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Title:
The Winds of Gath
Series: Dumarest #1
Author:
EC Tubb
Rating: 4 of 5 Stars
Genre:
SF
Pages: 168
Words: 45K
Another short novel. I zipped right through it, enjoyed it immensely and then had to sit back and try to figure out why I enjoyed it so much. The story was ok. A young boy, Earl, stows away on a spaceship and becomes a Traveler and ends up on a world with some mystical singing stones. There’s a plot to replace an heiress and murder ensues and some good old fashioned mayhem. All in all there was nothing here that should have attracted me the way it did.
But upon some intense navel gazing and narcissistic mental contortions, I realized that I actually appreciated the writing itself here. Not because anything stood out, but because it was a totally smooth read without a single interruption of an awkward word or a wrongly turned phrase or a scene segue that was too abrupt. None of that happened. It was like Tubb was, gasp, an ACTUAL EXPERIENCED AUTHOR!!!! Oh Myrtle, say it ain’t so! I can be a picky reader. A word choice, while acceptable, will give me that bump in the road feeling if it’s not the exact correctly used word. It might not be the meaning but how it flows with the words around it. Words are like Lego pieces. One might do adequately, but another will fit better with its neighbors and a good author knows how to work them together. Tubb has that skill and that artistry.
That kind of thing can be subjective, so I know it’s not a big selling point, but it gives me hope for the rest of the series (however long it is. I believe it’s 30+ books?). Even if the stories themselves aren’t the greatest, I’m hoping the writing itself will carry me on through. If the stories are good, then that will be bonus! I feel like I’m in a Win Win scenario here.
Score for the Good Guys!
★★★★☆
From
Wikipedia.org
Gath is a world with a unique tourist attraction:
a mountain-sized white noise amplifier. With no indigenous economy
other than the tourist slave labor trade, Dumarest struggles to break
free from this dead-end world. Dumarest becomes attached to the
retinue of the Matriarch of Kund and unwittingly finds himself
embroiled in the vicious and complex political intrigues of the
Matriarch's court. After some keen detective work from Dumarest and
the ensuing deadly battle with the Cyclan, Dumarest prevails and
escapes from the backwater planet.
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