Panglor

A crusty, discredited space pilot and a stowaway girl of uncertain age, due to time dilation and other timey-wimey mishaps, crash-land on a planet where, to put it mildly, time is out of joint. There are bad guys, wrecked spacecraft, and stranded aliens. Panglor is the foundation book for Jeffrey A Carver’s six-book Star Rigger series originally published from 1976 to 2000. Carver’s flux-space universe has just enough hard science to keep it out of Dr. Who territory. 4 stars.

Twists and turns and interesting adventure!

I really enjoy the Star Rigger stories (especially the Dragon stories!) and this book fits in well with the series. A prequel, of sorts, it had a good arc - from disgraced pilot pressured by, well, space-mobsters, to a castaway, to hero - Panglor goes through a hero's journey of sorts.

Carver's Star Rigger 'verse is a nice change from Star Wars/Trek genre fiction (which I certainly don't eschew). It would be fun to see more - especially in the Dragon realms, though I doubt that is coming.

I’ve not read any books by Carver, I picked this up off the shelf at Powell’s in Portland because it’s back cover synopsis sounded interesting, and it was a discounted, used book, so I didn’t have much to lose. It turned out to be quite a good read, and the only thing I didn’t like about it was the infrequent bad language. It was a great story, kept my interest and was a nice, easy read.

Apparently this is the “introductory” book to a universe that Carver has written about in several other books, and I’m interested to know if they’re worth pursuing. The story about a place where ships lost in space end up was captivating and the idea behind it fresh and well-written. It’s worth the read if you have nothing good lined up.

An interesting story well told, but more of interest in setting the scene for the star rigger series than of any wider merit. 26 October 2015

3.5