It's a Douglas Hill day today. I did that thing again where I look up the author to remind myself of their bibliography and discover they died a few years ago ! Same again here. The books above were all written in the 80s, which is mostly when I got to read them.
(I've snipped off the top so left to right it's : Warriors of the Wasteland, Exiles of Colsec and the Last Legionary Quartet).
It's a shame there won't be any more books from this author, he came out with some very readable, albeit pulpy books and I enjoyed reading them at the time. They rattle through extremely quickly and manage to pack in about as much action and narrative as you'd find in a book of twice their length. There's no messing about, straight into the story while still totally explaining what's going on. It's quite odd how they've never seen their way into television. They're almost totally made for being turned into a miniseries.
First up today is Warriors of the Wasteland, middle book of the Huntsman trilogy. This series is about Finn Feral, huntsman who leaves his home village after his family is abducted by the mysterious alien slavers. This one is set in the far future, on an Earth where aliens have invaded and effectively destroyed civilisation with humans being set back into a hunter gatherer existence. There are 3 dominant races, the brutish beastmen who enforce the will of the alien slavers and the humans are the subjugated third race.
This one sees Finn make his way across the land he has found himself in, getting ever closer to where the alien slavers have taken his family. But .... there are other perils in the Wasteland.
In the middle, we have Exiles of Colsec, which is another far future novel. Except this time the oppressors are humans and they didn't get beaten to the stars by aliens.
This one sees a misfit group of outcasts getting dropped on an untouched planet. The main tactic of Colsec (Colonisation Section) is to round up prisoners and drop them on to new planets. If they survive, Colsec moves in to take over what they've started to set up. If they die, then Colsec drops more people. A set up that is in typically brutal Douglas Hill style. However, this time the spaceship has crashed, leaving the survivors with even less supplies than usual and there's a prison guard who was expecting to be able to gone home, he's stranded with them too.
But ... it gets worse ! There are many alien critters on this planet and they're just waking up to a new food source.
This one sees the colonists attempt to survive, the next book (Caves of Klydor) sees them attempting to repel an incursion by Colsec with the third having them look to turn the tables on Colsec.
Another trilogy I must re-read at some point.
Last up is the Last Legionary Quartet, which I wrote about in a couple of the 52 books series earlier this year. (Link to Last Legionary, link to the other 3). A quick summary :
Humanity has colonised the galaxy and spread across all of its boundless expanse. Conflict abounds and the most elite fighting force in the galaxy has just been annihilated by unknown forces. The protagonist, Keill Randor, finds himself ending up as the Last Legionary of Moros. He immediately sets out to figure out what happened and his investigations through the 4 books lead him to the source of growing chaos in the galaxy.
Another good set of books !
The next couple of days will be a little odd with Advent. I should post up tomorrow's one fairly early but Monday's may be a little odd due to travel. We shall see what I can post !
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