ARC Pile Review: Space Brooms!, by A.G. Rodriguez

Johnny Gomez, a custodian – or space broom – on Kilgore Station, teams up with a pair of smugglers to sell a stolen data chip full of video game avatars and finally make his fortune

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Everyone aboard Kilgore Station is living their best life. Everyone except for Johnny Gomez.

While humans, the augmented, and aliens of all shapes and sizes enjoy exotic cuisine on the dining deck, or gamble away their credits on the entertainment deck, Johnny is elbow-deep in oily, black, alien excrement. A ‘space broom’ custodian for the entire station.

This was obviously not the life Johnny dreamt of. Ten years ago, he travelled to Kilgore, the farthest space station in our solar system, in search of fortune like everyone else. Some people are just luckier than others.

Yet his meaningless, uneventful existence is immediately turned upside down when he happens upon a tiny glass data-chit, hidden amongst the alien poop he must clean up. Unbeknownst to him, every nefarious creature in the solar system will soon be after him to claim it for their own.

With the help of his augmented roommate, a pair of smugglers and a mysterious and beautiful stranger, Johnny fights off thugs and sails as fast as possible to earth’s moon, Luna, in effort to sell the chit to the Obinna Crime Syndicate. But with assassins and mobsters on their tail, the trip is anything but a cakewalk. And Luna itself proves to be nothing like a safe haven, when Johnny’s painful past finally catches up to him…

Space Brooms! is a heart-warming, tongue-in-cheek homage to all things sci-fi, from television and movies, to video games and books.

My Review

I received this book from the publisher in return for an honest review. It turned up 1st February and I probably read a quarter then, and I’ve read the remaining three quarters today. I’ve been busy, I haven’t had much reading time, although listening time has been not too bad. I finally listened to The Long Earth over a couple of days this week for the first time, although I have copies of the books.

Back to Space Brooms!

Johnny Gomez wanted interstellar travel and adventure, what he got was ten years scrubbing shit houses on the last space station before leaving the solar system. He lives in one of the worse neighbourhoods with his only friend, who owns everything in their flat, gets sexually harassed by his boss daily and has to take the long way round because staff can’t use public lifts. Until one day, when he finds a data chip in a disgustingly filthy toilet.

After that he gets attacked multiple times, meets interesting new people and goes home to the Earth’s Moon, now called Luna, where he faces the wrath of his Tia Maritza for leaving without warning. After a gun battle in a cathedral, a stint in a gaol cell, and some time working in his Tio Pablo’s junkyard, Johnny heads back out for adventure.

And it may involve cleaning toilets.

The story is told by Johnny, as he daydreams, mopes about how much of a failure he is, then how terrified he is, his lust for Lisette and back to how much of disappointment he is to all of his friends and family. He goes through a journey of personal discovery, realising that he was searching for a sense of belonging and purpose all his life and his time aboard the Mentirosa, running from criminal gangs with a group of smugglers, gave him that. He gives a speech at one point about family not always being blood and home not always being a place, but doesn’t act on it until the end of the novel. He grew as a person.

I don’t always enjoy 1st person POV because it can be so limiting, and some characters can be boring or self-absorbed, but Johnny is funny in his limited understanding of events and himself, and I enjoyed seeing him grow as a character.

The other characters are quite entertaining. Hooper is such a space cowboy, but he doesn’t know what a cowboy is, he’s shallow and hedonistic, although in some quite childish ways. Leilani is silent but deadly, although she’s also the sensible one. Lisette is complicated. She is mediated through Johnny’s infatuation with her, although as he starts to see things more clearly, we see Lisette as she is – a frustrated concert pianist, educated and intelligent, and in love with a celebrity musician/old friend, and forced by circumstances to become a fence on the station and then a smuggler. Rygar, the heavily augmented human that Johnny lives with is never short of cash, has a mysterious job, and is a hedonist. He is also Johnny’s best friend and saves him a couple of times. All of the characters have backgrounds that are explored over the course of the novel and Johnny’s knowledge and understanding develops.

The setting is a future solar system where most humans live on the moon, other planets or in space stations and ships that travel the galaxy, earthbound or spacebound. The organisation that runs the galaxy, RUSH, is a bit dodgy, but saved humans after an attack by the Xin, an alien species with a theocratic empire built on eliminating species it considered plagues on the galaxy. RUSH helped humans become a fully space-faring species after Earth was finally trashed by the Xin, but maintains order using ‘tribunals’ – Judge Dredd-like police officers that can do whatever they want in space, and turns a blind eye to criminal organisations so long as RUSH gets paid.

The data chip multiple criminal organisations are willing to pay a lot of money for, or, equally, murder Johnny for, contains three character skins for a wildly popular video game. You will recognise them when you read Johnny’s descriptions of the avatars he sees. It’s a silly pretence for a novel, but really quite entertaining.

This book is a humorous romp through space, with cowboys, aliens, uncontrolled police officers, corrupt galaxy spanning organisations, and lots of references to pop culture figures. I giggled occasionally. I cried at the end. I was a fun read.

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About the author

A.G. Rodriguez is a Puerto Rican American, multi-genre author specializing in Latino/a/e/x stories and characters. He holds an MFA in Creative Writing and has penned his debut, Stone Feather Fang, three published short stories along with four full-length manuscripts in the past ten years. They all have sequels planned, if he can just stop coming up with new projects to work on or playing his huge backlog of video games. He currently resides in the Land of Enchantment where the beautiful mountains and never-ending skies inspire all his work.