Willful Child

Its place in Willful Child

Willful Child is book 1 in the Willful Child series. It is followed by Willful Child: Wrath of Betty. See the full Willful Child reading order.

Willful Child is Steven Erikson's broad, gleefully juvenile spoof of Star Trek and space-opera tropes generally, following Captain Hadrian Sawback -- a preening, rule-breaking, catastrophically overconfident starship commander -- and the long-suffering crew of the AFS Willful Child as they blunder from one galaxy-endangering incident to the next. It's a hard tonal left turn from Erikson's epic fantasy work: crude, fast-paced, and openly parodic, aimed squarely at fans of the original Star Trek series and its many…