jeffhall's review
3.0
Marc Miller's Agent of the Imperium is a decent sci-fi novel, and given that it is (by design) tightly tied to a TTRPG universe created by the same author, the book is considerably better than it needs to be. By that, I mean that since Miller has a built-in audience of Traveller players, he could easily have gotten away with a slapdash effort, but to his credit he has not gone down that easy route.
That said, there is a certain amount of repetition in the narrative, as the titular Agent is invoked multiple times to handle roughly similar challenges. Given that each challenge plays out in a very similar sequence of events, the second half of the book is a bit of a slog, made worse by the fact that none of the characters save Enna Plant Lagash are really developed in any way.
But for Traveller geeks, there's still a lot to love here, and simply having the chance to follow a story through the universe of the Third Imperium has undeniable rewards for the initiated.
That said, there is a certain amount of repetition in the narrative, as the titular Agent is invoked multiple times to handle roughly similar challenges. Given that each challenge plays out in a very similar sequence of events, the second half of the book is a bit of a slog, made worse by the fact that none of the characters save Enna Plant Lagash are really developed in any way.
But for Traveller geeks, there's still a lot to love here, and simply having the chance to follow a story through the universe of the Third Imperium has undeniable rewards for the initiated.
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