Imperial Stars

I picked up the fifth in the series at a thrift shop, and it looked intriguing, so I purchased this first book for pennies online. It proved as amusing as I'd hoped. Written in the 1972, it has all you'd expect from a cheesy space opera. With lasers, flying cars, strange planets, gold lamé hot-pants, and villain with a goatee and red silk robes - hell, there are even communist! While the plot is somewhat predicable and far-fetched, it in no way detracts from the book. Action, humor, dastardly deeds, and heroic feats - this book has it all! I highly recommend if you are looking for a pleasing, light, read.

Couldn't finish it--gave it the old "your age 1" pages (and I'm pretty old!) but it's not for me.

I don't mind that it's "fun" sf (I like fun!), it's that it was Stupid Writing. For instance, the protagonists are supposed to be the agency's 2 best spies. Except ... they've never worked in the field. And sorry, it doesn't matter how much talent one has, the New Kid is never going to be as good as someone more seasoned. It's irritating!

(Note: 5 stars = amazing, wonderful, 4 = very good book, 3 = decent read, 2 = disappointing, 1 = awful, just awful. I'm fairly good at picking for myself so end up with a lot of 4s).

This just isn't the kind of science fiction that I like. I had heard of "space opera" and didn't know what that means. I just looked up a definition in the dictionary: "a novel, movie, or television program set in outer space, typically of a simplistic and melodramatic nature." That describes what this book was like to me. The simplistic style with lack of character depth along with the melodramatic nature of everything that happens doesn't appeal to me.

Yes it is dated but it's not a bad read. I enjoyed it anyway.

F/SF