These are the voyages of the starship, A.S.F. Willful Child. Its ongoing mission: to seek out strange new worlds on which to plant the Terran flag, to subjugate and if necessary obliterate new life-forms, to boldly blow the...

And so we join the not-terribly-bright but exceedingly cock-sure Captain Hadrian Sawback - think James T Kirk crossed with ‘American Dad' - and his motley crew on board the Starship Willful Child for a series of devil-may-care, near-calamitous and downright chaotic adventures through ‘the infinite vastness of interstellar space’... 

The bestselling author of the acclaimed Malazan Book of the Fallen sequence has taken a life-long passion for 'Star Trek' and transformed it into a hugely entertaining spoof on the whole mankind-exploring-space-for-the-good-of-all-species-but-trashing-stuff-with-a-lot-of-hi-tech-kit-along-the-way type over-blown science fiction adventure. The result is smart. inventive, occasionally OTT and often very funny - a novel that both deftly parodies the genre and pays fond homage to it.

Willful Child by Steven Erikson (Audiobook extract) Read by MacLeod Andrews

Penguin Books publishes blockbusting, prize-winning, celebrated, controversial, heart-warming, thought-provoking and inspiring books by a range of authors from Ali Smith to Zadie Smith, Jeremy Clarkson to Jeremy Paxman and Jamie Oliver to Oliver Goldsmith.

Willful Child by Steven Erikson (Audiobook extract) Read by MacLeod Andrews

Penguin Books UK