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3.0 out of 5 stars
Four Stars For ADF Fans, Feb 7 2004
This is another novel from Foster's Humanx Commonwealth universe. Here, his series hero Flinx smashes headlong into Midworld, a strange super-green plant-dominated world that was the subject of a previous standalone non-Flinx novel. (One thing that ADF excels at is creating cool worlds with fully realized environments and deadly flora and fauna, such as in Cachalot and Sentenced To Prism.)On account of evil scientists having messed with his fetal DNA or something, Flinx is this young guy that has a few mind powers rattling inside his skull. So he's got this empathic ability plus a few other latent talents. Also his best friend is a non-sentient Alaspinian mini-drag, basically an extremely venomous flying snake with its own low-grade empathy skill. In any case, a rich psychotic merchant on a backwater colony world sees Pip the mini-drag and demands to buy her, but Flinx refuses to sell, and then has to flee when the merchant goes all postal. Luckily, Flinx has this rockin' spaceship that he acquired in an earlier novel from some super-aliens, so he zooms off in a random direction and ends up on Midworld, a planet which is not on any Commonwealth charts and which is the home to a small long-lost now-adapted group of human settlers. There, a wandering Flinx meets a trio of the neo-natives and agrees to help them, since an accident has separated them from their Home Tree and they need assistance in getting back. But then the monomanical merchant catches up, because no one can say no to him. And much else happens from that point, including an appearance from the most excellent AAnn, which are these neat yet evil reptiloids that live to conquer everything, but with extreme politeness, accompanied by a gestural language component that allows them to convey nuances like third-degree regret or fifth-degree smugness. A lot of the good stuff here has to do with the fact that virtually every creature and plant on Midworld is hyper-dangerous, so your best bet is to burn everything on sight, except that of course the vegetation is adapted to counteract this as well and you would be met with explosive results. Anyway, you'd best believe that people are dying left and right, getting decaptitated or infested with parasites or dissolved into goo. Dude, this would make a fantastic straight-to-cable movie! So I liked it, although ADF's often-florid writing style and intermittently omniscient narration might take some getting used to. But I've been reading this guy since I was, what? maybe 15 or something? I think he rules. And he does a pretty good job with characters and can throw a few plot twists and stuff, so I can definitely recommend his material for those looking for a fairly quick and romping read. (Avoid the trilogy about the founding of the Commonwealth, though--it's fairly weak.)
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