God Emperor of Didcot

I've actually not read the others, but cover shots are few
and far between.

For the Empire to thrive, the tea must flow. Tea, lifeblood of the British Space Empire, is almost exclusively grown on the planet Urn in the Didcot system. When an invasion threatens to cut off the tea and rob the troops of their vital moral fibre, the Empire sends in Space Captain Isambard Smith, the best man who happens to be in the area, to sort the problem out.

I read Space Captain Smith s few years back; I recall it being pretty decent, but having got around to the sequel, God Emperor of Didcot, I find myself underwhelmed. It's not that it's terrible, there's just very little to expand on the first book; only the same gumbo of SF references and dick jokes. It also lacks proper satirical bite. SF in which the good guys work for a fascist super-state tend to work by painting the super-state as terrible, and the enemy as worse (c.f. Warhammer 40K or Judge Dredd), but Frost's narrative basically buys into the glory of Empire with very little irony*, leaving the Ghasts and the Edenites almost pointlessly vile.

I wanted to like this too. I like steampunky space opera, at least in theory.

Oh well; onwards and upwards.

* I'm sure there is some element of parody, and it is conceivable that I have just been too tired to get it, but I wasn't feeling it.