Douglas Adams once made an excellent joke about telephone booth sanitizers – science fictional cleaners doing an important job that went unnoticed. Now, A.G. Rodriguez has given us Johnny Gomez, a janitor or “Space Broom” on an interplanetary cruise ship. He’s a man who spends his days deep in drudgery and alien excrement. When Johnny stumbles on a small “data-chit,” his life becomes dangerously interesting. The brown-stuff he’s wading through becomes more metaphorical but a lot more deadly.
What Is Space Brooms!?
Space Brooms! is a gentle found-family science fiction comedy. It tells the story of Johnny and the group of people that he falls in with as he tries to cash in on his find. The data-chit, essentially an old SD card, is worth a lot of money, and everybody wants a piece of it. They don’t mind how much Johnny gets hurt in the process.
Johnny has attracted what seems to be every gangster mob in the Solar System. Everywhere he turns, somebody is out to kill him, or at least hurt him until he gives them what they want. Will he escape with his life? Will he get to cash in on his find? and Will he manage to ask the woman of his dreams out on a date? All important questions posed in Space Brooms!
If that wasn’t enough to lure you in, check out the Space Broom beautiful retro cover. We all know that you shouldn’t judge a book by its cover, but this one definitely helps form a positive opinion of the book
Why Read Space Brooms!?
Found family is a huge theme in science fiction right now, and Space Brooms! is another quality addition to the subgenre. Why did Johnny leave his home? Why did he never manage to live out his dreams? And why does he feel he’s not worthy of his comrade’s friendship? These questions resonate at the book’s heart – in both senses of the word. I very much enjoyed the novel’s examination of difficult family relationships and how these fractured ties can pervade through the rest of your life.
Johnny is a likeable character, as are his friends, in particular, his enigmatic, cybernetically enhanced roommate, Rygar. The story is somewhat preposterous, with the data chit acting as a classic maguffin but the narrative is strung together with some great set pieces, a host of interesting Solar-System based locations, and some engaging and inventive alien lifeforms.
Beyond the story of the data chit and underworld criminals, the real villain of the piece is perhaps Johnny himself. Not that he is a dastardly mastermind. Far from it. The real battle here is Johnny vs his self-sabotage. Space Brooms! charts a voyage across millions and billions of kilometers (with some interesting ideas on space travel), but the real journey is the personal one that Johnny navigates over the course of the book.
This personal journey is where the warmth of Space Brooms! is to be found. It’s a feel-good book suffused with humour and I enjoyed the time I spent reading it. Things are more than left open for a sequel, and I would definitely be interested to see where things head next – if for no other reason than to find out what exactly makes Rygar everyone’s favorite cyborg.
Don’t just take my word for it. This review is part of a the Space Brooms! blog tour. Take a look at what these other lovely people have to say!
If you would like to pick up a copy of Space Brooms! you can do so here, in the US, and here, in the UK. (Affiliate Links)
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I received a copy of this book in order to write this review.
