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and_abelard_reads's review against another edition
4.0
They may be getting a tad formulaic, but the gags still come on spades. Still heaps of panto-esqe fun that also moves the series onwards in plot and character development.
chramies's review against another edition
5.0
I am a complete sucker for "Apocalypse Now" and so when I saw that this the latest of Toby Frost's "Space Captain Smith" adventures riffed heavily on that excellent film (and on Conrad's "heart of Darkness" which inspired it) I was of course going to go and buy the book.
Pleased I did. His little band of adventurers - plucky but slightly nonplussed Smith, Proud Warrior Race guy Suruk, Polly the biscuit-loving 'artificial person' pilot, the hippie psychic (and Smith's girlfriend) Rhianna, and the hamster - are off to jungle-enshrouded Ravnavar where half-tameable dinosauroids lumber around, and the world is at war with the Yull, better known as the lemming-men, a despicable race who eschew the warrior code that brings together human and M'lak, in favour of an attitude best described as 'kill 'em all'. The humans and the M'lak are former enemies who both now side with a renewed British Empire whose mission to 'civilise' entire worlds may seem dubious but Smith at least sees it as an _end_ to war, not a reason for it.
Smith's original task here is to travel up country and terminate the command of one Major Wainscott who has gone bush and set up his own kingdom - although he brings back a chastened and generally receptive Wainscott, less Kurtz than Lt.-Colonel Kilgore ("I love the smell of bacon in the morning"?), so who is actually the Kurtz figure? This is for later in the book and is effective when it does appear.
Then there are the natives, the equ'i - yes, they are as they sound although another layer is added by reference to an infamous novel and author of the early 20th century.
I have only read volumes 2 and 5 of this series and am currently embarking on the first one. 3 and 4 were apparently a bit of a lull and as the Yull are fought in one of them, "End of Empires" must finish off that story. I wonder if there will be a volume 6.
Pleased I did. His little band of adventurers - plucky but slightly nonplussed Smith, Proud Warrior Race guy Suruk, Polly the biscuit-loving 'artificial person' pilot, the hippie psychic (and Smith's girlfriend) Rhianna, and the hamster - are off to jungle-enshrouded Ravnavar where half-tameable dinosauroids lumber around, and the world is at war with the Yull, better known as the lemming-men, a despicable race who eschew the warrior code that brings together human and M'lak, in favour of an attitude best described as 'kill 'em all'. The humans and the M'lak are former enemies who both now side with a renewed British Empire whose mission to 'civilise' entire worlds may seem dubious but Smith at least sees it as an _end_ to war, not a reason for it.
Smith's original task here is to travel up country and terminate the command of one Major Wainscott who has gone bush and set up his own kingdom - although he brings back a chastened and generally receptive Wainscott, less Kurtz than Lt.-Colonel Kilgore ("I love the smell of bacon in the morning"?), so who is actually the Kurtz figure? This is for later in the book and is effective when it does appear.
Then there are the natives, the equ'i - yes, they are as they sound although another layer is added by reference to an infamous novel and author of the early 20th century.
I have only read volumes 2 and 5 of this series and am currently embarking on the first one. 3 and 4 were apparently a bit of a lull and as the Yull are fought in one of them, "End of Empires" must finish off that story. I wonder if there will be a volume 6.
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