The Rebel Worlds
Poul Anderson is one of those names that I’ve heard a lot, but I don’t think I’ve actually read anything by him before. I bought this book on a recommendation from a friend, and it’s pretty good, although not having read any of the other Technic Saga books, I feel like I’m missing some context.
The Terran Empire is a vast enterprise, succumbing under the weight of bureaucratic inertia and the personal corruption and stupidity of the Emperor. When a regional governor’s sadism inspires a military revolt, it’s up to Dominic Flandry, the last competent man in the room, to salvage the situation.
There’s some musing on political stability and corruption, great xenobiology with a tripartite symbiotic alien species, and action and adventure. Flandry is a decent man in service of a bad cause, and it’s fun to watch him wheedle and deal in service of a galactic order that promotes bad men and punishes good ones. There’s a long, slow, seduction of a beautiful blonde, space battles, aliens of all sorts. It’s a big kitchen sink setting, and one thing that struck me was how fast everything moves. The longest story arc is a transcontinental journey from a crashed spaceship across a primitive alien world to get back to the spaceport and hijack a ship. Anderson does this in about 50 pages. David Weber and John Ringo wrote an entire series of doorstoppers (March Up Country etc) on the same subject.
I’m sold enough that I’ll read the rest of them, assuming I can work out the best way to get ebook omnibus versions.
Okay, so I did pick up an omnibus of Flandry, finally working my way to book three, and this is definitely a step up from the unnecessary and somewhat grotesque Circus of Hells Kathryn is definitely an actual strong female character, even if she’s more the Madonna side of the Madonna/Whore dynamic. The explanation of Empire, espionage, and the Mersenian threat really needs book 1, but this might be my favorite, for much of its sheer weirdness and the evil of its villains.