Hard Luck Hank: Screw The Galaxy by Steven Campbell (4.5 stars)

This is noir sci-fi comedy. Wrap your head around that, or "Eat suck, suckface". Hank is an amazing character, I loved him from the beginning. He's a self-described thug and a mutant with a superpower - he's very dense (heh), which makes him very hard to hurt. He has an offbeat, self-deprecating sense of humour that is just perfect. I can't remember the last time I liked a character so much.

 The story is exciting and ridiculous. Hank ends up negotiating on behalf of the human race with a vastly technologically superior race in a monogrammed pink bathrobe:

I looked at the robe for some time, wondering if I should get them to exchange it, but they had gone to the trouble to get it monogrammed. Besides, just because pink was a pansy color where I came from didn't mean anything out here. For all I knew it could be the galactic color of death and destruction.

The Colmarian world Campbell has built is hilarious in a dark way, and every bit as dysfunctional and contradictory as you'd expect a space station run by criminals to be.

The only thing Colmarians found more frightening than effective government was Ontakians: the race that had designed my very special plasma pistol.

I'll be reading more of this series.

4.5 stars