When humanity finally left Earth behind for the outer reaches of space, they might’ve expected to encounter little green men but certainly not unicorns, pixies or elves. Known collectively as the Bala, they are a group of species who take the forms of just about any mythological creature you can think of. Despite having observed and even visited humanity over the centuries, they extended the hand of friendship, offering to help them adapt to their new lives in space. Did humanity accept the gesture in the spirit it was intended?
Well, with our track record in meeting new cultures, what do you think? A century passes, and the Bala have been hunted, enslaved and exploited with near fanatical zeal, especially once it was found out that individual Bala parts had useful properties. Gary Cobalt is half-unicorn and has just been released from prison. With their horns that enable faster-than-light travel, unicorns have had it particularly rough. No longer incarcerated but still not free, Gary’s first goal upon being released is to try to reclaim what was taken from him—his ship. Unfortunately, he almost immediately runs into the two people he never wanted to see again: Captain Jenny Perata, the woman who took his ship and imprisoned him, and her co-pilot Cowboy Jim, the man whose wife Gary was imprisoned for murdering…
With an important summit on the horizon, the fate of both humanity and Bala seems to rest in the hands of a group of misfits who may kill each other before they can learn to work together.
As you can probably tell from the above synopsis, this book is completely and utterly bonkers. And it’s brilliant. The story hits the ground running with Gary taking part in a rigged game to win back his ship—a game that involves challenges such as risking the gaze of a parrot that will show you your own death, and surviving a bite of ‘singularity pie’, the heaviest dessert in the universe—and it doesn’t let up from there. The story is essentially a romp: Jenny and Gavin have been employed by a mysterious Order to deliver a package to the Century Summit where humanity will be judged by the Pymmie, the race of immortal omnipotent aliens and judging by their physical description, Mulder and Scully would probably recognise, who enforced the truce between humanity and the Bala in the first place. It’s time sensitive and they only have 24 hours to make the delivery. Cue obstacles strewn in their path at every turn, each more potentially dangerous than the last.
But Space Unicorn Blues is more than just a superficial adventure story, there’s a real emotional core to the story and depth to the world and its inhabitants. Everyone is flawed. Some, like Jenny, recognise their mistakes and are desperately trying to make up for them; others, like Jim, refuse to even acknowledge them and just double down—with potentially disastrous consequences. Humanity doesn’t come off particularly well. They are largely represented by a government ironically known as the “Reason”, whose reasoning is the old colonial ideology of “Manifest Destiny” which has even, rather chillingly, been turned into something of an affirmative. They regard the Bala purely as property to exploit and harvest, and so the parallels to things such as big game hunting and the ivory trade as well as colonial slavery are obvious, but they emerge naturally from the text, with little to no sledgehammering.
It’s also not just physical mistreatment they’re subjected to but cultural mistreatment as well. Gary’s stoneship (think an organic Death Star), the Jaggery, for example, is in actuality a complex biome, full of flora and fauna that work together to make the ship run, with controls that are as organic and intuitive as the rest of the ship. When Jenny first took over, this was all cleared away to make it more like a human space craft (something that, we find, the ship has suffered for) and even now still tries to operate it through a jerry-rigged human technological interface.
However, there are some seeds of hope. Half Bala like Gary and relationships like the one between Jenny and her dryad wife show that there’s a possibility humanity and the Bala could one day coexist. Where the story leaves us at the end of the book shows us that day is still a long way off. Whilst the narrative objective is achieved, there are enough unanswered questions and tantalising loose ends that it’s obvious this story is not yet finished.
Combining the character diversity and interaction of Firefly and the absurdity of The Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy, Space Unicorn Blues is a brilliantly original sci-fi novel, with enough to make you think as well as being thoroughly entertaining. It also contains the best weather-forecaster-oral-sex joke ever—it may actually be the only one, but it’s still the best! Roll on the next instalment!
Space Unicorn Blues has been published by Angry Robot, and will be available from Amazon, Book Depository, and other good book retailers. Thank you to Angry Robot for providing The Nerd Daily with a copy in exchange for an honest review.
You can also check out our interview with T.J. Berry about the book, writing, and more!
Will you be checking out Space Unicorn Blues? Tell us in the comments below!
Synopsis | Goodreads
A misfit crew race across the galaxy to prevent the genocide of magical creatures, in this unique science fiction debut.
Having magical powers makes you less than human, a resource to be exploited. Half-unicorn Gary Cobalt is sick of slavery, captivity, and his horn being ground down to power faster-than-light travel. When he’s finally free, all he wants is to run away in his ancestors’ stone ship. Instead, Captain Jenny Perata steals the ship out from under him, so she can make an urgent delivery. But Jenny held him captive for a decade, and then Gary murdered her best friend… who was also the wife of her co-pilot, Cowboy Jim. What could possibly go right?
