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A review by timinbc
Out Past The Stars by K.B. Wagers
2.0
OK, I wasn't too keen on Farian 1 and I read this without realizing I hadn't read #2 (and from the descriptions here I don't mind that I missedd it), but this is five books of Hail now, and I had to see how it ended.
This sure isn't a standalone: in the first five pages Wagers brings 17 characters on stage. Gosh, my last time in this universe was four years and about 200 books ago. Eventually I caught up. Wouldn't it be cool if every series book had a little "Reminder" link with the characters and a superquick summary?
OK, so there's hard SF, and then there's space opera, and ... this is somewhere between space pulp fiction and a comic. Hail is now a super fighter, part-time future-seer, a teleporter, a healer, and a mind controller. Some of the characters can kill by touch, teleport, become invisible, heal, and bring back the dead. Travel is trivial, fleets just "warp in" and travel time is never mentioned. WAY over the top! What would NOT be possible if Wagers chose to deploy it?
Yet somehow there is a plot that more or less makes sense, and a problem that needs to be solved, and some quite adequate philosophical issues to discuss.
Take out all the "Hail, be careful" and "hah, try and stop me!" and this is a novella, but I learned to skim those.
I got lost at the end. Hail loses a fight and wakes up in a cell, fair enough, but there's Sibyl and friends, unexplained, and then we're back with Thyra. The raid team goes to the planet, bumbles around, kills some Farians, and takes off in a shuttle apparently unchallenged. Why did they go?
At the end we go full 1950s with the huge room full of glass tubes with bodies in them, Puh-leeze. And the bwah-hah-hah villain carefully explaining everything "before I kill you, Mister Bond."
Finally, after 100s of pages of "our relationship is doomed, it's so sad," we get the ending, which I won't spoil.
HOWEVER, I think the whole Hail series achieved what I think it was meant to do, and many people liked it. I don't like mushrooms either, doesn't mean you can't enjoy them.
This sure isn't a standalone: in the first five pages Wagers brings 17 characters on stage. Gosh, my last time in this universe was four years and about 200 books ago. Eventually I caught up. Wouldn't it be cool if every series book had a little "Reminder" link with the characters and a superquick summary?
OK, so there's hard SF, and then there's space opera, and ... this is somewhere between space pulp fiction and a comic. Hail is now a super fighter, part-time future-seer, a teleporter, a healer, and a mind controller. Some of the characters can kill by touch, teleport, become invisible, heal, and bring back the dead. Travel is trivial, fleets just "warp in" and travel time is never mentioned. WAY over the top! What would NOT be possible if Wagers chose to deploy it?
Yet somehow there is a plot that more or less makes sense, and a problem that needs to be solved, and some quite adequate philosophical issues to discuss.
Take out all the "Hail, be careful" and "hah, try and stop me!" and this is a novella, but I learned to skim those.
I got lost at the end. Hail loses a fight and wakes up in a cell, fair enough, but there's Sibyl and friends, unexplained, and then we're back with Thyra. The raid team goes to the planet, bumbles around, kills some Farians, and takes off in a shuttle apparently unchallenged. Why did they go?
At the end we go full 1950s with the huge room full of glass tubes with bodies in them, Puh-leeze. And the bwah-hah-hah villain carefully explaining everything "before I kill you, Mister Bond."
Finally, after 100s of pages of "our relationship is doomed, it's so sad," we get the ending, which I won't spoil.
HOWEVER, I think the whole Hail series achieved what I think it was meant to do, and many people liked it. I don't like mushrooms either, doesn't mean you can't enjoy them.