The School of Hard Knocks

"{3.25/5}<br/><br/>CW: Drugs/drug use, reference to slavery, sexism, use of r word (x3), use of n word (x1), derogatory slang regarding s3xual orientation, some others. <br/><br/>Thank you to the author for the gifted copy!<br/><br/>Listen, full disclosure— if crude, lewd humor ruffles your feathers, this is not the book for you. If you’re okay with fictional people having personality traits that would inspire real-world people to scrub themselves with bleach, you’re in good shape.<br/><br/>Captain Rick Katusa is a stripper (of the salvaging variety, not the dancing kind). With Earth on the brink of being exterminated by a hostile alien species and desperate for spare parts, profits are soaring, and Rick and his crew revel in their freedom and perpetual bachelorhood. When Rick makes a deal with an enemy soldier, though, everything he thought he stood for is called into question.<br/><br/>You absolutely cannot go into this book thinking you’re going to get a hardcore action sci-fi with all the shiny bells and whistles in the form of a clear, goal-oriented plot. If that’s the vibe you’re looking for, you’re going to be disappointed. If, however, you’ve ever wanted crude, body-humor based entertainment set with a sci-fi background and rounded off with a surprisingly enjoyable storyline, then this is it. <br/><br/>Rick is, with absolutely no exaggeration whatsoever, a disgusting person. His general hygiene is nonexistent, and both he and the crew delight in making raunchy, crude jokes. Essentially, he’s the full embodiment of the stereotypical “I’ll be a bachelor forever and I’m loving it and no woman will ever pin me down” type of guy. To put it bluntly, he’s gross. Having now read two books by this author, I can say with conviction that the man writes unlikable characters. In fact, he excels at it. It’s not that the characters are unlikable because they’re poorly written; they’re written really well to be really, really distasteful. Even the narrator, a third party non-character with their own distinct voice, manages to convey some of the same issues that Rick and the crew embody. It’s really off-putting, but stylistically it gets the job done.<br/><br/>Rick’s true saving grace is that he is able (if not overly willing) to change. He’s got some pretty solid basic principles under that grungy exterior, and he’s not willing to compromise on them. It becomes a pivotal point in the overall plot, and it ends up making him almost endearing…almost. Regarding that plot, remember that this is not a story you should be taking too seriously. It’s got some pretty decent commentary on humanity being kind of garbage at almost everything, but ultimately this is more of a cross between “Animal House” and “Rick and Morty.” A fun ride with the right sciencey-sounding buzzwords (no idea if any of it’s correct, but it *sounds* good), but with a definite bent towards the ridiculous.<br/><br/>My biggest problem with the book overall came down mainly to punctuation. Or, rather, a certain lack thereof. I’m not sure whether it’s stylistic or accidental, but there were a lot of places where a comma or semicolon would have made the sentence flow a lot more smoothly. It became easier to overlook the longer the book went on, but for a while there I think I developed a twitch in one eye. My other issue, also possibly a style thing, was a lot of repetition in descriptions—whole passages or phrases would be reused to describe various things. While it did make it easier to connect the dots between occurrences, it also felt like the descriptions had just been copied over from prior encounters instead of being reworked to fit into the situation more efficiently. This was particularly noticeable with a character’s facial expression repeatedly being described as an ‘oriental smile,’which felt decidedly questionable. In the same vein, the same character’s actions were once referred to as ‘Asian sadism,’ and I’m desperately trying to attribute this to that same narrator persona.<br/><br/>At the end of the day, once I was able to cope with the shock factor of Rick being, well, Rick, this was a fun story. While the main plot took a little while to truly kick off, the journey was humorous and never boring. I wasn’t ever really sure where the story was going to go, but I’m pleased with where it ended up. If you’ve ever looked at the sci-fi genre and thought, ‘hmm, it needs more farts,’ then you’re in the right place. <br/>"