The Fourth Consort, by Edward Ashton
10 Mar 2025The Book
Synopsis:
A new standalone sci-fi novel from Edward Ashton, author of Mickey7 (the inspiration for the major motion picture Mickey 17).
Dalton Greaves is a hero. He’s one of humankind’s first representatives to Unity, a pan-species confederation working to bring all sentient life into a single benevolent brotherhood.
That’s what they told him, anyway. The only actual members of Unity that he’s ever met are Boreau, a giant snail who seems more interested in plunder than spreading love and harmony, and Boreau’s human sidekick, Neera, who Dalton strongly suspects roped him into this gig so that she wouldn’t become the next one of Boreau’s crew to get eaten by locals while prospecting.
Funny thing, though—turns out there actually is a benevolent confederation out there, working for the good of all life. They call themselves the Assembly, and they really don’t like Unity. More to the point, they really, really don’t like Unity’s new human minions.
When an encounter between Boreau’s scout ship and an Assembly cruiser over a newly discovered world ends badly for both parties, Dalton finds himself marooned, caught between a stickman, one of the Assembly’s nightmarish shock troops, the planet’s natives, who aren’t winning any congeniality prizes themselves, and Neera, who might actually be the most dangerous of the three. To survive, he’ll need to navigate palace intrigue, alien morality, and a proposal that he literally cannot refuse, all while making sure Neera doesn’t come to the conclusion that he’s worth more to her dead than alive.
Part first contact story, part dark comedy, and part bizarre love triangle, The Fourth Consort asks an important how far would you go to survive? And more importantly, how many drinks would you need to go there?
My Review
The Fourth Consort is an excellent sci-fi novel, written by Edward Ashton (Mickey7, Mal Goes To War), and published by Solaris Book. An absolutely astounding mix between a lot of humour, alien politics and the interventionism over social orders, supported by an excellent cast of secondary characters and a deep exploration of themes such as conquest, exploitation and colonization.
An intriguing story following Dalton Greaves, an ex-soldier turned into emissary for the Unity, a pan-species federation working to bring all sentient life into a "benevolent brotherhood", and against the efforts of the Assembly, a group that claims to do the same. Stranded into a bug-alien planet after an event, he will find himself entangled into a political fight, becoming the fourth consort of the ruling queen; all while Breaker, a stickman from the Assembly, is also trying to bring the species towards his own organization. We will not only see how the alien society works, but also how Breaker and Greaves will slowly get together, and even understand how notions such as honor work from their own prism.
Ashton brilliantly weaves a fun story which encloses a fair share of social commentary, all while we keep wondering which will be the next desventure our Greaves will suffer while on his role for the Unity; the difficult societal equilibrium that is broken as a result of external interference, and the structures of power seen from the eyes of a foreigner. Personally, I totally enjoyed the kind of bromance that is established between Greaves and Breaker, coming from really different backgrounds, but that slowly coming into shared grounds, breaking those preconceived ideas they had. Unity and Assembly are no more than two aspects of the same kind of colonialism, applied to the universe.
I have to recognise that even if the world-building is just secondary to the story, I was particularly intrigued by how this bug-alien society was organised; we get a glimpse of their traditions and rituals, but from the lense of a foreigner with his own targets. The pacing is really on the spot, making of this a book that you quickly devour.
The Fourth Consort is a fun but clever novel, an excellent proposal that I heartily recommend if you are interested in exploring themes such as assimilation and colonialism in a sci-fi setting. Another excellent novel by Edward Ashton, proving he's a powerhouse of the genre.
The Author/s
Edward Ashton
Edward Ashton is the author of the novels Mickey7, Three Days in April and The End of Ordinary. His short fiction has appeared in venues ranging from the newsletter of an Italian sausage company to Escape Pod, Analog, and Fireside Fiction. He lives in upstate New York in a cabin in the woods (not that Cabin in the Woods) with his wife, a variable number of daughters, and an adorably mopey dog named Max, where he writes—mostly fiction, occasionally fact—under the watchful eyes of a giant woodpecker and a rotating cast of barred owls. In his free time, he enjoys cancer research, teaching quantum physics to sullen graduate students, and whittling. You can find him online at edwardashton.com or on Twitter @edashtonwriting.