Phule's Company by Robert Aspirin. Sci-fi comedy.
It suggests a comparison to Jeeves and Wooster with its main protagonists being a gung-ho officer and his dutiful and tactful gentleman's gentleman. Sadly, it's not really a comedy, despite the prologue suggesting it is with Captain Jester's "overzealous idiot" moment, and it's hard to even call it a story. It's more a chronicle of how Captain Jester takes over an "Omega company", or basically what's left of an army when you take away any soldier quarter-way competent. It basically consists, after the introductory chapters, of Jester competently sweeping aside or avoiding every obstacle the story half-heartedly throws at him, if not with connections and money then with quick-witted stratagems and sheer integrity.
It's a pity because the script is crying out for - and practically loaded with - some meaty complication and chaos. You've got the local chief of police who doesn't trust them an inch, the hotel manager horrified at the thought of letting them settle in his establishment, the press nabbing any potentially embarrassing titbit they can find, and a superior officer called Battleaxe chasing up whenever the midden hits the fan.
And we have as motley a collection of officers and grunts as would make the Ankh-Morpork City Watch proud. It includes two incompatible lieutenants - one artistically inclined and hating conflict, one meat-headed and zealously determined - a larger than life and bellicose sergeant called Brandy, an officer too painfully shy to actually talk except over the radio, a pacifist giant hog, two slug-like aliens from opposite ends of the class spectrum, a soldier called "Super Gnat" who can never back off from a fight however hopeless, a black market dealer keen to avoid any contact with the authorities, and a violent, temperamental member of the kitchen staff who's good with a sword. The disappointment of seeing each of these elements underutilized is matched only by the potential they're brimming with.
It's not painful or offensive, or even mediocre, and it has some grin-inducing moments. It's a decent bit of reading that keeps disappointing its own great set-up by defanging it. 6 or a 7 out of 10.
It suggests a comparison to Jeeves and Wooster with its main protagonists being a gung-ho officer and his dutiful and tactful gentleman's gentleman. Sadly, it's not really a comedy, despite the prologue suggesting it is with Captain Jester's "overzealous idiot" moment, and it's hard to even call it a story. It's more a chronicle of how Captain Jester takes over an "Omega company", or basically what's left of an army when you take away any soldier quarter-way competent. It basically consists, after the introductory chapters, of Jester competently sweeping aside or avoiding every obstacle the story half-heartedly throws at him, if not with connections and money then with quick-witted stratagems and sheer integrity.
It's a pity because the script is crying out for - and practically loaded with - some meaty complication and chaos. You've got the local chief of police who doesn't trust them an inch, the hotel manager horrified at the thought of letting them settle in his establishment, the press nabbing any potentially embarrassing titbit they can find, and a superior officer called Battleaxe chasing up whenever the midden hits the fan.
And we have as motley a collection of officers and grunts as would make the Ankh-Morpork City Watch proud. It includes two incompatible lieutenants - one artistically inclined and hating conflict, one meat-headed and zealously determined - a larger than life and bellicose sergeant called Brandy, an officer too painfully shy to actually talk except over the radio, a pacifist giant hog, two slug-like aliens from opposite ends of the class spectrum, a soldier called "Super Gnat" who can never back off from a fight however hopeless, a black market dealer keen to avoid any contact with the authorities, and a violent, temperamental member of the kitchen staff who's good with a sword. The disappointment of seeing each of these elements underutilized is matched only by the potential they're brimming with.
It's not painful or offensive, or even mediocre, and it has some grin-inducing moments. It's a decent bit of reading that keeps disappointing its own great set-up by defanging it. 6 or a 7 out of 10.
And one of them is the odd man out - can you guess who? 
