One Night At Kedasi by Ashton Macaulay: Review!

I'm very pleased to announce that One Night At Kedasi by Ashton Macaulay will be out on September 23rd.

Ashton writes for ABCTales as mac_ashton and the story was originally posted on our site.

If you'd like to pre-order a copy, you'll find the link included in this review by Ewan:

One Night At Kedasi by Ashton Macaulay 

Shadow Dragon Press 

ISBN 1963832345 

Sci-Fi, Space Mercenaries, humour and bugs. Or for some of us, creepy-crawlies. Massive ones. This book – obviously – is not for everyone. Those who like exoplanetary escapism from their books will love it. Our protagonist is Zip Turbine; space pilot, smuggler and mercenary. She is aptly named, since this novel zips along like a jet-ski designed by someone who forgot to install brakes. 

The plot is uncomplicated; one last(?), high-risk/high-reward job for a motley crew of near strangers. Why not? If it’s good enough for films like The Magnificent Seven or The Dirty Dozen, it should work here too. And it does – because the novel is pacy and the descriptions cinematic. The “science bit” is sound, while the concept of the Tech-bro Millionaire Manchesters building asteroid-borne theme-parks is no more unlikely than some of their real-life equivalents’ projects. 

The team’s mission is to recover a diamond as large as the Ritz, well not quite, but a very big one indeed, from Kedasi, an abandoned theme park project. The team are split into two squads, neither of which trust the other. It’s then a race against the other squad, time and – of course – the bugs to recover the diamond and get out alive. 

Zip is a female hero of the first order, complicated inside the hard-boiled exterior. All the characters are well drawn and the alien life forms are easily visualised thanks to Macaulay’s skill. Best of all, the giant crustacean character, Tom, is so well delineated that we really do get inside his shell. 

If Harry Harrison’s Stainless Steel Rat was your thing, or your favourite Star Wars characters were Han Solo and Chewbacca, then this book is most definitely for you.  

Buy Ashton’s book here.