My Big Goblin Space Program

What makes it funny?

The technology system greets Chris’s first stone knife with the grand announcement that he has unlocked “Stone stabbies.” The names keep that literal-minded logic: an invention can be “sticky” simply because it is made of sticks. The gap between space-age ambition and goblin terminology gives the engineering a running comic vocabulary.

The comedy at work

Chris supplies the technical direction, while his followers bring enthusiasm, shared knowledge and a dangerous appetite for experiments. They can learn and improve quickly, but preventable disasters keep interrupting their progress. The story makes inventiveness and foolishness coexist in the same tribe.

Try this if…

For readers who like watching a settlement develop, problems get solved and primitive inventions become increasingly ambitious. The mostly relaxed stretches of experimentation give the goblins room to be funny, with predators and outside threats adding danger. Their underdog success is part of the appeal.

Good to know

This is the first My Big Goblin Space Program novel. Chris remains a double amputee after reincarnation. Expect profanity, a fatal launch and goblins dying in destructive or preventable accidents. Jay Aaseng narrates the unabridged audiobook, which runs 11 hours 41 minutes.