Lallia

My Amazon review - http://www.amazon.com/review/R96M6BVGW4ECV/ref=cm_cr_rdp_perm

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It seems that the cliches and tropes that define the Dumarest cycle are coming together in this book. We have Earl Dumarest on his quest for Earth and getting a scant clue that might propel him forward. We have the one-dimensional characters acting as a foil for Dumarest's quest. We have the greed and stupidity that kill people through indifference and oversight. We have Dumarest knowing on first inspection who is the fool and who he should ally with. We have Dumarest's speed and ruthlessness. But, now, for the first time, we have Dumarest learning the significance of the ring he received two books back, which, if you've read the latter books, you know, holds the secret of the affinity twin, which the Cyclan want ever so desperately.

The book starts with the normal Hobbesianism of the Dumarestiverse - life being particularly nasty, bitter and short there - with a spacer being brained in a bar on Aarn. Dumarest doesn't hesitate to intuit that this means a job has opened up somewhere. He uses the opportunity to sign on with the most-run down ship in the Web - that portion of the galaxy where Dumarest happens to be this time.

The story is set on the ship with some time-off for adventures on various planets. It is stipulated that the ship is run-down and the captain and crew is on the edge.The ship takes passengers and freight as it can. One passenger is a portly gem merchant who seems helpful.

On a religiously backward planet, Dumarest fights for the life of the title character, Lallia. She's clairvoyant, which can happen in the Dumarestiverse. She, of course, immediately falls in love with Dumarest, declares herself married to him for as long as she wants, and casually offers to others challenges that he will fight to the death on a wager.

My distaste with this book comes from this character. Lallia is by turns too weak and submissive, and, then, too conniving and egocentric. Obviously, Lallia is the trope of the femme fatale and that is the role staked out for her by Film Noir potboilers and detective stories. In my first entry in this series of reviewing my way through the Dumarestiverse, I compared Dumarest to Phil Marlow. [See The Winds of Gath: The Dumarest Saga Book 1.] If Dumarest is Marlow, then he has to have his fair share of “dames” who love him but are always looking out for number one.

The final score is Dumarest ends up in a fight to death for Lallia, a fight to the death with some kind of space beast, and a fight to the death with an agent of the Cyclan. He barely survives being shipwrecked. He finds out about the “affinity twin formula” in his ring. He gets a clue from a shipmate that directs him to the “Original People” who fled “terror.”

Does he survive? Does the story come to an end.

I won't tell you, but this is book six of thirty-one.