Technos: The Dumarest Saga Book 7

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This is book 7 of the Dumarest series, and, by this time, Tubb has developed the formula that would enable him to turn out two Dumarest stories each year for fifteen years. Be assured that the fact that these stories are formulaic doesn' stop them from being great fun, in part because Tubb drops a tidbit of information at each step of the way.

As with all of these serial stories during this time period, the conflict of the story is premised around a “push/pull” motivation. The “pull” is that Earl Dumarest is looking for his long-lost birth planet of Earth. The “push” is the fact that he is being pursued by the emotionless, logical, scarlet-clad manipulating quasi-religious order of the Cyclan. The Cyclan are pursuing Dumarest because he was given the formula for the “Affinity Twin” secret in [[ASIN:B00H6SOV1S Kalin: The Dumarest Saga Book 4]] , three books back, and the Cyclan really, really want it, but we won't know why for about another ten to fifteen books.

This book opens on a planet that is there only for the purpose of setting the hook. The hook this time comes from a dying friend who tells Dumarest that someone on his home world may know something about Earth. So, off Dumarest goes to the second world, that is under biological attack by a third world named Technos. Dumarest is stymied on the second world but gets information that what he wants is on Technos, so off he goes, under cover, into what seems like a police state.

There is a crazy world-leader (the “Technarch) and a back-biting conspiring oligarchy and a Cyclan to stir the mix. Dumarest is nearly captured, but for the second time is saved by a rutting minx of a woman. Naturally he's pushed into life or death situations, which he can only survive because of his will to power and his amazing reflexes.

I've made the point in my previous reviews that the Dumarest series is basically Film Noir as science fiction. Dumarest is the man of integrity who never compromises himself in a world without values, where virtually everyone. particularly the comfortable at the top of the heap, are loathsome, self-seeking hypocrites. You get that in spades in this one with the female character of Mada Grist, who is a woman on the ruling council, who saves Dumarest from discovery, heals him when he nearly kills himself, beds him and then offers him the job of assassinating the Technarch, which Dumarest refuses.

The don't get more fatale, then the femmes in Dumarest's universe.

The tidbit this time that moves the series along a micrometer is that Dumarest learns the constellations of the Zodiac.

It is a long road to Book 29, but Dumarest is solidly on it.