ARC Review: A Tale of First Contacts

The Fourth Consort by Edward Ashton

Publication Date: February 25, 2025

Summary from NetGalley:

ARC provided by St. Martin’s Press via Netgalley for an honest review.

Confession:

This was a fun and yet thought provoking read. I really enjoyed the characters and the writing was great. The pacing was a tad on the slow side, but the story was fascinating and very intriguing. It is my understanding that this is a standalone novel, but I am certainly hoping for more books covering the adventures of Dalton and Breaker.

The book is told from the point of view of Dalton. Dalton is a very relatable character, mostly because he is human, unlike many of the characters in the story. But Dalton felt like a real person, he is indecisive at times, makes mistakes, but has a strong sense of morality and what he feels is right. Of course this gets him into all sorts of trouble when it comes to dealing with aliens who have a totally different code of ethics and morals. But somehow Dalton perseveres and manages to survive. I really liked listening in on his thoughts and feelings as he struggled to figure out what was really going on in the civilization he found himself in.

Neera is the other human trapped on the world with him. We don’t get to know her well, but I didn’t like her very much. She seemed to be involved with this whole thing just to make lots of money and didn’t seem to care how that affected the natives of the planet. She wasn’t very supportive of Dalton and his issues either, which was weird considering their situation.

Breaker was the representative from the Assembly who also gets marooned on the planet. He was an interesting character and was often a good sounding board for Dalton as he struggled to understand the Minarch’s culture. Breaker seemed to understand the minarchs better than Dalton. This might be because the Assembly did their homework better than Unity did or it might be that Breaker’s culture was enough similar to theirs to give him an edge. I did enjoy watching the friendship develop between these two and learning a little bit about Breaker’s culture.

The aliens that Dalton encounters were really interesting. They were an insect like people who were the apex predators of their planet. Their society was sort of insect like with a queen, lots of female workers and then the males who were kept in harems and traded like a commodity among the different factions. It was a really interesting concept. I loved the two consorts that Dalton spent time with, they were quite the comedic duo and often made me smile with their comments. The Queen was quite terrifying but Dalton managed to keep her a bay while struggling to keep himself alive.

The writing was great, especially the descriptions of the planet and the different creatures that inhabited it. There were some great themes woven into the story, especially that had to do with what the two groups, Assembly and Unity, were perhaps up to. This was a great first contact story that was heavily influenced by colonialism and racism. I liked it when one of the other non human characters calls Dalton out on his assigning human nicknames to them and how insulting that really was. There are a lot of instances of this throughout the book.

There is some cool tech in this book as well, but I especially liked the somewhat sentient AI earworm that translates the languages for Dalton. It is sarcastic and funny at times, especially when it is struggling to give an accurate translation that has words it really isn’t sure what they mean. A lot of this story circles around language and the many meanings of words as well as cultural differences.

Sorry this has turned into such a long review, but as I said this one gave me a lot of interesting things to think about. I really hope that this isn’t a stand alone and that we get to see Dalton and Breaker again. Perhaps they will wind up with Mickey on his planet in the future. If you are looking for a sort of light yet thought provoking science fiction story this is one you might want to pick up.