I generally like Jeremy Robinson, I’ve read 4 books by him now (Alter, The Others, Infinite and Xom-B) which range from really good to fantastic but damn if this isn’t a dud. I should have paid closer to the subtitle, “All your base are belong to us.” It seems like it could have been funny, basing a book on the failed idiotically named Space Force fitting for our current administration but what happens is cringey attempts at humor. It’s pretty banal and crude but not in a good way. Andy Weir’s The Martian or Josh Gayou this is not. It’s not offensive enough to be edgy, and it’s littered with pop-culture references, new and old but more so, old. Some of the characters are woefully thin, such as our sassy African-American bus driver, who’s seems entirely to exist to deliver clichéd lines.
The premise is alien invaders learn about humans through gaming and want to do battle Earth’s elite. However due to budget cutbacks, few remain in Space Force. Their preferred method of combat? Deathmatch. It really goes downhill fast. Most of this is sophomoric, relying on bad metaphors over witty banter and literal bathroom humor, (including our heroes having to stop to use the bathroom and find one of the penis-shaped aliens flatulating in a stall). I appreciate dick jokes probably more than I should but these lack wit. Once or twice a few lines were actually amusing but after bombing joke after joke, it’s not enough to save it. Robinson’s The Others had better humor in it, and it wasn’t necessarily meant to be comedic. This probably would have resonated with me at age 13-14.