I love this book. I read it a few months ago and needed to re-read to write this review and once more loved the zany, off-the-wall plot and back story. It probably says something about my low brow tastes, but I’m giving this 5 stars, just because it was much fun to read the third time as the second and the first.
The Galactic Peace Committee of the title is a cross between a bad joke, a con job and a deadly necessity. You see, there are thousands of races throughout the galaxy, most love war and fighting far more than we humans do, and most will gladly go slaughter another race for the horrible crime of insulting their hats or preferring pizza to pancakes. The Committee exists to keep the peace, more or less, or at least keep someone from engulfing the entire galaxy in war or, worst of all, annoying the Ancient Ones.
Ah yes, the Ancient Ones. One race of Ancient Ones looks like cuddly teddy bears. The space teddy bears were the first alien race to contact us when Earth developed faster than light travel, and the bears kindly put Pluto and a minor Saturn moon back together, then helped us get over the hump on a few technological travails.
Then the space teddy bears pulled the ultimate con. They convinced a gullible humanity to accept the immense honor to run the Galactic Peace Committee, while they and the other Ancient Ones, extend their holidays on their favorite beach worlds and enjoyed more drinks with umbrellas in them. We’re a bunch of optimists with good opinions of ourselves so it tkes a while for humanity to realize they had been had. No one wants to be in charge of Galactic Peace!
That’s the back story. Our hero, Jake, is a mid level diplomat on a space station who would like to be successful enough to survive until he can retire on a pension that is very generous, mostly because the Committee rarely has to pay them out. Jake needs to keep the peace and uses every skill he has and all his patience to stop two interstellar wars. How Jake works these miracles is the crux of the novel.
The Galactic Peace Committee pulls off the hat trick: humor, plot with enough science-fiction-y events to feel like we’re reading space opera without all the operatic trappings, intriguing characters, and did I mention humor? Unlike several wanna-be humorous novels this one uses the ridiculous specifics to contrast with the generally serious back story to make a very good, fun novel.
There are a few minor problems.
- Jake has a few woe-is-me moments in the beginning that stopped just before they got tiresome.
- The Galactic Peace Committee is more a novella than a novel.
- Not sure I like the super robot idea. In this novel author L. G. Estrella avoids relying on the robots to make everything magically work out (these are military/assassin/bodyguard robots), but he must feel the temptation to have Jake narrowly escape because his bodyguard saves him.
The only one of these problems is number 2. I want more Galactic Peace!
5 Stars
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