Edward Ashton has a beautiful way with words as he tells a story so outlandish YET so beautifully poignant and relevant to our humanity that one can’t help but follow along with no hesitation. Packed with wry humor, suspense, and some gritty action, I highly recommend this for fans of sci-fi genre.

I’ve had the pleasure of reading a lot of books, but The Fourth Consort by Edward Ashton might just be one of the most entertaining stories I’ve ever encountered. Edward Ashton has this incredible ability to blend dark humor, sci-fi action, and surprising depth into a narrative that keeps you hooked from start to finish. If you're looking for a wild ride that’s as thought-provoking as it is hilarious, this book is definitely for you.

The story follows Dalton Greaves, a human representative of Unity, a supposed intergalactic confederation that aims to unite all sentient life. Except, in true Ashton fashion, nothing is quite as it seems. Dalton quickly realizes that the so-called benevolent mission of Unity is far from what he's been told. The only other Unity members he encounters are more concerned with plundering than peace—specifically Boreau, a massive, shady snail-like creature, and Neera, his human sidekick who’s caught up in a dangerous game of survival.

The narrative takes a sharp turn when Dalton finds himself stuck between the Assembly—a mysterious, morally upright collective—and the chaos of alien worlds, where things are far from friendly. On top of that, he has to deal with Neera, who may just be more dangerous than the aliens or the political intrigue that surrounds him. The tension in this book is palpable, and it's a constant back-and-forth between humor and life-or-death situations that keeps you on your toes.

One of the things I appreciate most about The Fourth Consort is the blend of different genres. It’s not just a sci-fi adventure; it’s a dark comedy, a love triangle, and a first-contact story all wrapped up into one. The characters are complex and compelling, and the dialogue is sharp and witty. As Dalton navigates this bizarre and often dangerous world, you can’t help but laugh, even in the most tense moments.

Ashton’s writing is incredibly engaging, with moments of levity that make you genuinely care for the characters, even when they’re being swept up in the absurdity of their situation. Dalton, for all his flaws and confusion, is someone you root for, and Neera—well, she’s a force to be reckoned with. The chemistry between them is unpredictable, and watching their relationship evolve is one of the most interesting aspects of the story.

The book also raises a lot of philosophical questions about survival, morality, and trust. Dalton is put in situations where he has to decide how far he’s willing to go to make it out alive, and those decisions are often complicated by the fact that everyone around him is as self-interested as he is. The layers of intrigue and deception are fascinating, and they make you question what you would do in his shoes.

In short, The Fourth Consort is a brilliant blend of humor, heart, and hard choices. Edward Ashton has crafted a story that’s as unpredictable as it is entertaining, and I couldn’t put it down once I started. If you love sci-fi with a twist of comedy and a touch of romance (or danger, depending on how you see it), this book should be at the top of your list. The journey is wild, the stakes are high, and the laughs are plentiful—what more could you ask for?

I enjoyed the reflective humor and overall story. Different that what I typically read, but not without enjoyment. Definitely glad to have read it, and already recommended to a friend that I believe will enjoy it even more.

This book is irreverent and snarky in all the best ways. It drops you into an insane situation and somehow things keep getting weirder. I could absolutely see this being a series with The Fourth Consort as it's prequel, and I would absolutely read more to find out where these characters head next. This is absolutely a fun sci-fi romp and I found myself laughing, rolling my eyes and having heartfelt emotions all within one page. I recommend this for anyone who loves a quirky and weird plot, emotionally damaged ex-military characters, snarky AI and ambiguous world building. I'm usually all about lore, and I would've devoured every bit of it in this book if it were offered, but I did feel that the ambiguity fed the story and kept the plot moving, especially in a book that I imagine to be a standalone (or at the very least, is not a sweeping epic).

If you've enjoyed works by John Scalzi, find Col. Jack O'Neil endearing, and don't mind sympathizing with creatures that are essentially a giant cross between a beetle and a praying mantis (at least as I imagined them), I definitely recommend this one. If you are easily offended, prefer to avoid strong language and are new to sci-fi, you might want to skip it.

Edward Ashton has one favorite main character type, the seemingly incapable bumbling idiot, who is actually more capable then his self perception permits him to see. For The Fourth Consort our lead 'fool' is Dalton Greaves, a human who willingly joined the interstellar Unity with the task of finding other civilizations and convincing them to join with Unity.

Unfortunately for Greaves, his current mission has him stranded on the planet of the insect Minarchs. He's not alone, he has his fellow human Neera, who recruited him and Breaker. However, Breaker is from the stickmen race and part of the Unity competition, the Alliance. Highly reliant on technology to do the hard work of communication Dalton and Breaker are in competition to bring the Minarchs over to their side. This is not without risk or politics. Especially when the AI translator can only offer percentages on the accuracy of its language model.

The Fourth Consort is a story of first contact and learning about others. Dalton is frequently befuddled, and is our narrator. But his self deprecation and humor hide a keen intelligence with little hints scattered that sets the stage for a well delivered conclusion.

While intended as a standalone, I hope this universe is revisited.

Recommended for readers of science fiction, Star Trek away teams or political intrigue.

Fourth Consort is an adventurous trip to another world, where everything may not be as it seems. Whether it is the alien you are competing against or your co-worker, the qualities of a friend can be found in unlikely places. The dynamics of an alien society may not be as different from human interactions. Like all good science fiction, this novel presents opportunities for the reader to learn more about himself and his own world. With humorous as well as adventurous moments, I enjoyed reading this novel.

Thank you to Netgalley and the author/publisher for the ARC in return for an honest review.

When I first started this book, I wasn't sure what I was in for. The premise seemed interesting, and I hoped for an entertaining read. This book was that and more. I've always liked books where the main character is faced with the challenge of learning and navigating a culture different from their own. In this case, the main character (a human) is faced with trying to understand and negotiate with an alien culture that he is currently stranded with. Add some not so accurate translating of alien communication to the mix, as well as another alien agent that happens to be the enemy of the company the main character works for and you've got a recipe for disaster. What follows is a fascinating and humorous story of survival, and how far you might go to do so. That aside, along with the humor, there was also a lot of political intrigue and even some action to keep things interesting. But I feel that the best part of the story were the characters. There was a lot of depth to them, not only for the main character, but also the aliens he interacts with. As the story goes on and the more you learn about them, the more real they feel. Honestly, I'm sad that this is just a standalone because I would really like to know what happens next. All the same, I'd recommend this for fans of John Scalzi, or those of the Murderbot series by Martha Wells. As a side note for those that enjoy audiobooks, I'd highly recommend this one for that as well. The narrator is clear in their narration, and does an excellent job of giving the characters different voices through the story. It made for an enjoyable listen.

A story with the perfect blend of humor and thoughtfulness that anyone will appreciate. This is sci-fi for sure but one doesn't get bogged down in technical jargon. No, this is a character study that is fresh and relatable. I loved the alien, Breaker, most of all and would love to see a continuation of this story. Edward Ashton has quickly become a must read author for me. Thank you to Netgalley and St. Martin's Press for the opportunity to read this wonderful book.

Thank you NetGalley and St Martin's Press for the opportunity to read this ARC.

This story was not for me. It has a very interesting set up but my one book thing I can't get over are books written in present tense. It reads like a script and it was just throwing me off so much I couldn't enjoy the story. For that I give it 3 stars the layout for the story is well made and the characters are sarcastic and tense. It's an interesting layout with learning more about alien planets.

I’m rating this one almost simply for how hilarious it was that I misunderstood the true meaning of “consort’ in the title. It's not just a sci-fi term for 'diplomat'.


I really enjoyed Mickey7 when I read it, but I think I might like The Fourth Consort even better. Maybe because of how much I love Futurama, and imagine the main character Dalton as a more competent Fry and Beaker as Leela, and all of the minarchs as Zoidberg. It was a difficult image to erase from my head once it stuck.

This was laugh-out-loud funny, and made me think which is my favorite type of sci-fi. Edward, you have done it again with this one.

Edward Ashton is a really smart guy. I don’t mean just because he teaches quantum physics, but because he made bizarre, insectoid creatures completely relatable. He brings their absolutely alien world, culture and politics to life, delivering an immersive novel that goes in unexpected directions at every twist. I was trying to add a blurb summarizing the plot but it is so hard to describe that I refer you to the official synopsis. In a nutshell, Dalton has to figure out who are his friends, who are not, and how to get out of the situation that he finds himself in. Except for Dalton and his shipmate Neera, none of the characters are human. It is remarkable how I cared so much about the fate of what sounds like a gigantic tentacled ant. The details about their matriarchal society, again similar to ants’, their honor code and traditions only added to the plot. I loved the philosophical discussions between Dalton and Breaker, the other creature stuck in that world with him. The addition of the Queen’s two consorts, as well as the translator that Dalton relies on and that is not always accurate, bring some witty comic relief. The author doesn’t rely on coincidences or miracles and the characters only have their resourcefulness to survive (or not). Entertaining, funny and poignant.
I chose to read this book and all opinions in this review are my own and completely unbiased. Thank you, NetGalley/St. Martin's Press.

I'll start by saying that I enjoyed this more than Mickey7, which was a bit of a disappointment for me, so I'm overall happy with this book, though I was nervous going into it.

What I liked:
-The different alien biologies and cultures were explored well and were creative. I felt like the different races were unique enough from ourselves and each other to create good tension and interest. Their differences created interesting situations due to misunderstandings and creative physical engagements based on their physiology.
-I found the comments about humans being prey animals and how we don't exactly fit the mold for either predator or prey to be thought provoking.
-The main character was nice to follow. He was a bit passive but the situation he was placed in needed a character like that. I liked his humor and his growth over the course of the book.
-The humor overall in this book was a step up from Mickey7, which felt a little juvenile. The main character had some funny moments but most of the humor that I enjoyed was from the AI translator and the consort duo that he meets later in the book.

What I didn't like:
-Neera didn't really have any function in the story more than a plot device. She wasn't in it much after the beginning so this didn't bother me a lot.
-While I did enjoy the worldbuilding of the aliens, I would have liked a little more to get a better sense of the factions at play.

This is an interesting book. Set in the near-ish future, there are sentient species throughout the galaxy, with two groups vying for dominance of worlds that have not joined the larger community. Dalton is a human that is recruited by one of these groups to be a grounder, or the person that initially goes down to newly discovered worlds. This book explores cultures and how beings fit within them. Dalton has always been told that his employer is the benevolent group, while the other is bad. But what if that isn’t quite right? He ends up stranded on a planet and is pulled into the political intrigues of the local species, all while trying to figure out Breaker, a representative from the “other” galaxy spanning group. What will Dalton do to survive? Does his life mean more than an entire species? All of these questions are touched on throughout the book.

No job, no family, no girlfriend, Dalton signs on for space service with the ammies (giant snails). The ammies compete with the Assembly, another alien race. The ammies portray themselves as the good guys, but is that the truth? The story unfolds on a planet run by giant ants and with Dalton and Breaker (a stickman from the Assembly) vying for favor.
I wasn’t sure what to expect at first, but before long, I was completely captivated. Dalton’s and Breaker’s characters evolve during the story, which is complex with cultural differences.
I enjoyed the story and the ending was unexpected, but perfect.
Thanks to St. Martin’s Press and NetGalley for the ARC.

This was an interesting read, though I found Dalton Greaves to be not quite as charming as Mickey, from Ashton's previous books. The flashbacks to bits of Dalton's life on Earth reminded me a bit of Andy Weir's writing. To be honest, I had a hard time picturing the different alien species and ended up thinking of them as giant insects. And I am still confused as to why Dalton became a consort at all.

An exciting space job was supposed to be the way for Dalton to get away from his boring, sad life on Earth. However his latest mission turned out to be over his head. He has encountered scary aliens he is to appease but the AI translator isn’t even sure that it has explained its culture or language correctly. Soon his life depends on his actions. The Fourth Consort by Edward Ashton uses snark, humor and miscommunication to provide excitement toward the next page. Ashton employed humor in his Mickey7 duology, but it fell flat for me because of the sadness and fear that kept cropping up. In this novel it is well used in Dalton’s narrative and other character’s comments also. In addition there are well developed secondary characters who we are trying to decipher all the way to the ending. The Fourth Consort is a fun science fiction romp with aliens and new civilizations to learn. I think that Ashton would do well to continue with more episodes/ sequels trying to bring other alien groups together. True science fiction with stakes, but fun.

Alien diplomacy, extraterrestrial political intrigue, and humor
Dalton Graves meets Neera Agarwal in a bar in West Virginia, but their encounter is far from the usual bar hookup. Neera recruits Dalton to work for Unity, a pan-species interplanetary group whose goal is to promote good relations among all sentient species. Dalton anticipates some exciting times, but they go beyond expectation, like participating in duels and serving as a consort to the First-Among-Equals of one of the species Unity is trying to recruit.
Needless to say, Dalton finds himself dealing with quite a diverse group of people (He and Neera are the only humans in the book.), and this is both the strength and, to this reader, the weakness of The Fourth Consort. It was difficult for me to keep all the characters and species straight. A great deal of attention was given to setting up the situation and the relationships and giving background. Many SF fans may enjoy this; I wanted to action to get going sooner than it did. I would also have liked to see more character development and exploration. There were some interactions between Dalton and a “stickman” known as Breaker that were nice, but it was hard to see the motivation of most of the entities.
One element that DID take off quickly, though, was the humor, and my Kindle has a goodly number of Ha ha’s in the margins.
As the book ends, Dalton signs up for more adventures and exploration, so readers who enjoy intergalactic adventures may be hearing about them in the future.
I received an advance review copy of this book from NetGalley and St. Martin’s Press

This is my first book by this author as someone who doesn't typically read sci-fi. This book was funny, but in a tasteful way. It was really well-written and it was a great introduction to me for this author.

Edward Ashton's (author of Mickey7, soon to be a movie under the title Mikey17) newest stand-alone science fiction novel presents us with an first contact adventure story that is also an exploration of both honor and the "stranger in a strange world" style adventure. This book shocked me in how effortlessly funny it could be at times and yet also very poignant.

On it''s surface, this is a story about a pair of humans (Dalton and Neera), working for an interstellar "organization" (polity? empire? it is very unclear) called Unity who are stranded on a first-contact world after their employer (patron species?) destroys their starship against the ship of Unity's great adversary, the Assembly. Both sides claim to be working for the betterment of intelligent species in the galaxy, but as becomes clearer over the course of the novel...maybe Unity isn't as good as it claims to be? Stranded with them is an agent of Assembly, a "stickman" who goes by the name Breaker, and it is Dalton and Breaker who are led off to the "capital city" (it isn't, but it also is) of the alien civilization (the "minarchs") on the unnamed planet.

The plot more or less moves on from there as Dalton, our viewpoint character, learns about the minarchs and gets caught up in their internal politics. There's a lot to unpack in all of this, which the novel deftly does over its sparse number of pages. A lot of the nature of predator and prey species is explored as well as the nature of honor, which is different for all species present in the story. We slowly begin to wonder whether Unity is as noble as it seems, or what exactly is going on with the minarch civilization.

I do wish there had been a tad more world-building regarding Unity and Assembly. I'm all for "show don't tell," but I had a lot of questions regarding why Dalton would just take Breaker at his word (though lying certainly seems to be anathema to them). A bit of first hand desciption of what Unity had been truly up to might have helped things. Likewise, Neera comes across as extraordinarily shallow (until the very very very end) in her wants and desires.

But that's beside the point. This book at points is laugh out loud hilarious ("Bob" and "Randall" are particular highlights - I enjoyed every scene they were in), a fascinatingly alien civilization/culture, hints of a possible wider story in the future (I don't know if Ashton plans on writing more set in this universe, but I'd be up for it) and an excellent exploration of what makes humans different (I never saw the climax coming). Really enjoyed this and recommend it to anyone interested in good first-contact story.

Thank you to NetGalley and St. Martin's Press for an advance reader copy. All opinions are my own and are uncompensated. The Fourth Consort is out February 25th and you can preorder it now!

This fast-paced exploration of cultural differences, honor, and human expectations is a lot of fun. You are thrown right into the action and it doesn’t slow down, with really strong pacing. There isn’t really a lot of meat on the bones here, which is perfectly fine. The story has an objective and the writing and pacing outline and aim toward that the whole time, so you are never bored.

The main character was interesting and felt genuine and understandable. The ancillary characters were fun, but I do think they could have been filled out a little more. That is especially true for two of the ancillary characters, Neera and Breaker, both who had an important influence on our main character’s journey. They both were fun, but felt like they had more potential. Another pair of ancillary characters, the second and third consorts, provided a wonderfully dry comic relief and they fulfilled their narrative role splendidly. Overall the characters were fun and worked in the story, but across the board we could have spent a little more time with any of them and I wouldn’t have minded.

The writing was simple and direct, which worked for the story. Sometimes it felt a little too self-aware for my tastes, once in a while being a little heavier handed on the meta sarcasm than needed, which did take away a little of the gravitas that the character and situation kind of warranted. It was never too excessive though, it was just a few one-liners that felt like a hat on a hat. However, overall the tone worked, and approached a life-and-death situation with a levity that made it fun to tag along. Every chapter we got one paragraph or so, usually but not always at the start of a chapter, describing something about our main character’s past, filling in his life history, especially as it applies to whatever situation that chapter finds him in. Some of these felt a little too convenient, but overall it was a really effective structure. It never slowed down the main action, allowing for the tight and propulsive pacing to continue, but it gave more color to the character and to his reactions and decisions.

The story did approach some interesting ideas, but it never went that far with any of them. Obviously the overall intergalactic projects of the two companies, the Unity and the Assembly, to make contact with and safeguard/shepherd sentient life on other planets, has a whole lot of social and moral ideas wrapped up in it, ideas that are never really explored. What is more explored is the idea of honor, and what it means to be truthful to yourself in the face of differing cultural expectations. These ideas were interesting, but these too felt pretty simplistic in their exploration. While our main character had the appearance of going on an inner journey it didn’t feel all that profound or remarkable. This is in part because we didn’t see him acting in any ways contradictory to the moral place he ends up, we just have to trust that this was a journey for him, especially as it is contrasted with his coworker’s decisions. So I wasn’t entirely sold on the journey, nor on the depth of investigation into any of the ideas that are broached, but you know what? That is perfectly fine. Because this story was quick and fun and to the point, and the fact that it very explicitly even brought up these ideas gave me something to think about. There wasn’t a lot of internal wrestling on the characters’ parts but that doesn’t mean they didn’t offer interesting things to explore outside of the story’s pages. Plus, while I don’t know how epic or transformative of an inner journey our main character may have gone on, I still really enjoyed where he ended up. It felt like the right place for our character, and it was a satisfying way for the events of the story to unfold. Nothing felt forced or hackneyed, and even the story developments that were expected were still enjoyable.

This story is quick and fun, with interesting characters and alien races that I enjoyed spending time with. The writing and style for the story well, being very fast-paced with a story that kept you turning pages. The world-building was simple but effective, an expanded version of our world that was easy to fall into and felt believable. I wouldn’t have minded if some of the ancillary characters had a little more to do, and maybe if there were a few other misdirects or supplementary stories or ideas explored, but that is because I enjoyed the world and characters and felt the time with them too brief. Yes, the story could have gone a little deeper, but it is hard to fault it for not overstaying its welcome, especially if the ride is as fun as this one is.

I want to thank the author, the publisher St. Martin’s Press, and NetGalley, who provided a complimentary eARC for review. I am leaving this review voluntarily.