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A review by brettmurray
Triplanetary by E.E. "Doc" Smith
3.0
A mixed bag of early space opera, that shows the transition from the Flash Gordon era of campy pulp fantasy-in-space, towards the era of classic modern sci-fi of Vonnegut and Asimov.
For every great chapter, there's a mediocre one, lacking in the worldbuilding and character development that you'd expect to find in a modern sci-fi - Triplanetary definitely suffers from the 'Mary Sue' trope of almost every character being almost perfect in almost every way, which becomes tiring.
It gets old towards the end of book, especially when the height of an incurring space war starts seeing touches of the current events from the time when this was written in the 1940's. There should maybe be a trigger warning for borderline genocide for the last couple of chapters. That, and the overtly typical male gaze for the single female character in all its hundreds of pages.
For every great chapter, there's a mediocre one, lacking in the worldbuilding and character development that you'd expect to find in a modern sci-fi - Triplanetary definitely suffers from the 'Mary Sue' trope of almost every character being almost perfect in almost every way, which becomes tiring.
It gets old towards the end of book, especially when the height of an incurring space war starts seeing touches of the current events from the time when this was written in the 1940's. There should maybe be a trigger warning for borderline genocide for the last couple of chapters. That, and the overtly typical male gaze for the single female character in all its hundreds of pages.