Stainless Steel Rat Joins The Circus (Hardcover)

This book was purchased mainly to complete my current SSR collection, and although decent at a few places, it lacked the comedy "punch" that the others in the series had. In my opinion, the comedy aspect in this book compared to the others in the series is the worst, but then again it did provide a nice mystery, which I reluctantly followed. Still, it was worth the few bucks I paid. Don't get if you don't follow the SSR series, though, it'll be a waste of time.

However SSR Joins The Circus is a pretty good rat book. The story is well paced and exciting enough to keep you interested and the world of Fettorr is well developed and interesting. Not as good as Harrison's earlier ones but non the less a quite enjoyable read. The main villain in very menacing and has poor old Jim on the ropes for the majority of the tale, but this is also one of the books major flaws. DiGriz doesn't seem anywhere near as sharp as he used to be, yes he pulled off a couple of nice capers to appease his blackmailer but you get the distance feeling that poor old Jim is getting a little dim witted in his later years.

Once again he is forced to rely upon the twins to get him out of tight scrapes. I have personally never been a fan of the twins as they provide Jim with an easy escape route anytime things get tough instead of doing it himself. That plus the fact that Harrison can't tell them apart anymore and gets them mixed up towards the end of the book. Also the book has a number of typos and you get the feeling that it was thrown togeather very fast.

Yet despite these shortcomings SSR Joins The Circus is a pretty good read if you enjoy the exploits of the Stainless Steel Rat as I do. Not Harrison's best effort of behalf of good old Jim, but certainly not his worst either.

3 out of 5

But, if we were to look past all the errors and all the grammer points, we can see the old rat shining through. It's a great book, but a lousy book to end on. I'm 100% sure that this is not the last of the rat. That I will bet my life on! If you were a true rat fan you would remember that old diGriz will vacation for a while, but then find that boring and have an itch for action. Let's just hope that the Stainless Steel Rat hasn't gotten rusty.