I'm still behind on the 52 books after getting held up a bit on Revelation Space but I'm catching up again with the aid of a few shorter books. Totally not cheating.
Book 12 is the 5th book in the Expanse series, Nemesis Games. I'm wondering where they are going with these books. I'm not convinced the authors really do know ! That's not fair really, they've said there is a plan for the 9 books in the series and after that, no more. So the story should be all done and dusted in the next 4 books.
This one feels a bit like a bridging book. The style of the books has the chapters split up between central characters and in this one, it's the crew of the Rocinante splitting up to do their own thing across the solar system while the usual star of the Expanse (the ship !) is getting fixed up. So whereas some of the crew can seem to be a bit bitpartish, they get their centre stage again in this one.
And it adds a lot of background to all of these characters while moving the background story on quite considerably with some earth shattering events and the emergence of a new power. The sad thing for me is that it does start feeling a bit contrived in the "How come no one spotted this building up ?" kind of way.
Still well worth a read though and I'll be picking up book 6 at some point soon.
Not yet though ... I'm reading a series of books from my childhood. It's the Last Legionary Quartet by Douglas Hill, first published in 1980 through 1982. The edition I have is all 4 books together in one paperback.
Book 13 - Galactic Warlord opens with our hero and central character Keill Randor searching for those who murdered his world.
He is the Last Legionary of Moros, an elite soldier, quite possibly the best human soldier in the galaxy. Yeah, that sounds a bit contrived ... this is a series mostly aimed at young adult so they do take far more liberties with the science side of the fiction than a series like The Expanse does. More believable than Trek or Star Wars though.
Anyway. This one sees Keill finding out about the great galactic conspiracy and teaming up with a mysterious group of scientists who save his life in return for him becoming their emissary.
I'll be charging through reading the remaining 3 in the series, although I don't think I have the prequel book which saw Keill growing up.
The Legionary series always struck me as books that would be ideally suited to a TV adaptation. You have a galactic conspiracy, you have the martial arts fights so favoured by TV now, you have space, you have scifi and the timing is well suited to telly as well.
Perhaps this will be the latest series of books to be mined for the telly ...
Douglas Hill did more series too, his Huntsman trilogy telling of the aftermath of an alien invasion of Earth was good (we lost badly) as was the Colsec trilogy. He's definitely aimed at young readers but Galactic Warlord has aged well in the 30+ years since I first read it.
Whereas some books overdo the description and end up padding out their books unnecessarily (I'm looking at you Revelation Space !), the Douglas Hill books are stripped right back to narrative while still giving enough description to keep you in the picture of what's going on.
A great light read for a younger reader. (Although the Fraxilly Fracas was a bit pants)
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