There’s nothing better than a bit of robot bashing for some good old blaster fun, and Stewart and Riddell deliver this in pacy, bite-sized chunks in this book. Reading it, I’m reminded of the stories of the generation ships, spending centuries travelling at sub-light speeds to new suns, that were a popular sub genre of science fiction when I was a teenager (a rather longer time ago than I like to think).  Showing that you can’t keep a good sub genre down, it’s obviously time for the generation ships to take off once more, what with the new Chris Pratt/Jennifer Lawrence film, Passengers, and this book kicking off a new series. If I remember right, the first iteration of the sub genre eventually disappeared up its own premises with the slow realisation that this was actually nothing more than Peyton Place in space – space opera became soap opera. Let’s see what happens this time round!