Ben does not know how he knows the details of bug sex or vintage timepieces, but when he speaks to someone online who knows about The Chime, he has to meet them. This takes Ben and his best friend Patton on an adventure across the galaxy, first to prevent their own deaths and then to stop the end of the universe as they know it. This is one of those mad-cap stories that captures your attention and does not let go. Fast-paced, clever, with an eclectic cast of characters, from the snarky bounty hunter to the intelligent engineer and not to forget the jar of pickles. My thanks to Angry Robot for an ARC in exchange for an honest review.

Panatier is clearly a gifted writer with an unusual way of looking at the world. I haven’t read his debut novel, The Phlebotomist, as my book blogging buddies confirmed that it is on the horror side of dark – and right now, I cannot deal with that. But once I’m better, it’s definitely on my ‘To Read’ list. This one, however, is right up my alley. Poor old Ben is on track to be one of the most unusual of this year’s protagonists that I’ll encounter. He’s afflicted with an encyclopaedic knowledge of the mating habits of insects, along with all sorts of other details regarding their lives. I learnt – thanks to one of the many, many footnotes – about the Australian Peacock spider, known as the ‘sparklemuffin’, which has now become a term of endearment in our household. Look it up – it is the most fantastical little creature. The trouble is, that from the time he could talk, Ben is driven to share these facts, along with his other hyper-obsession about watches, with anyone and everyone who’ll listen. As well as those who won’t. It doesn’t win him friends, or even make him a particularly nice person. Although, he has got a friend – dear Patton, who has to be one of the kindest people I’ve encountered in a book, without coming across as unbearable. Indeed, Patton insists on accompanying Ben when he goes to meet up with someone who professes to suffer from the same problem. Quite rightly, Patton suspects a trap and wants to be there to look out for his buddy. It doesn’t come as a massive surprise when they’re abducted by an alien, who is going to sell Ben for the contents in his head. There is also a parallel narrative about an alien pipe-fitter called Naecia, who has suffered the same fate. The resulting adventure takes us on a familiar journey with nasty, destructive aliens and a bunch of plucky protagonists trying to save the galaxy. So far, so familiar. What sets this one apart is Panatier’s quirky writing style, riddled with jokey allusions and footnotes, many of which are genuinely funny. Some… not so much. I enjoyed much of the humour and a lot of the nerdy scientific stuff – this one is on the harder side of sci fi genre – and all of the character development, which is outstanding. I did feel that the pace stuttered a tad about two-thirds of the way through. Some of the humour by then was a bit annoyingly predictable, while I felt the techie details around what was going wrong and how to fix it got a tad too involved. However, Panatier managed to land the ending in a wonderfully poignant way that will stick in my memory for a very long time. So although this wasn’t a flawless read, it’s one that will definitely stay with me. And I’m looking forward to seeing what this clever, original writer does next. While I obtained an arc of Stringers from the publishers via Netgalley, the opinions I have expressed are unbiased and my own. 9/10

Page 20 of Chris Panatier’s “Stringers” contains this sentence - “She’d added muscle like a rutting brymlack on a torpgrub diet”. If that sentence appears perfectly normal to you, then you need to read this book. I fear I may run out of adjectives to describe this extravagantly bonkers yet deeply profound book by the end of this review. The crazy plot involves Ben, an unwilling fount of amazing/pointless facts about natural science (and watches) which have appeared unbidden in his brain from an early age. Seeking out other sufferers on the Dark Web, he agrees to meet one of them who turns out to be an alien bounty hunter tasked with capturing Ben and others with the same gift, known as “stringers”. A galactic search for a devastating concept known only as The Chime ensues. Also, a stubborn jar of pickles plays a large part… The supporting characters, especially the alien Naecia who has her own, more traditionally sci-fi narrative thread, are fully fleshed-out and individually interesting. Panatier juggles varied, exciting story strands which cleverly intersect whilst never dropping any of the narrative balls in what is quite an intricate and serious story, despite its humorous overtones. He takes a complex idea (people who can access the minds of dead people on the same “string” and their obscure and sometimes valuable knowledge) and creates a fun and accessible novel. “Stringers” is written very much in the same vein as Douglas Adams (there’s even a Babel Fish reference) or Jasper Fforde, the latter especially present in Panatier’s use of footnotes, which offer fascinating tidbits of Ben’s labyrinthine knowledge of the sex lives of bugs. The footnotes are actually highly relevant to the plot and shouldn’t be ignored. This is not hard sci-fi, just a ridiculously fun romp with believable characters and a surprising amount of depth amidst the jokes. “Stringers” is incredibly easy to read and the plot moves at a satisfying pace that never becomes boring, with moments of great poignancy on the theme of friendship. Fresh and inventive, “Stringers” is naughty, sweary, heartbreaking and brilliant - with great big dollops of nerdiness, pop culture references and sexy alien tech. If you’ve ever argued about an episode of Blake’s 7 in a comic shop, “Stringers” is the book you need right now.

Consigned to the tedium of working in a bait shop, Ben has little going on in his life. His days are spent engineering the perfect fly fishing lures, while his evenings are spent trying to work out just how the hell he knows how to make the perfect fishing lures (amongst other bizarre trivia which he couldn’t possibly know naturally), or getting stoned with his best friend Patton. Ben’s life takes a turn for the terminally interesting when a flesh construct bounty hunter shows up and abducts him, hoping to use Ben’s knowledge of “The Chime” to land a big pay day. Of course, that might depend on whether Ben can remember what the Chime actually is, or what he’s supposed to do with it. Ben is “aided” in his quest - possibly a slightly charitable term in this case - by the loyal Patton, who has unwittingly volunteered to accompany him on his travels across space. The relationship between Ben and Patton is a source of plenty of the comedy throughout (spoilers - Stringers is pretty damn funny), with the lumbering stoner playing the comedy sidekick role to an absolute T. There’s a bit of a Peter Parker and Ned vibe to the pair, if Peter was considerably less super and considerably more flawed and Ned was constantly ingesting hallucinogenic mushrooms. Both are easy to root for from the off - regardless of whether or not you’ve ever worked in a retail environment, Ben’s deadpan comments to frequent browser (and never purchaser) Jim will make you like him instantly, and Patton is, quite simply, the king of the loveable goofballs. Just like with The Phlebotomist, it’s difficult to get too much into the plot of Stringers without running the risk of spoilers, and Panatier has done such a good job with the whole affable obfuscation bit on Twitter that it seems a shame to shed too much light on things now. It’s even kept up as we get into the book itself; a warning that you’ll need a mirror later on turns out not to be a joke (it’s perfectly justified, incredibly), and cryptic foreshadowing abounds. Oh, and if you’ve seen anything on the socials of Panatier’s trivia on bug sex - or, as I like to call it, bumping uglies at the ugly bug ball - rest assured, all that had a point. Stringers is replete with footnotes which are by turns informative, amusing, gross or frequently all of the above. They’re often on the theme of bug sex, and the fourth wall isn’t so much broken as it is gleefully demolished repeatedly throughout them. Ben likes to argue with his own brain you see, which proves to be another rich vein of comedic gold. While carefully skirting around some of the details of the plot, what I can say is that things get considerably more epic than you might expect, Panatier showing that he’s equally as adept at crafting an entire universe for a comedy-tinged space opera as he was at creating the unsettling dystopian world of The Phlebotomist. It’s another mash up of a few different ideas too - there’s a heist movie feel to some elements, as a team with specialised skills comes together to track down Ben, as well as the buddy movie feel of Ben and Patton’s relationship, plus plenty of large scale action packed moments. There’s some extremely in-depth world building in there too, with some deep ideas to chew over. Crucially, all these elements just mesh seamlessly; it never feels like things are novel just for the sake of being novel. In case it wasn’t clear by this point, I loved Stringers. It’s playful in its narrative approach, it’s stuffed full of loveable characters and wonderfully constructed relationships, and its humour is perfectly pitched. On top of that, it has some very cool ideas about the nature of existence, and manages to build up to a climactic finish worthy of a Hollywood blockbuster. A big hearted work of fertile imagination.

The difficult balance between the serious and the humorous, nailed. Panatier understands that everything - from time-bending string theory concepts to the intimate workings of a bug's anus - sits on the same scientific spectrum, and it is that love of the 'sci' in sci-fi that makes this wild ride gel into an entity that is as friendly as it is outrageous. It wants to be your pal. Let it.