Friday 31 July 2009

SCIENCE FICTION REVIEW: Orphan's Triumph - Robert Buettner


BOOK BLURB:

Mankind's reunited planets now control a vital crossroads after forty years of fighting, one that secures their uneasy union. The doomsday weapon that can end the Slug war, and the mighty fleet that will carry it to the Slug homeworld, also lie within humanity's grasp - but all is far from won. Since the Slug Blitz orphaned Jason Wander, he has risen from infantry recruit to commander of Earth's garrisons on the emerging allied planets. But four decades of service have cost Jason not just his friends and family, but his innocence. Then an enemy counterstroke threatens to reverse the war and destroy mankind, Jason must finally confront not only his lifelong alien enemy but the reality of what he has become after a lifetime of conflict.


REVIEW:

With it having been a while since the original series landed, I chose to reread the whole lot before embarking on Wander’s latest epic tale and if the truth be told I’m glad that I did, not that it was hard to get into again but purely for the joy that I got from doing so. The whole series is a delight and since from book one to now the whole series spans 40 years (over four books) the author was pretty clever to aid the reader by throwing in some recollections of the character to act as handy reminders. You can read this tale on its own but why should you miss out on the fun that appears within the series. Yet again its well written, the characters good fun and the type I’d buy a beer with but the author really does play to his strengths when he makes sure that he plays for keeps.

Yet for all that there are some problems. The lulls and peaks along with the speed of the prose seems to have some problems, partly as if the authors running out of idea’s and partly as he didn’t quite pull this tale off, as it felt that the ending was a bit too convenient and really didn’t leave me feeling quite as satisfied as the others. I do wonder how many more books there will be for this series and hope it ends before its dragged through the mud ruining the carefully built reputation gathered over the previous few.

1 comment:

Laurence MacNaughton said...

Years ago, I invited Robert Buettner to my bookstore, but all of his books sold out before he got there! He was a great sport about it, though, and handed out Orphanage swag. I asked him recently about his latest book, Orphan's Triumph, and he had all kinds of fascinating things to say about being compared to Heinlein, getting published overseas and the root of modern science fiction. He also told me that Overkill, the first novel in the Orphan’s Legacy series, will be released in early 2011. (If you're curious, you can read the interview for free at SciFiBookshelf.com )