by
Captain Ales is a lonely smuggler at the galaxy's Outer Verge, and the last of his people. He's been trying to move on from a life of drugs and meaningless sex, but finding love in this forgotten corner of the galaxy is difficult.
When he's sent on a mysterious smuggling mission to a world under siege, he's enticed by promises of the domination he craves. But soon Ales finds himself entwined in a galactic power struggle that could cost him everything.
Excerpt
Siege Weapons
Harry F. Rey © 2018
All Rights Reserved
Chapter One
Alone at the space station bar, I checked the screen on my wrist-tech for the hundredth time. The smooth silvery material as thin and flexible as a flower petal contoured perfectly to my bumps and scars. The device came alive, but still no message from him.
READ MOREHe wasn’t late anymore; he wasn’t coming. I sighed and pushed away the plate of imported meat I’d picked through for the last three hours. I didn’t know why I’d even wasted the money on it. When I’d arrived at Baldomar, this crummy little flank-yard station orbiting a dead star, I’d been horny, not hungry. As the hours went by, my anticipation had turned to anxiety, then nervousness, and finally, a dejected state of knowing I’d been right all along. He never was going to come, and I was stuck footing the bill for an expensive dinner I didn’t want and a shitty room I wouldn’t sleep in. Plus, I was at least eight hours away from where I needed to be.
The bar curved around the station’s front edge, the long window displaying a view of a black starless nothing. It was busy, but I happened to be the only homosapien here. Finding someone else to keep me occupied in this array of tentacles and translucent eyeballs was out of the question. Call me a racist, but I was only into humans. Besides, I doubted there would be any humans at all out here, let alone male ones interested in me. This was heterosapien space. They didn’t like that term, but with hundreds of thousands of sentient, space-faring, nonhuman species in the galaxy, there was no way anyone could remember, let alone pronounce most of their native names. So since forever they’d been lumped together as heterosapiens, hetero meaning different, as opposed to us homosapiens.
The dark expanse of the Outer Verge was the most isolated and sparsely populated place in the galaxy. But to be sure, I checked my wrist again. No messages. Again, I conducted a pointless scan of who might be around. As the wrist-tech searched for any homosapien male who’d registered at least a passing interest in the same sex, alerts flashed and danced around the screen. The more annoying ones swerved around the screen to the back of my wrist before I could swipe them away.
Free ship repairs with a room booking on Rastel Station. I saved that; my own one-person transport ship was older than me and held together with little more than hope.
Mineral ore prices continue to plummet. That would hurt those bastards over at Galactic Shipping Co., my ex-employer.
Trades Council rules against Jansen in galinium mining dispute. Jansen was a planet at the edge of the Verge, beyond the slipstream, and a place I couldn’t even pretend to be interested in.
There are no users matching your requirements on this station.
Same as five minutes ago. I dragged my fingers across the screen and expanded the search.
There are no users matching your requirements in this system.
Shit; not one dick in the whole damn system. I sighed again, harder, waving my wrist at the infra-ceptor for another drink of something strong and orange that burned my throat. I turned on my stool away from the crowd of ever-rowdier heteros. I’d entertained their squealing for hours and was beyond sick of it.
“Eat enough of that stuff and you’ll lose your hot body, mister.”
I immediately recognized the fake, sickly sweet voice of an AI. Rent a bot for one night and they’ll follow you around forever.
“Heard that line before,” I said without even turning.
“Well, with an ass like that you can have anything you want. Feel like buying me a drink, mister?”
It slid itself across the bar to get right in my face, flexing fake muscles under a poly casing and fluttering cheap plastic eyelashes over its visual receptors. It disguised itself as a hot young blond guy, pecs poking through a black mesh shirt, thick legs encased in tight shorts showing off a butt big enough to dock a ship in. All this happened to be pretty much my type—well, my conventional type at least. The other things I liked could only be provided by a select few, with Ukko being the only one in the whole damn Outer Verge I knew of right now.
“It’ll fry your circuits. Now buzz off before I shove an EMP up your ass.”
Its elbow lifted off the bar with a faint electronic snap and it slinked away. The bot scanned the rest of the place, no doubt after some leaky data to go code itself into the next unsuspecting soul’s metallic fantasy. Although there’s fat chance with this crowd of heteros. I didn’t even want to imagine what sick sexual thoughts went through their minds.
With a beep, a new message displayed on my wrist. Finally.
Hey Ales, couldn’t make it, had to jump. Something came up, you know how it is. I should be on Targuline next week; maybe we can get a room there instead? See you. Ukko
I waved for another drink and slammed my fist on the bar. Why did I believe him? We’d met once, totally random, in a system I couldn’t remember. We’d fucked in his ship, a security patrol vessel. It’d been everything I’d fantasized about, and the best thing to happen to me in a long, long time. I could get what I needed in any pleasure palace in any major world or even a decent-sized station. But, like renting a bot, it only gave the illusion of gratification. Ukko had given me what I wanted, what I craved.
We’d met, chatted. He’d made me laugh, bought me a drink. His job made it more exciting, more dangerous. We’ve got to use your ship, not mine, I’d told him, as he might’ve arrested me if he’d seen what I had stored in my hold. Of course, I hadn’t been joking. Ukko worked in security, or what passed for it here in the Outer Verge; the loose band of a few hundred self-ruled systems occupying the spiral “arm” that juts out from the rest of the galaxy. We were too insignificant and too isolated to attract the machinations of galactic power. Out here, we operated under our own rules.
Prospering meant being the smartest, quickest, or strongest, and I was none of those. Across the vast distances of the Outer Verge, to venture beyond the atmosphere of your own world was to wrestle with smugglers, gangs, and astronomical phenomenon that wasn’t found in any training manual or weather forecast.
The danger also gave rise to opportunity; no tolls, no tariffs, no taxes. Only Ukko flying around collecting bribe money in between his busy schedule of fucking everyone who wasn’t me, apparently.
I downed my drink, not caring about its cost anymore. As soon as my boss got his tentacles on me, I’d be in major shit. Enough time and fuel had been wasted to end up nowhere near the last delivery or the depot, so there was no reason for me not to get drunk.
All because what seemed to me a solid promise wasn’t even a second thought to Ukko. I meant nothing to him. Was nothing to him. And the worst part was I couldn’t even blame him. It was my fault, trying to turn a sly encounter into a lasting relationship. I considered my response. Sending a snarky message or even showing him what he’d missed, but what would be the point? Stuck somewhere between unrequited and unfulfilled, Ukko was the story of my love life over and over again. Never fulfilling enough to gain any real satisfaction, but never unrequited enough to be able to let it go.
My scalp suddenly itched, probably from this cup of orange engine fuel, which on second thought maybe wasn’t fit for homo consumption. My fingers dug through thick black curls, cursing the fact I kept any hair at all. The thought of shaving it all off frightened me. Perhaps the fear that someone from my distant past wouldn’t recognize me if I did. I shook my head at how ridiculous that was, and I caught the itch. Finally came the soothing sensation of nail on skin.
Where was he, my rescuer? The one who would fight through life with me, make the pain of past dissipate to mere atoms.
Out of the din of unfamiliar languages came a shriek at the other end of the bar. Followed by the sound of a wet and heavy thing hitting the floor. I tried to ignore it. Normally I’d love to watch a good hetero fight. Or even join in. But I couldn’t enjoy the spectacle in this depressed state.
I cracked my neck, the closest thing to satisfaction I’d get now, and it shot through me like a syringe full of Kri. Maybe there would be some of the bright blue drug on the station. I brought my wrist halfway up, thinking about searching for a vial, and ordered another drink by accident from the infra-ceptor. On second thought, Kri on my own was no fun. Without an orgy to go to, all that nano-induced energy went to waste. The bar-bot refilled my glass, and I knocked back the extra drink. I tried to stand. Drunk again. This time, I pushed myself against the bar and made it all the way up.
Shit. Guess I’d be using the room after all.
I stumbled along to the exit, almost holding it together. It was so much easier to fly drunk than walk. I glanced over to check out the fight’s aftermath. A gaggle of blobby and tentacled heteros were huddled around whichever one had gotten injured. I couldn’t figure out if it had lost a vital appendage, but it seemed like they were trying to scoop a blob off the floor and reattach it. Seriously, what was the big deal with losing one glutinous blob if your entire body was literally glutinous blobs? I didn’t know if they were crying or laughing. Damn heterosapiens.
Something beeped, another message. In the hazy moment before my eyes adjusted, a spark twitched in my trousers. Perhaps this trip wouldn’t go to waste.
Ales – get your scrawny black ass back to the depot nows. I gots a jobs for you.
Javer still hadn’t learned plurals. My boss, the dumb-fuck tentacle dick. How did he even know my skin was black if his globby-ass species had sniffers for eyes? There were certain places his type couldn’t even set a blob in, let alone order around a homo. Us skin bags might dominate most of the galaxy, but out here was cold, hard equality. Part of me so wanted to hit back at Javer. I reminded myself I’d come to the Outer Verge to get far away from that sort of oppression, any sort of oppression. Plus, I wasn’t exactly captain of the week. The last job dropped my punctuality rating to less than 50 percent, well below the firing threshold.
The truth was I didn’t want to go back. I was done, beyond done. I couldn’t take another yelling from him, or another job basically smuggling contraband. Javer didn’t even pretend the planetary import licenses had anything to do with the cargo anymore. He didn’t care about the moments of terror I faced while bribing or blagging my way through another delivery. The free-trading worlds of the Verge were his opportunity to sell anything and everything that would bring a profit.
A sudden stab of pain hit my lower back, the muscle memory of my last delivery gone wrong; twenty-four hours chained to a wall in a customs prison on Kerjan. All for what? Another planet; another lonely bar, another fruitless search for satisfaction at the lost edge of sentience. Another message.
Get backs nows.
The elevator took me to the right corridor, and my hands ran along either side of the fluorescent-lit wall, steadying myself while avoiding condensation drips from the ceiling. I tried to figure out how long I might reasonably expect to live if I ever decided to fuck it and run.
The room had a chill, the kind you only get in deep space. I stumbled, still couldn’t figure out how to get the lights on. Ukko wouldn’t have been impressed anyway. Probably a good thing he’d never showed after all. The promise of sex was usually better than the real thing, I’d come to learn. I pushed off my boots and, seconds before collapsing, carried out my nightly ritual.
“I believe in the continuity of existence, in the eternity of our people. That the glory of our past will never be forgotten and the greatness of our future will always be remembered. Oh victorious one, conqueror of the universe, restore us, your faithful army. Oh merciful one, mother of all, deliver us from exile. May your people grow strong and numerous, as in the days before. May we sweep across the stars, and may tomorrow herald the coming of your dominion over all worlds.”
I fell onto the bed, my mind full with the heavy despair of many years and the memory of many deaths, and I was the only one left alive in the galaxy who knew these words.
COLLAPSEFree Dreamer on Scattered Thoughts and Rogue Words wrote:I was hopeful but not one hundred percent sure about this book going in. Sci-fi can be very hit or miss for me and this is a new-to-me author. That blurb did enough to draw me in but it doesn’t prepare you for the strong writing, the ripple effect of emotion, or the type of sex Captain Ales gets himself into. I like something with a bit of teeth, I like a surprise, so, you know, that being a lot of this story totally value-added for me. The biggest issue is how to describe Siege Weapons. Sci-fi meets master-slave, complete with rough foreplay and sex? Space drama? I think I’ll just settle on gay sci-fi/SFF with an erotic-kink bent.
First of all, there is some quality writing and world building in this book. It blew me away because I wasn’t expecting the level of vivid description that blended seamlessly into the overall story. Sometimes authors can break everything down in SFF to the nth degree and it becomes tedious reading. Sometimes they skip details that you need and it’s just a contemporary story by any other name. Neither is the case with this book. Siege Weapons is never boring, it never suffers from overkill or underdevelopment. It is most assuredly sci-fi and the sex is erotic as opposed to romantic. It works and it’s intriguing.
Everything had me hooked, from interactions Ales had with his Jar Jar Binks-esque but globular boss, Javer, to his descriptions of the different species, homosapien or heterosapien, and just the details about the galaxy he’s in and given planet he’s on. The love he has for Teva, his home planet, which was embattled then destroyed, the daily prayer he recites. sometimes at stressful times, in its memory and for those who are now lost. Then there are several men he encounters throughout this story. Initially there is Ukko, who doesn’t turn up for round two of a much anticipated sexual encounter at an Outer Verge post, and how much Ales is disappointed at his no-show.
Across the vast distances of the Outer Verge, to venture beyond the atmosphere of your own world was to wrestle with smugglers, gangs, and astronomical phenomenon that wasn’t found in any training manual or weather forecast. The danger also gave rise to opportunity; no tolls, no tariffs, no taxes. Only Ukko flying around collecting bribe money in between his busy schedule of fucking everyone who wasn’t me, apparently.
The Verge, the Outer Verge, Teva – Ales’ childhood home – the sexual freedoms of Targuline where he lived for a while with his ex, the feeling of impending doom within Jansen City, the capital of Jansen and the planet at the centre of another looming siege, one where Ales feels sick with the reminder of the loss of his home and the potential loss of someone else’s, are all very much brought to life. As is Ales’ complex set of emotions around men, sex, relationships, grief, and around a need to do the right thing in amongst those who don’t know and don’t care what it’s like to lose so much, and so easily.
General thoughts and feelings:
Captain Ales, or Ales as he is referred to throughout Siege Weapons, is a trader, a smuggler, someone who works for a heterosapien named Javer who doesn’t care how a dollar is made just so long as it is. Ales has his own ship and is willing to do what needs to be done in and around the Verge. It’s all he’s known since fleeing Teva – first with his ex, Franx, now with Javer. The Verge is his home and a place he likes for it’s openness and the ability to work and make a living within the illusion of free enterprise. But the Trades Council and now the Union are all becoming interlinked, and corruption is making it hard to make an legally-illegal living.
Instinctively, I turned my face away as an invigilator passed by. Those were the ones to watch out for. I shuddered at the memories of the more unsavory things I’d done to hide contraband from Trades Council invigilators.
Ales is given a new job from Javer, to take medical supplies to Jansen. Jansen is unknown to him but there is something about the name. Medical supplies is a euphemism for dangerous cargo. This cargo is the most delicate and complex that Ales has had to carry – another siege is centred around it and Ales. It does seem that Ales is a galactic nexus point and I’m wondering if this is going to be explored further within an ongoing series. I certainly hope so. That Ales is where things happen, events that now seem focalized around the merging of the Council and Union and his “medical supplies,” cannot be coincidental.
Turo, a hook up who becomes Ales’ master, also becomes an admiral in this new venture of a merged Union and Trades Council. He is supposedly interested in slipstreams. It seems when combining slipstreams with a dark energy it will allow travel to places not thought possible of venturing to previously.
There was nothing after Jansen we could get to, though. No slipstreams had yet been discovered that led outside the galaxy’s structure, although many an explorer had disappeared trying to find one. The great empty distances of extragalactic space were too much of a barrier for any conventional technology. MAST drives needed proximity to stars to generate thrust, using the cosmic radiation to speed between massive bodies. So they only worked inside the ecosystems of the galaxy.
I see Turo as pretty much having manipulated Ales into a quasi-relationship at this point because while Ales is looking for something, I’m not sold on it being Turo. I think their beliefs may clash but I could be proved wrong. All the while Ukko remains interestingly and tantalisingly on the periphery. I really hope that book #2 in this series continues to tell Ales’ story and what happens next. Because there is definitely a ‘next’ to be told.
There is no love in this book. There are hook-ups, sure, but not romantic ones. There’s a ménage farewell, of sorts, for Ales with his ex and his ex’s new boyfriend, a realisation that at least it wasn’t the right direction for him. Not then and not now, but it was a hell of a release.
The last thing I expected was to ever share a sexual encounter with Franx again, but here I stood, a tongue down my throat and a finger working its way inside my ass.
Boren got into a rhythm of fucking us both. He thrust into me for half a dozen strokes, then withdrew and went straight into Franx’s hole, sitting snugly above mine. Franx squirmed on top of me as he got fucked, and I kissed him hard when I got fucked.
Even with the attempts at trying for a connection with someone – Franx, Ukko, then Turo – believing that’s what he wants, there is an unsettled feeling that can’t truly allow Ales to commit, even if he illogically grumbles to himself that Ukko is interested in anyone but him. At any point, it’s really more about the sex than the person, about a certain kink to take away his pain, but Ales’ reality and his thoughts don’t sync right now.
Stuck somewhere between unrequited and unfulfilled, Ukko was the story of my love life over and over again.
Ales is all about the idea of a rescue/rescuer to take away his hurt, but he’s unsure of what that looks like or what that really means. His past still dominates his present and overlaps into his sexual connections. To that end, there are dreams and small but powerful flashbacks to the time of war on Teva when Ales was somewhat younger, his father loved by him and revered by his planet for his heroism, but then the incomprehensible happened. The luck, or is it luck at all, that saw him as the only survivor of a planet that no longer exists.
I still remembered the day the first invasion ships landed and the Crejan shock-troops stormed through our homes and farms.
The connection and sex between Turo and Ales is orgasm denial, humiliation, and it also isn’t safe or sane. Not to pathologize, but fifteen + kicks to the balls isn’t super healthy, but they’re both into it… horses for courses. I also want to add this: Turo and Ales connect via a futuristic version of Grindr. They meet up at a hotel in Jansen City, and they’re going to hook-up back in Turo’s room for the first time. They’re both up for it, what they want appears to be a fait accompli to the reader. It starts very aggressively – Turo is rough, and Ales likes it that way, he asks for ‘harder’, but he suddenly needs to off-ramp. The reader knows why, Turo doesn’t, that isn’t relevant but his actions are. We know that the time and place, another planet under siege, the physical and the emotional become one and impact Ales. Turo is erect and about to enter him when Ales says ‘stop’. It didn’t matter where they were or what they were doing, Turo stops immediately when Ales asks him to. The futuristic handcuffs, the bindings, all removed. No issues like, ‘you can’t stop now’ or ‘you were hot to trot before, you’re a tease’, no pretending like ‘Ales wanted it so I gave it to him’ – and I’ve read the last one a lot in romance books. Here, ‘stop’ meant just that. Stop. That, I respected a great deal. You can call this story porn, but it isn’t. Is it erotic? Yes, and it’s not going to be everyone’s cuppa, but I loved the surprise of where it went between Ales and Turo, and Ukkko too. I really appreciated that no, not now, meant just that.
“Stop,” I said, gasping to catch my breath. “I need a minute.”
Turo took himself back with surprise and concern for me. He undid the handcuffs, stepped away, and padded over to the bathroom.Oh yeah, not meaning to be cryptic, one of my favourite parts of this story is small but significant. Payback’s a bitch, and when someone kindly shares their weed and an honest story with another at the possible end of their world, it carries a lot of weight to an individual having experienced that before. Buh-bye, priest. Excellent – said like Monty Burns.
Overview:
This is a different story, no two ways about it. The book straddles a more serious sci-fi story and gay erotica. It’s novella sized and tackles a lot. It hits some intense moments emotionally and definitely does so in the sex department. Readers wanting pure sci-fi might find aspects disconcerting. People who have expectations of romance may also be somewhat polarised. Me? I was happy. Romance wasn’t expected or necessary, particularly given the nature of the tale, and I’m up for rough.
Siege Weapons offers a sci-fi story with emotional depth, seriously good world building, interesting characters, a quirkiness I like, then there’s some sexy times and some nasty ones. Diversity in genre is something I’m increasingly interested in and I think because of lack of time I miss a few of these books, but I didn’t miss this one, nope, and I’m so glad I didn’t. I felt like I was in space. I felt like I was in the future. I felt Flo’s story and Ales’ righteous anger over it. I also felt the loss of Teva and the pain and uncertainty that Ales faced because of it. I understood his need for connection but the inability to grasp it.
I really enjoyed this book and I would have given it 5 Stars but I’m not sure there will be more on Ales, Turo, and Ukko… and I selfishly want more. Having said that, this novella is self-contained. I also think different readers will focus on different aspects. This is an intriguing tale and I got right behind it. I’m now going to further seek out this author’s writing, I’m certainly looking forward to more in this series. For all the reasons I’ve outlined in my review – 4.5 Stars!
Jess on Love Bytes Reviews wrote:I don’t know what exactly I expected after the blurb, but “Siege Weapons” definitely surprised me.
This is one of the publisher’s “literary/genre” titles, so this is more Sci Fi with a gay MC than anything else. Which is something I’m always on the lookout for, so yay. There are several explicit sex scenes, with pretty heavy BDSM in the second half, but no real romance to speak of. The sex was hot but I can see how the BDSM elements might make some people uncomfortable. They aren’t really of the “safe, sane, consensual” sort, even if there’s no rape in this story – past or present.
Ales is a complicated man. I think we barely touched the surface of his personality. There were so many layers of him and new sides kept popping up that I really didn’t expect. I’m not sure I actually liked him in a traditional way, though I certainly cared for him. He’s the most important person of the story and we don’t learn much about the other characters, which don’t get much on-page time.
I like my books to be angsty, so I’ve read some pretty dark stuff. But “Siege Weapons” is a whole different kind of heavy. The flashbacks to Ales’ past really made my hair stand on end. And even though this is set in the distant future, it reminded me a great deal of how our world works atm. I was close to choking up once or twice, which very rarely happens.
The world building was really interesting. We meet all kinds of aliens or “homos”, as they’re called in this universe. Ales could probably called a racist, so a lot of that experience is coloured by his rather negative emotions. We also get a lot of space travel and intergalactic politics. It’s a wonder how the author managed to fit all of those elements into such a short book and make it all seem so natural.
The plot has a pretty good balance between fast-paced action scenes with a fair bit of violence and quiet introspection. There were quite a few twists and turns and that epilogue was very unexpected.
Overall, I really, really liked “Siege Weapons”. It’s solid Sci Fi with a gay MC with a lot of issues. There’s sex, but no real romance. If that’s the sort of thing that makes you sit up and pay attention, then I believe this book is for you. If, however, you’re on the hunt for a solid romance set in space, then this you’ll want to keep looking.
Personally, I’m really looking forward to the next part in the series. I want to know what happens next!
The cover by Natasha Snow is pretty cool and gives you the right idea about the contents of the book.
One of my favorite romantic dramas of 2018 so far is Harry F. Rey’s first novel of the year, Line of Succession, which I reviewed very favorably here. When I realized he’d written a gritty sci-fi story for NineStar Press, I jumped at the chance to read and review it. This is a completely different type of story from Rey’s other recent release, but it certainly contains some of the dark drama, human bitterness, and kinky sex scenes that Rey really excels at writing. It doesn’t have a completely satisfying character arc, but it’s still an incredibly enjoyable piece of erotic sci-fi.
I think Captain Ales is a really interesting, complex character. He’s not our typical tragic hero, though he is indeed tragic. He’s a man with such messed-up ideas of freedom, control, and choice that he has no idea what he wants or what he truly believes in. As the last surviving citizen of his destroyed home planet, he’s been wandering aimlessly for years, making money as a trader for a shady alien boss and trying to find fulfillment in the form of sex, drugs, and travel. He ends each day with a traditional prayer of his people, showing how he’s still grieving his lost world and struggles to preserve it while trying to survive.
When it comes to love and men, Ales is a total wreck. He’s still waiting on Ukko, a man who gave him the kind of sexual release he can’t find anywhere else, yet he constantly checks this universe’s version of Grindr, hoping for something better. He falls into bed with old friends (and their new boyfriends), avoiding the emotions that come along with his actions. He obviously craves submission and release, but every time he has sex with someone, the emptiness comes crawling back. I was actually moved to tears a few times as Ales seems to find someone, someone who will take care of him and allow him to just let go, only to realize he’s alone yet again. It’s a pervasive kind of loneliness—the sort of loneliness that comes with being one small man in an unfathomably huge galaxy.
I’m not totally in love with Turo, the man who Ales meets at a hotel on a trade gone terribly wrong. Turo isn’t characterized much beyond dominant and confident, and the ease in which Ales submits to him feels more like defeat than release. Their sexual dynamic is sizzling, and their scenes together are intense, but at this point in the story, I don’t trust Turo as much as Ales does. And the push-pull, give-take of their dynamic doesn’t always 100% work for me. Since Ales is a black character, some of the master/servant dynamic between him and Turo made me a little uneasy. I didn’t mind the extreme BDSM at all, especially since it is there for both erotic and storytelling purposes, but the choice of language didn’t always settle right with me.
I can’t say Ales’ characterization develops completely by the end, but since this is only the beginning of a series, it didn’t hinder my enjoyment too much. I love stories with characters who are seeking something and they have no idea where to find it—but by the end, they’ve found it at an unexpected source. In this case, Ales seems to fill that endless loneliness with even more dissatisfaction. It’s an odd ending, and one that I don’t think a lot of readers will click with. It isn’t an unhappy ending, but it leaves us slightly uneasy, like a calm before the storm.
Though he reaches some level of happiness by the end, I’d definitely say our Captain Ales is a man who is still searching for something. And I’d love to read future books in this series to see him grow and develop.