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This collection is a bit uneven, thanks to the poor first short novel included here, dragging it down to 3.29.

Some solid stories in the middle, but it is the end that is the good part. The nebula novelette nominee Once There Was a Giant, and the final novel, Dinosaur Beach is just poles apart in quality and complexity from the opening book.

If you just wanted to check out Laumer, the last two would be a pretty good place to start, assuming you don't mind time travel/time agent type books.

Odyssey : GALACTIC ODYSSEY - Keith Laumer
Odyssey : A Trip To The City - Keith Laumer
Odyssey : Hybrid - Keith Laumer
Odyssey : Combat Unit - Keith Laumer
Odyssey : The King Of The City - Keith Laumer
Odyssey : Once There Was A Giant - Keith Laumer
Odyssey : Dinosaur Beach - Keith Laumer

Billy Danger, wanderer.

While that is perhaps a good name for a starship captain/adventurer, as this homeless young itinerant becomes, when accidentally coming across some alien hunters, there isn't too much good about the rest of it.

It meanders from them taking him on a hunt on another planet for dangerous beasts, to that going horribly wrong, to strandings, separations, more looking around all over the galaxy for stuff, a bit of slavery and generally not hanging together all that well.

With a finale:
"The lords and ladies of the House of Ancinet-Chanore may have been out of touch with reality in some ways, but when it came to setting up the stage for a blood-duel on their fancy lawn under the gay lights, they were the soul of efficiency."

2 out of 5

Urban dummies.

3 out of 5

Tree team-up, at length.

3.5 out of 5

Survivor power base consolidation.

3.5 out of 5

I'll tell you something. You think I'm sitting on top of the world, huh? I own this town, and everybody in it. All the luxury and fancy dinners and women I can use. And you know what? I'm bored." "And you think running the Navy might be diverting?"

3 out of 5

"Sure, I'm a contract killer—and if not proud of it, at least not ashamed of it. Like they say, it's a tough, lonely, dirty job—but someone has to do it."

An assignment with Mob complications leads him to a planet where his skills come in handy, along with a big man and his big dog.

4 out of 5

This book starts simply, with a man with a happy home life, who walks out the door an d shows us he is a time agent with a kill and retrieve mission. Things don't go as planned:

"A lot of horror stories had circulated back at Nexx Central about what happened to people who misfired on a jump. They ranged from piecemeal reception at a dozen stations strung out across a few centuries to disembodied voices screaming to be let out. Also, there were several rules against it. The alternative was to set up housekeeping here on the beach, with or without dinosaurs, and hope that a rescue mission arrived before I died of heat, thirst, reptiles, boredom, or old age."

He ends up running into a female agent from a different timeline who looks just like the lover he walked out on. They have even more problems:

"A Nexx agent is a hard man to dispose of: hard to kill, hard to immobilize, because he's protected by all the devices of a rather advanced science. But if he can be marooned in the closed loop of an unrealized alternate realitya pseudo-reality from which there can be no outlet to a future which doesn't exist'then he's out of action forever."

Stuck at Dinosaur Beach, they try to understand what is going on:

"Don't be foolish. We have to do what we can. Which means examine the facts and plan a logical next step." "Logical: that's a good one, Agent Gayl. When did logic ever have anything to do with Timesweep Ops?"

Then there's the whole androids trying to be the Final Authority of Time thing.

That is by no means the end of it as the story here accelerates and gets more complicated and more strange as it goes.

Really rather cool.

4 out of 5

http://freesf.blogspot.com/2008/07/od... ( )

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My 7-year-old son Parker loved this cover. ( )