Bookstooge's Reviews On the Road: Dumarest

Thursday, April 18, 2024

Derai (Dumarest #2) 3.5Stars

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Title: Derai
Series: Dumarest #2
Author: EC Tubb
Rating: 3.5 of 5 Stars
Genre: SF
Pages: 188
Words: 60K

Dumarest is hired to escort a young woman back to her home planet. Normally he wouldn’t care to, but she claims to be a telepath and has some knowledge of mythical Earth. In the process, he falls in love with her and ends up in some sort of Death Game to help her family, which would somehow help her. She ends up getting a fatal wound and is put in some sort of cocoon thingy. Another Love That Wasn’t Meant To Be. I have a feeling a lot of these stories about Dumarest will follow that pattern.

I am beginning to wonder if the Cyclans, a group of humanity that is trying to become pure brain power is what sparked the idea of the Cylons in Battlestar Galactica. That’s just one of those random thoughts I had. Nothing to base it on really besides the coincidence of the names.

Dumarest is a great leading character. He’s mature, he’s not stupid, he thinks his actions through (for the most part) and he’s not afraid to do what is necessary to get a job done. And he sticks to his goal of finding Earth. Of course, I do wonder WHY he wants to find Earth so bad. It was a horrible, burnt out wasteland when he left it, filled with horrible people barely surviving. It is not some paradise he was stolen from. He left it for a reason. So why does his whole existence now center around getting back? I don’t feel that Tubbs (the author, but man, I want to make some serious fat jokes now) has really provided a reasonable explanation other than tapping into a collective desire to “go back” that most of humanity has. I realize nostalgia can be a powerful, driving force, but nostalgia for a place where people beat you, used you and tried to kill you? Yeah, something doesn’t scan with that.

However, the story itself is still quite enjoyable. Adventure, telepaths, dastardly family politics, evil Cyclans. This has it all and Tubbs does a great job of weaving a very entertaining story out of all those parts.

Now that cover. Is that fantastic or what? Of course, it has NOTHING whatsoever to do with the story but man, I’d buy a book with that cover in a heartbeat. I’m giving this the cover love tag because of that and it wouldn’t surprise me if it’s the featured cover at the end of the month. Unless something else really knocks my socks off. But anything else will have to be really gooooood to do that.

★★★✬☆

From Wikipedia.org
Dumarest is recruited to escort a waif of a woman lost on an unfamiliar world back to her home and family. Upon delivery he is recruited to assist the family further by participating in a trial to benefit their patriarch. The waif is the Lady Derai, heiress to a noble house, and they are able to succeed due to special circumstances relating to Derai. In the end, he is confronted with a member of the Cyclan once again and his victory is tainted by sacrifice.

Thursday, March 07, 2024

The Winds of Gath (Dumarest #1) 4Stars

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.