Goldstein is willing to let Truffaunt be part of his trade mission to the homeworld of the hjadd, an alien race that "looked sort of like giant tortoises, only without shells, who stood upright on stubby legs and wore toga-like garments that seemed to shimmer with a light of their own."

Truffaunt accepts, and Goldstein visits the secretive hjadd embassy, bringing on board a mysterious "Mr. Gordon Ash," who provides the novel's title, by playing a song called "Galaxy Blues." As they loiter around before embarking on the mission proper, Truffaunt gets to know fellow shipmate and secret crush Rain Thompson and then meets the Prime Emissary of the aliens, Mahamatasja Jas Sa-Fhadda. Truffaunt promptly manages to offend the emissary by touching him. Things are off to a swell start. Eventually, the mission gets underway, all of them, including the emissary, taking the Pride of Cucamonga spaceship to Rho Coronae Borealis to meet the aliens on their own turf.

On the way, Truffaunt tries to befriend Ash, but Goldstein forbids any further contact with him. Things then get really awkward when it turns out that hjadd purification procedures require asking Truffaunt and Rain to take their clothes off, Rain protesting vociferously. It's a funny scene and very human. However, things quickly go south as Truffaunt's further blunders create a diplomatic incident that drives the rest of the plot, Our Hero forced to rectify his mistake by going on a mission even more dangerous and tricky than dealing with the aliens.

Fun for Steele's fans

Throughout Galaxy Blues, I kept having moments where I enjoyed what I was reading and then other moments where I was either waiting for something to happen (especially before the characters leave orbit) or thrown out by what seemed like an anachronism. For example, I know they'll have baseball in the future, but with the world-building in the novel being cursory at best, such a recurring here-and-now cultural reference didn't work for me. In fact, in general Steele seems to want to create an SF that doesn't have much to do with the future. Whether it's literally true or not, I felt as if I'd traveled back to the 1950s and was reading a story written during that era. This isn't necessarily a criticism, but because of everything from New Space Opera to Doctorow-Tech, I had to ignore the SF elements and focus on the adventure and characters.

Truffaunt is a suitable bumbling hero for the tone Steele strikes here, and as long as he's interacting with other characters you can forget that he's pretty much made of cardboard. The problem, however, especially in the early sections of Galaxy Blues, is that he's often by himself, and in that mode he's boring and callow. Thus, the novel becomes much better as it progresses—first when Truffaunt joins the ship's crew and then when they encounter the aliens. Each distraction from Truffaunt's essential lack of being that's added to the plot helps Steele, so that by about the middle of the novel I was fully engaged and enjoying the read.

Toward the end, as he goes off on his redeeming mission, some of this sense of being too much alone with Truffaunt reoccurs, but with the weight of the other characters behind him, it's much less intense. Steele also has great fun with the aliens, the descriptions of which are often pitch-perfect. On balance, then, the fun payoffs outweigh the negatives in using Truffaunt as a viewpoint character.