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Willful Child
Willful Child
Jul 27, 2025 2:50 AM

Author:Steven Erikson

Willful Child

These are the voyages of the starship, A.S.F. Willful Child. Its ongoing mission: to seek out strange new worlds on which to plant the Terran flag, to subjugate and if necessary obliterate new life life-forms, to boldly blow the...

And so we join the not-terribly-bright but exceedingly cock-sure Captain Hadrian Sawback - think James T Kirk crossed with ‘American Dad' - and his motley crew on board the Starship Willful Child for a series of devil-may-care, near-calamitous and downright chaotic adventures through ‘the infinite vastness of interstellar space’...

The bestselling author of the acclaimed Malazan Book of the Fallen sequence has taken a life-long passion for 'Star Trek' and transformed it into a hugely entertaining spoof on the whole mankind-exploring-space-for-the-good-of-all-species-but-trashing-stuff-with-a-lot-of-hi-tech-kit-along-the-way type over-blown science fiction adventure. The result is smart. inventive, occasionally OTT and often very funny - a novel that both deftly parodies the genre and pays fond homage to it.

Reviews

Willful Child is a love letter to 'Star Trek' and its fans - a pitch-perfect tour de force; Erikson walks a very fine line without ever once stumbling.

—— ROBERT J SAWYER, Huge Award-winning author of Fast Forward and Red Planet Blues

This comical tale will not only delight space fans but will more than cement him into many readers TBR lists. . . cracking prose alongside an author who knows how to create a tale that readers will just love to get behind . . .will have you chuckling along as it unfurls.

—— FALCATA TIMES

A thrilling and hilarious read...if you are fan of Steven Erikson; if you are a fan of Star Trek; if you are a fan of science fiction, its tropes, and making fun thereof; if you are a fan of comedy, hilarity and spoof; if you are a fan of any of these, or just like a good read that will keep you up into the wee-hours of the morning, then Willful Child by Steven Erikson is simply a must-read!

—— FANTASY BOOK REVIEW

A new Tessa Hadley is a pleasure to be savoured… The Past is a hugely enjoyable and keenly intelligent novel, brimming with the vitality of unruly desire.

—— Sameer Rahim, four stars , Daily Telegraph

Hadley is an exquisite writer, with a fine eye for detail and a way of crafting sentences that make you stop and inhale

—— The Times

Tessa Hadley recruits admirers with each book. She writes with authority, and with delicacy: she explores nuance, but speaks plainly; she is one of those writers a reader trusts.

—— Hilary Mantel

Tessa Hadley has become one of this country’s great contemporary novelists. She is equipped with an armoury of techniques and skills that may yet secure her a position as the greatest of them.

—— Anthony Quinn , Guardian

My favourite contemporary novelist... Nobody explores the mystery of relationships better than Hadley.

—— Deborah Moggach

A masterful novel

—— Spectator

Tessa Hadley is funny, precise, sensuous, and one of the best writers of family life that you are ever likely to encounter – simultaneously sympathetic and penetrating

—— Daily Mail Books of the Year

She deserves all the prizes. Hadley is psychologically acute, drily witty and…absolutely wonderful on place

—— Observer

Splendid… Hadley’s gift for depicting the interior lives of children and adults rivals Ian McEwan’s

—— Chicago Tribune

Tessa Hadley excels at presenting the contrasting viewpoints of children, teenagers and adults, and her evocative descriptions of the English countryside are a delight.

—— Anthony Gardner , Mail on Sunday

Poetic, tender and full of wry humour. A delight

—— Sunday Mirror

Tender dissection of a certain sort of English middle-class life is magnificently done: half celebration, half elegy.

—— Phil Baker , Sunday Times

Tessa Hadley has an exquisite eye for detail.

—— Joanne Finney , Good Housekeeping

Full of wonders

—— Observer

A brilliant British take on two generations of family inhabiting the same house.

—— Tim Martin , Daily Telegraph

An astute and finely written novel

—— Stylist

Exquisite… For anyone who cherishes Anne Tyler and Alice Munro, the book offers similar deep pleasures. Hadley crystallizes the atmosphere of ordinary life in prose somehow miraculous and natural.... Extraordinary

—— Washington Post

An extremely affecting novel of cumulative richness, yet there is nothing ponderous about Hadley’s sparkling and sensuous prose: she captures the comedy of family life brilliantly.

—— Stephanie Cross , Lady

No one writes family like Hadley

—— Vogue

A classy, observant page turner.

—— Woman and Home

Sharply delicate.

—— Cathy Rentzenbrink , Stylist

Tender and well-made and poignant, it is a gentle delight.

—— Cressida Connolly , Oldie

Masterly yet understated fiction.

—— Lucy Scholes , Independent

Time and again, the sheer truthfulness of Hadley’s writing blows me away. In the last section, the beauty of the structure unfurls like a peacock’s tail.

—— Saga Magazine

Subtle and beautifully written.

—— Peter Parker , Spectator

Probably the best novel of the year.

—— Philip Hensher , Spectator

Draws sibling love and rivalries with as much gentle satire as poignancy.

—— Arifa Akbar , Independent

No one delineates familial bad behaviour the way [Hadley] does.

—— Rachel Cooke , Observer

Tessa Hadley has the natural bent of a short-story writer, given to careful description and the kind of feinted closure that pushes uncomfortably past happily ever after.

—— Radhika Jones , Time Magazine

Hadley is so insightful, such a lovely writer, that she pulls you right into the tangle of wires that connect and trip up the stressed siblings.

—— People Magazine

Her best so far

—— Evening Standard

Hadley is expert at conveying emotion... The way she draws each character is so good the book feels like a huge achievement. Her best so far.

—— Evening Standard

Hadley, who won the Hawthornden prize this month for The Past, is literary fiction’s best kept secret. Don’t let her fellow novelists keep her for themselves.

—— Alex O'Connell , The Times

[The Past is] magnificently done: half celebration, half elegy.

—— Phil Baker , Sunday Times

There are hints of Larkin in her tender descriptions of landscape and imaginative responses to the ineffable… All her books are wonderful.

—— Anthony Quinn , Guardian

This is a hugely enjoyable and keenly intelligent novel, brimming with the vitality of unruly desire.

—— Sunday Telegraph
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