David Peters (1)

In a retread of The Last Starfighter, Christopher Jarvis was just a teenager playing laser tag at his local Photon game center when his mad skillz brought him to the notice of a galactic police force -- the Photon Warriors -- that recruited him to fight the dastardly minions working under the ultra-evil Warlord of Arr.

But this volume breezes past that origin and throws us directly into an adventure with Bhodi Li -- Jarvis' Photon Warrior codename -- and two of his teammates as they have to show more stop a time-traveling plot to recruit Adolf Hitler as the Warlord of Arr's newest minion.

Yeah, it's that cheesy.

So Bhodi runs around 1940s Berlin trying to track down Arr lackeys Mandarr, Pirarr, and Destructarr (Warriarr, Dogarr, and Bugarr couldn't make it) before they can change history and level up Hitlarr. He just needs to use his Photon laser gun to hit their chest plates and send them back to the future.

Oh, Bhodi also discovers the Holocaust and tries to fit a fix for that into his busy schedule.

I bought this book and the rest of the series about twenty-five years ago when I found out the author name "David Peters" was a pseudonym of Peter David, one of my favorite comic book writers, but I never got around to actually reading them. But when my hand touched them as part of an indexing project I'm doing, I remembered that David died earlier this year and was prompted to finally give them a go.

It's easy to tell that David wrote this, his humor and style are everywhere, which is the only reason I'm going to keep on reading even though this is pretty obviously hackwork for a laser tag company that was riding a wave of success in 1987 and was trying to cash in before it all went away, which happened just a couple of years later. It is very much of it's time, with clashing groups of good and evil akin to He-Man and friends vs. Skeletor's forces or G.I. Joe vs. Cobra.

It ain't good, but that rarely stops me when it comes to my reading choices. show less

Bhodi Li (a/k/a Christopher Jarvis) and his comrades are shocked to learn that the computer entity called MOM that supplies their tech and gives their orders has been kidnapped by the opposition. Though they don't have access to her vast knowledge as well as her teleportation and time freezing capabilities, they are still determined to mount a cobbled-together rescue.

And, bonus, in the course of the adventure, they will learn the full origin story of the Photon Warriors and their evil show more adversaries.

A footnote toward the end of the book indicates that at least a portion of this July 1987 book was written after the last episode of the TV series was written and/or produced (it aired in March 1987). I've never seen the show, so I don't know if any of the mythology revealed here was ever in the show. I wonder if the author of this book -- Peter David, writing as David Peters -- was working from the show's bible or if he knew the show was canceled and was given permission to come up with his own original version of the mythology behind the concept.

David has been a little cheeky throughout the previous books, dropping in plugs for the book and comic book series he was writing at the time under his true name. This time he even pokes a little fun at Photon by having one character pointing out the similarities to "The Last Starfighter" movie.

The whole book is built to climax with a goofy punch line, but I enjoyed the balance of silliness and drama that David achieves in this juvenile adventure. show less

The "exile" of the title is the Photon Guardian named Tivia. She was the princess of the planet Nivia, a world of women warriors who shun men as weak and evil, but she has been rejected recently by her mother, the queen, for daring to have mixed feelings about a male teammate.

She goes off on her own to do some soul searching and also some field research on the nature of men, but before long she finds herself pulled into an adventure that will affect all the Photon Guardians.

It's a bit cheesy show more and a lot silly at times, but I still found myself having a good time. And I was tickled that author Peter David (writing as David Peters) drops in some easter eggs paying tribute to his Marvel co-workers Bill Sienkiewicz, Todd McFarlane, Walt and Louise Simonson, and Fabian Nicieza. show less

When I read the first book in this series, I knew it was based on a chain of laser tag game centers that existed back in the 1980s, but I hadn't realized that there was also a television show involved. So these books are based on the characters from that show and not original creations of writer Peter David (using the pen name of David Peters). These books do seem to be original adventures though, and not just adaptations of the television episodes (but I could be wrong about that as I did show more not watch the show).

Still, David manages to toss off a good work-for-hire tale this time around, giving us a morality tale about the travails of dealing with a friend who is reckless and self-centered. Teen Christopher Jarvis is worried about his friend drinking and borrowing his father's expensive sportscar without permission. And when he is whisked into space to take on his role of Photon Warrior Bhodi Li, he finds that the new recruit to the team, Gambler, acts like his friend but is not a team player when push comes to shove.

It's a proper space adventure with spaceship dogfights, force fields, alien princesses, and a gladiatorial arena. show less