Three Episodes In- Pay me Bug!

“Pay Me, Bug!” by CB Wright is a space opera sci-fi series about a smuggler crew of a spaceship. It’s got cool aliens and physics-defying FTL, giant spaceships, snarky commentary. It’s a trope fest. Which is why I loved it. It fits in the same niche as my own‘”Seraph’s Gambit” and Aristeia. I write in that genre for a reason.

The series, originally written as a novel I am led to believe, starts out ruminating about the mechanics of the worlds faster-than-light travel. It doesn’t go on too long but provides a way of easing into the mechanics of the world and a way of introducing Captain Grif Vindh. Many authors fail to pull that off, often turning the introduction into an info dump.

The story starts off in media res with our heroes running after a botched job. We’re introduced to this fact naturally, with the crew interacting with each other, mostly ridiculing Grif’s nephew who accidentally broadcast the crew’s internal comms to a nearby patrol ship. This allows us to start to get to know some of the crew.

One potential issue arises here. The crew of the Fool’s Errand is quite large. We’re only really able to get a handle on Grif, Amys and Doma. To a lesser extent, Ktk and Morgan play a role. But that’s okay. A book can have more characters than you can keep track of just so long as you don’t have to keep track of them to follow the story. So far we’re told everything we need to know.

Nabbed by a massive ship of the Radiant Throne, commanded by Commodore Mavis, a man with a strong dislike of Grif, the crew struggles to find a way out without losing their cargo. Grif issues some orders that both sounds like he has a plan and confuses his crew. In the confrontation with Mavis, Grif plays a role that suggests he has something else going on but it’s not quite clear what. The third episode ends with him laughing in private, presumably at how he just pulled a fast one on everyone. I’m eager to read the next episode to learn more.

The prose is well done and the characters are very entertaining. I fully intend to finish this one. And to my great joy, it is indeed complete so I can keep reading all the way to the end.

If I have one concern with the series it would be the length. Each chapter is 3-4 thousand words. That works fine as a chapter but for a quick morning read as a serial it does take a bit of time. But that’s just a personal preference. The story works and I’m not bored reading it. I’m just impatient.

Overall, I gave it five stars on Top Web Fiction and look forward to reading more.