Hard Luck Hank: Stank Delicious

Read Time: 2 Minutes

Continuing my journey of the Hard Luck Hank series in audiobook, next up was Stank Delicious. Each book in the series reinvents the world of Hank just a little. In this case, everything has moved on a few years since the events of the previous books. Nobles are bedded in even deeper into Belvaille, and Hank is scratching out a living once more as a go-between.

Cliston, Hank’s Dredel Led butler, expands his role in this one to prove just how good at everything he is. From sports agent, glocken team manager, and so on, Cliston takes his 15% from anyone and everything he can. An odd choice was made to make his voice more robotic since the last, and I’m not really a fan. I much preferred his posh, unaltered accent.

Finally, with this book, we get to experience the game of glocken in all its manic, psychopathic glory. Campbell does an excellent job of getting the rules and the idea behind the made-up game across so it’s easy to follow along. Taking away the mutants and the insanity of it all, I could see it as a game that could actually exist one day. I’d watch it!

Hank gets roped into playing Super Class Glocken – the highest level of the sport there is. Hank becomes “Stank Delicious” and gets to play against the team he has followed all of his life; the Reskin Sleepers, famous for the longest losing streak of anything ever. Spanning thousands of years, the drought looks about to break.

With the Hank books, I love how you jump in at virtually any point in the series and be caught up. The basics of life on the station are always covered off quickly, and because life has always moved on, you can pick up any book and jump right in with no background knowledge of the prior books. Of course, it certainly doesn’t hurt as you get to know the characters and some of their motivations over that time, but like I said, not mandatory.

Narration by Liam Owen again continues to grind my gears, but at this stage, I’m in some kind of resigned acceptance of while I don’t particularly like his style for Hank. At this stage, I’m used to it enough. Less of that high-pitched background noise that has plagued the books so far, too, which is good. It’s still there occasionally, but a lot less often. Occasional editing issues, small clicks and the like that should have been edited out.

Overall, another fun Hank adventure. The new character of “Gun” is one of my favourites. Completely unaware or uncaring of anything beyond what it can see and talks in philosophical musings, Hank finally has a gun he can shoot with and not miss.