RICHARD

In Hickman’s latest SF series entry, an Earth teenager who’s also the king of the Milky Way galaxy prepares to defend his massive realm against an ancient enemy dragon.

“So many things have changed since I've left home, and it's only been about ten months,” understates young Richard Plantagenet in this continuation of a saga begun with Richard: Distant Son(2022). Until recently, he was Richard Drumm, a small-town Ohio teenager; then he found out that he’s the hereditary heir to the throne of a galactic kingdom. This spacefaring destiny has been brewing for 1,000 years, ever since his royal grandfather and immediate family members died due to a conspiracy by a jealous usurper. The revelation that a boy from Earth—a despised planet—carries the crucial Plantagenet DNA has led to much plotting and scheming; although many planets of the realm celebrate the return of the monarchy, the power-hungry Senator Spartacus and his conniving family want to take control themselves. In this installment, they launch a conspiracy to abduct and murder the teen, but are unaware that the boy’s steadfast guardian—an artificial alien lifeform, or AAL—has created an emergency duplicate of Richard, dubbed Henry, for just such occasions. Richard and Henry are switched, but the price of escape turns out to be a steep one. The Spartacus household sends an assassin among the foxlike citizens of the planet Beowulf to kill Richard’s pregnant queen, Amber. However, the essential function of the Plantagenet king is to enact a once-a-millennium defense of the galaxy, partnering with satyrs and flying horses against a banished species of long-lived, teleporting dragons. The barrier between the dragon’s prison dimension and the capital world of Krel is thinning, and Richard must do his duty.

Blending SF, mythic fantasy, not-very-hard science, and references to Hollywood SF properties (even the TV series Sliders gets a shoutout), the epic narrative offers readers a mixture of the sophisticated and the jejeune. The latter aspect is sometimes abetted by close encounters of the bathroom-humor kind; one such moment elicits this reaction: “Richard almost lost his breakfast. ‘You have got to be kidding me!’ ” There are still some unanswered questions, carried over from the series’ inception, about mighty beings who transcend time and space and oversee everything with godlike authority; they include AAL’s mentor, Olaf, an ordinary-looking old man in a battered hat who’s invisible to most. There are deeper themes at work amid the action and menagerie of unusual creatures: Human beings are portrayed as having run the Milky Way government for centuries, mainly for their own benefit, and marginalizing a vast number of other intelligent species along the way (including rabbit folk, multi-limbed extraterrestrials, merpeople, and centaurs, among others). Fair-minded Richard not only launches his progressive reign with inclusivity in government and society, but also mates with foxlike alien Amber, which many consider taboo. As such, readers should be prepared for references to interspecies sexual couplings and sperm-related procedures, as well as profanity.

A tale of a once-and-futuristic king that combines juvenile adventure elements and more mature intrigue.