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Title: Pawn's Gambit: And Other Stratagems
Series: -----
Author: Timothy Zahn
Rating: of 5 Battle Axes
Genre: SFF
Pages: 342
Format: Kindle
Synopsis:
A collection of short stories that Zahn has published in magazines.
The first half of the book was stories that I'd read in other paperback
collections of Zahn's collected short stories and the last half of the
book, with the exception of the titular story,
Pawn's Gambit, were all new.
My Thoughts:
I was expecting all new stories, so to have the first half be ones
that I'd read before, or multiple times [as I've bought almost all of
Zahn's old books in paperback] was a bit of a letdown.
Even with that, those stories were still excellent.
Then came the new stories and it was evident that Zahn has NOT lost
his touch for encapsulating an idea and creating a story around it. His
latest
Cobra books have been rather a disappointment to be
honest and I've been wondering if Zahn's time as an author was starting
to get near the end. These new stories show that he is on top of the
game as never before.
Which leads me to wonder, who has changed more, me, or Zahn? I read
Cobra
back in middle school and it has stayed on my "I love this book!" shelf
ever since. Maybe the latest books in that series are showing me how
"I" have changed as a reader and not so much that Zahn has changed as an
author.
All of that is just to say that this short story collection is good!
It would be a great way to introduce someone to Zahn without
overwhelming them with a series. For those of us in the old guard, who
have devoured all the older books by Zahn, this is still worth it for
the new stories.
One of the main reasons I took a star off was because several of the
stories have ending commentary from Zahn, when they were part of another
collection. Those commentaries show their age and in some cases, show
they are part of another collection. Very lazy on the publisher's part.
Cut or update. It was just jarring the way they cut n pasted.