Matthew Hughes is one of my favorite writers. But the vagaries of publishing today has forced Hughes to self-publish his work. Hughes’s latest book is Passengers & Perils (2022) available through AMAZON which is a fix-up novel made up of eight short stories.
Conn Labro, his lover Jenore Mordene, and Captain of the Peregrinator, Yalum Erkstachian, lease their space yacht to various clients who prefer to travel in a small starship instead of a large transport. In the first story in Passengers & Perils Conn, Jenore, and Yalum deal with a sinister death aboard their craft.
The second story concerns a kidnapping and the payment of ransom. But, things go astray.
The third story involves attempts by the criminal group Green Circle to acquire Conn’s hidden planet.
The fourth story starts with the disappearance of a woman and leads to the drug overdose of a Person of Interest.
The fifth story features Conn dealing with a spoiled son of a wealthy family who owes money in gambling debts.
With story six, the action moves to Old Earth where an enigmatic organization initiated legal proceedings to seize the space yacht Peregrinator. Conn and Jenore engage another of Matthew Hughes’s characters, the foremost freelance discriminator–Henghis Hapthorn–to help resolve the issue.
The events of story six continue in story seven as another of Matthew Hughes’s characters, the criminal Luff Imbry, joins the plot and assists–in an unlikely way–in the investigation of the problem of the Peregrinator.
The eighth and final story in Passengers & Perils send Conn and Jenore in a search for a religious idol.
Passengers & Perils provides thrilling episodic journeys from exotic planets to Old Earth filled with mystery and secrets. These marvelous adventures will delight and amuse you! GRADE: B+
I will have to get this although I have probably read most of these stories if they appeared in F&SF. I love Hughes. just finished Baldemar.
Steve, Matthew Hughes plans to release another book this summer. Hughes mentioned that he self-published PASSENGERS & PERILS after BAEN Books held the book for almost a year…and then declined to publish it.
I’ve never read Hughes, and really don’t read SF or fantasy any more. But just based on his appearances here I’m astonished by how anyone could write this much. He seems to crank out at least one new book each month. Even Stephen King isn’t doing that.
Michael, although Matthew Hughes is prolific, at the moment he’s trying to make all of his backlist titles available through self-publishing them and selling them on AMAZON. With today’s technology no book needs to be out-of-print. The process of creating e-book and print versions of older titles simplifies the procedure.
I’ve like the little of Hughes I’ve read, and I like episodic collections like this, so will probably read it.
Jeff, I think PASSENGERS & PERILS is available on AMAZON in e-book and trade paperback formats. You would enjoy PASSENGERS & PERILS.
Thank you, George for a fine review. A couple of little quibbles, because I think your spellchecker is interfering with the text: Conn’s surname is Labro, not Libra, and it’s Hapthorn, not Hawthorn.
Re my prolific output, P&P was written in 2020-21, but spent ten months being looked at by Baen Books. Rather than send it off to a small press, I decided to put it out myself. I have another Dying Earth fantasy, The Gost-Wrangler,, written last year that has been under consideration at a small press, but it has become clear to me that I can earn more from self-publishing than going that route — not a lot more, but some.
Again, thanks for the review. I appreciate the encouragement.
Cheers,
Matt
Matthew, you are correct about the demon spellchecker in WORDPRESS! It is the bane of my blogging existence! I correct names, places, etc. but the evil spellcheck changes my words into some else! I’ll make the corrections…and hope they stand. I hope you continue the self-publishing strategy so your readers can buy your books all that much more quickly!
I will keep this author in mind. I admire him for self publishing his backlist (and newer work). I like the premise of the stories in this book too. I never thought I would enjoy science fiction short stories but I have found many I like lately.
Tracy, I’m sure you would enjoy Matthew Hughes’s work. Most of his SF stories have mystery elements to them that delight me!