Watchers of the Dark

The automated "Will you like it?" function said "LibraryThing thinks you will will love Watchers of the Dark". I thought I would too. It's got a detective doing private eye stuff and aliens. What's not to like? Well, how about the characters, the plot, the pacing... perhaps I'm being a bit harsh but it's been a while since I couldn't finish a book.

A meandering story with too many different tones. The fate of the galaxy is at stake, yet most of the time the tone is comical, if not downright silly. Other times it's suddenly a dark and serious book. The inconsistency is jarring. My biggest complaint however was that it went nowhere. The entire middle of the book (where I abandoned it) has the main character going undercover as an show more interstellar trader and learning the intricacies of selling various nuts and seeds. Not exactly the science fiction escapism I was looking for. show less

A weak sequel to All the Colors of Darkness. In the first novel, there was one set of aliens, and, for 60s SF, they were relatively alien. Here, there are half a dozen alien races and they all sound like humans, with cocktail parties and the rest. The setting of the first novel was the Moon. The setting of this novel is galactic. But our hero -- and his senior citizen tough as nails companion -- have no trouble acclimating. It's that annoying lack of concept of scale, where one galaxy invading another is like two countries at war,, and one human can deal with this, as if such a thing for a country would not be overwhelming, much less a world, or a planetary system. And worst of all, the resolution of the core mystery of how the invasion show more is happening is both hard to credit and has been in-your-face for at least half the book.

Not objectionable but nothing to recommend. show less

As a major shareholder in Universal Transmitter Corporation and having so successfully found out who had been sabotaging its start up, Jan Darzek need never have worked before but he's a PI at heart even if his heart is not really in the job anymore. And not even he realises that his case was a lie, implanted memories given him to hide the even more fantastic truth. The Galactic Council of Supreme has become aware of a situation that is leaving a wide band destruction travelling with an arrow-like direction and speed towards the galactic council's home world, the planet of Primores housing Supreme hand its Council and they want help as quickly as possible so Darzek is approached by a gentleman going by the moniker of Mr Smith and in an show more effort to ignore the demand to take on the case, Darzek declares he would undertake this mysterious case for the princely sum of a million dollars in notes so when a lorry load of boxes filled to the brim with notes arrives at his office he considers himself hired in a case that will see him and his secretary travel far further than they could imagine.

Darzek and Miss Schlupe, his elderly but still deadly have to save a galaxy from an enemy that most of its citizens refuse to acknowledge exists in yet another fast moving story of the Galactic Synthesis. show less

Better than I expected from the cover of this novel. I enjoyed the open mindedness of the detective, main character.