Hard Luck Hank: Screw the Galaxy

A nearly-invincible mutant must save his space station (a hive of scum and villainy) from destruction by aliens.Book Review: This novel is excellent at what it does. What it does is provide a PG-13 comedy-action-adventure story. The skill with which it executes is remarkable.The story keeps moving at a very good clip, never dull, but not rushed either. All the major players are introduced early and well. The conflict is clear, the plot is interesting. The jokes are good, if you’re into gritty Army-of-Darkness style humor (I am). There’s the PG-13 violence of an action movie, without any gore, and the hot chicks of a PG-13 movie, without nudity or sexual situations. The protagonist is fun, and very relatable despite being a criminal. He’s the guy who doesn’t want to be bothered, but he’s good at what he does, and he’s the Big Swingin’ Dick on this station, so he’s always involved in the important stuff. It’s great for a fun wish-fulfillment action story. :) Also, the story constantly raises its stakes, in a way I found captivating.I think the best part is that, even though our hero is invincible, the situations he finds himself in are ones were being invincible helps but will not solve his problems. The charecter thinks of himself as dumb, but he’s actually very smart, just uneducated. The major conflicts in the story are all resolved by clever use of his specialist knowledge or unorthodox use of his unusual resources. We don’t worry that he’ll die, but he can still lose, and that makes seeing how he wins interesting.Also, of vital importance: Hard Luck Hank doesn’t overstay its welcome. It reads fast and smooth. It tells a good story in a couple hundred pages, and then it’s done.Ultimately, the book is a success because it gives you a promise, and then fulfills that promise well. You can tell exactly what sort of book this is by looking at the cover and reading the title. If you look at this cover and think “This could be fun to read!” then you’ll be happy with the time spent on this. I can’t recommend this book the same way I recommend books that I love. It isn’t emotionally moving. It isn’t intellectually stimulating, or artistically challenging. It has no bigger message. But it IS really fun, which is all it’s trying to be. If you want a fun, light read, of the kind promised by the cover, than I definitely Recommend this.Book Club Review: Whether people like this book or not can be predicted by its cover. If they see it and want nothing to do with it, don’t bother. If they grin and say “could be fun!” then they’ll probably like it. The conversation around the book itself isn’t very long. It can be interesting, as people work through why something dumb and fun like this is still enjoyable. But you won’t have any major insights. Only Recommended if the group is into it and wants a break from reading more substantial stuff. Otherwise, Not.Side-note: we read this directly after The Once And Future Witches. This was a coincidence. However, I couldn’t stop seeing the parrallels between the two books. Witches is also light, wish-fulfillment fare. But in all the places Witches failed, Hank succeeded.– Despite being invincible, his struggles were interesting because his super-power couldn’t resolve them. Witches wasn’t, because despite pretending to be vulnerable, their magic solved all their problems consistently, easily, and without cost.– Despite being silly and indulgent, Hank leads with “Look at how silly and indulgent this is gonna be! Don’t expect greatness, this is about Manly Dudes and Stuff Blowing Up and Hot Chicks!” Expectations are low, and reader is happy. Witches takes it’s name from a literary classic, and sports an abstract cover. Reader expects something ambitious, and is dissapointed, despite the fact that it’s not bad for light fare!– Hank is fast and compact. Witches could have been a good read if it had been equally short. Instead it dragged on for more than twice Hank’s length. I gave up on Witches less than 3/4ths of the way through, at which point I would have finished Hank more than a hundred pages ago!Although, the comparisons aren’t fully fair. Witches is aimed at a very different audience than Hank. Hank is great for people who enjoy teenage-boy shenanigans. (again, people who love Army of Darkness). Witches is aimed at elite women readers. Perhaps being super-long and unexciting is exactly what they like, and Witches is perfect for them. The contrasts in how “light, popcorn reading” played out between the two books just kept jumping to my attention.

Let's get something straight: Hard Luck Hank is not a thug! Yeah, I know, the Amazon boiler plate says he is, and Hank calls himself a thug on at least one occasion. But that's just author Steven Campbell's way of showing us that Hank can be, in various ways, self-deprecating. Hank's no arrogant bully, though he has the physical resources to play that role if he wanted to. I agree there's no denying that Hank is sometimes pretty violent, but when he is, to paraphrase Hank, it's because the jerk had it coming or Hank is being paid. True, that last part sounds ominous,and it seems to undercut my no-thug judgment. But we've got to make allowance for the kind of folks who make up Hank's social world: crime bosses, drug pushers, real-life thugs of the sort who trip-up little old ladies just for the perversely sadistic fun of it, not to mention thoroughly corrupt public officials, and various and sundry others who fit into this collection of bad guys, and, yes, bad girls. Violence against actors of this sort seems more or less self-explanatory and not all that out of line.Besides, Hank much prefers to fix things without violence and functioning as a negotiator. OK, he's not a labor relations grad of the Wharton School, but Hank has qualities much better suited to the context in which he works: really good intuition. Much as other folks in Belaville, the Colmarian city in which he lives, Hank is a mutant, level-four in his case. Being a mutant of whatever level is a mixed blessing. After all, my great grandmother could out run hulking Hank, but then Hank is five or six times older. Super-human longevity is one of Hank's mutant traits, so when he says he's had hundreds of years' experience to acquire the intuition that makes him a good negotiator, you can take him at his word.My characterization of Hank is a noir sci-fi super-hero. I love noir, and it's important to recognize the modifying effect that noir has on sci-fi and super-heroes. If you're a fan of noir or have just a passing familiarity with that genre, you know that noir guys, though they may be tougher than a glutton's stack of nickel steaks, are deeply imperfect and couldn't be clean-cut if they tried, which they don't. Noir guys are tough, but not so tough that they can't be hurt. After a lengthy, bruising, busting, bashing, hanging-on-for-dear-life, Belaville-saving encounter with a Dredel Led robot, mediated by a giant alien named Wallow, Hank becomes a city-wide celebrity and a person of enormous influence, but he also spends more than a month in a hospital in a coma. Like I said, as super heroes go, sci-fi or otherwise, Hank is imperfect.Later Hank pretty much repeats this performance when he tries to use his great-great-great-great grandfather's Ontakian pistol to shoot another robot and the mysteriously powerful pistol blows up in his hand. Another month in a coma, and this time he comes out of it with a permanent limp, making him even slower than he was before. He likes the three green scars the exploding pistol left on his face; he says they give him character. Besides, they're something entirely new: Hank's skin is so tough that he's never before been scratched. Shoot him in the face with a .357 magnum and the bullet just sticks there, and he can pluck it out with nary a blemish.Hank drinks a lot, gambles a lot, eats a lot, and sleeps when others give him some peace. It's sort of sad (I won't say pathetic) though, to see him trying to climb three fights of stairs in the company of Garm, the gorgeous and corrupt-through-and-through official who heads up what passes for the law and order establishment in Belaville. Hank huffs and puffs, sweats and squirms, and they decide it's best to take the elevator. Hank is super-tough, super-strong, street-wise, and noir to the core. As a super hero, though, his short-comings sometimes make us groan with embarrassment. But not that often.Though basically a loner, Hank has a varied and sundry assortment of mutant friends and acquaintances of differing levels to whom he can turn for advice, counsel, and delfiblinium. (You'll see!) Though the friends and acquaintances usually do their best, they're just as imperfect as Hank: they'll give him what he needs, but it usually comes, inadvertently, with things he doesn't need that turn out to be troublesome. You know: solve one problem while creating another.This review has been all about Hard Luck Hank. I probably like him too much, but as far as I'm concerned Hank is the story. Steven Campbell writes quite well, has a great sense of humor, and only occasionally strays into territory implausible by the standards of good quality sci-fi. Moreover, he manages, to maintain reader interest throughout a fairly long book, and he neatly ties together events that, at first look, seem unrelated or misleadingly inconsequential.First and foremost, though, he's created a new super hero. A bit like Mickey Roark in Sin City, but smarter, smoother, better connected, tougher, stronger, slower afoot, a bit less cynical, funnier, and more appealing to women. After readers have finished Hard Luck Hank, I hope that many will agree that we've definitely got a new and different super hero, one who will resurrect noir or, if you prefer, neo-noir, raising it to a new level of sophistication with a really dynamite noir character. "Screw the Galaxy!", and bless author Steven Campbell.

This book was really great at first, what with the story being interesting and well written. But in the end I was disappointed.I will say Steven Campbell is a good author in that his idea for a book was good one and was unique in my mind. The premise of the hero, Hank, was well thought out and the setting worked well with the character. I liked the twists and turns that occurred in the story as they helped to keep it fresh.My problem with the read is that the ending was abrupt and didn't give me the satisfaction you'd expect to enjoy from the end of a book. Imagine George Lucas wrote episode four of Star Wars and the whole movie was the same, but the whole part about taking out the Death Star in the end was hinted at but wasn't there, you just see Luke, Han, Leah and the others smiling with their medals. You'd be confused an upset, right? Well Steven Campbell did sort of just that. He gave us a great story and took out a good ending. The last scene is Hank making out with a woman that has had no signs of interest in him the entire way through unroll the very last page. The love interest isn't even mentioned. Other is more to the way I felt disappointed but you can find out for yourself.In the end I will say that I will be buying another Steven Campbell book. Over all I liked it a lot an he shows promise. The begging and middle were great, the end being a dud. But in my book, two outta three ain't bad.

This is an odd one for me. I really enjoyed the story, and the characters- while perhaps a little bit clichéd- were entertaining. The main character was exactly what I was expecting him to be, but not in a bad way! The whole book felt like an odd mix of deep space sci-fi, Terry Pratchett, and an old Film Noir type movie.My only complaint, really, is that something about the writing style felt oddly flat. I can't really explain it, but something felt very off about it. There were moments when long periods of time would be skimmed over in a few sentences, while other, less significant incidents were described in great detail. There were also a few very significant plot points that seemed to vanish or be forgotten, which struck me as very strange and rather unsatisfying.Overall, though, this is a good, solid book. I would recommend it to other readers, especially those who like things a bit silly, but not so silly that it's completely unbelievable.

I'm not sure what's taken me so long to review this book. Given that I've loved every one of the series so far and I've excitedly ploughed through each one as it's been released, I kind of owe the author a review.It's Pratchetesque, witty and thoughtful. I love the gradients of moral neutrality of the various characters, which is more like a spaghetti western than the traditional good vs evil.With cracking dialogue and great plots I can thoroughly recommend this book and the sequels. I laughed a lot.

It's rarely worth reviewing a Kindle Book in the lower price bracket.However, this is a good read, with lots of humour, in a Harry Harrison Stainless Steel Rat Vein.This is a masterpiece of it's sort, combining some of the early Space Opera ideals with more modern Steam Punk stuff. The only shame is that the spin off novels are not quite as well sorted.

I'm loving the characters and story more as I read along. There are some mistakes here and there but they are just bumps in the road of a good story. Cheers!

Very likeable main character (fantastic actually)Often funnyGood settingWell written (as in good prose style)Decent plotAt no point did I get bored, or need a breakIt's not an instant classic or anything, but it's not Dan Brown style nonsense either :)Great light sci-fi