalley for review purposes.
Astro-nuts is about the adventures of Captain Cox and his crew on the SS Jefferson. The book before the adventure give another point of view of the problem to show the reader what will happen if the lose. Over the book they rest of the crew go to learn more about each other. This helps the crew work together on future adventures. This makes the book to be a series of to be countinued which made me read the book wanting to know what happens next. Thebook also talks about technology and gives hints of the history of the book.
3.5 stars Although I could have done without the wannabe rapist character (who admittedly gets a much-deserved ending to his plot line), this is a straight-up Canadian comedy fiesta. It is over-the-top in a Simpsons-esque kind of way (with a couple of allusions to the tv show to boot), but as with much Canadian humour, it works. You by no means need to be a sci-fi fan to enjoy this book, but having a decent grasp of popular culture will certainly enhance its comedic effect. Definitely a fun read!
Overall this sci-fi comedy did not meet my expectations and was a bit of a slog to get through. While I did chuckle a couple of time, most of the jokes fell flat and some had a jaded cynical twinge to them. I liked to overall positivity of the main character, and there was one touching chapter, but that was not enough to make up for the rest.
It had possibility that I hope would come, but never did for me.
As mentioned in the opening credits, 'Not everything in this books gets the seal of real.' This story is so whacky and giggle inducing, I had to listen to it again to see if I missed any puns, play-on-words, zingers, or cultural references. The narrator's (Christopher Lane) voice and delivery made this a truly entertaining experience. Logan J. Hunder's writing (also check out Witches Be Crazy) appeals to my warped sense of humour. Much fun.
The author started strongly but the final went on and on - and yes, on a bit more! Chapters were too prolonged. The characters were mildly entertaining. Better as an audiobook, though. I would not recommend, sorry.
I almost gave up on this one several times. Too many forced attempts at trying to be cute and funny for me. Just read the Hitchhiker's Guide series of books if you want "space humor". This one is simply not that great.
It was entertaining. I think I got almost all the jokes. Sadly, it is because I like space operas so much as well as Bondiana. However, didn't laugh out loud.
Hit page 110, & strike 3, a random shot at the Amish. Before that a chapter making fun of British. Then the bad joke about 45 was the first strike. The story wasn’t good enough overcome the faults.