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Book # 3
Slan by A.E. van Vogt
One of the great classics of science fiction. I've read this book a number of times and each time it gets better. Sure it's kind of dated, but not near as much as a lot of scifi written in that era. The level of technology is not that advanced for it being more than 1000 years in the future, but that can be explained by the Slan wars that happened in the past. Van Vogt wrote characters that really did seem to have a different thought process.
Book # 4
Slan Hunters by Kevin J. Anderson and A.E. van Vogt
This is a sequel that was started by VV and finished by Kevin J Anderson. Van Vogt evidently started to write the sequel a few years before he died. I don't know how much was written by him and how much by Anderson, but from the feel of the story and the characters, Kevin must have rewritten all of it.
I had hopes that this would be a good book. I don't really care for Anderson as a writer. His Star Wars novels were just bad. But his writing with Brian Herbert with the Dune prequels and books 7 & 8 of the main sequence were quite enjoyable. While not on the same level at all as Frank's stuff, they were still fun to read as you could tell that a lot of the historical stuff had been laid out by Frank. The fact that Kevin helped to write those made me give him the benefit of the doubt in regards to Slan Hunters.
I shouldn't have.
This was really not a good book. The characterization was all wrong. None of them acted at all the same. The motivations were different. The words and actions were wrong. I could see the seed of what Van Vogt set out to write, but the result was oh so far from the original.
My biggest complaint though came in the very last paragraph. It is setup through the story that Samuel Lann invented a machine for the storage and reintegration of memory and personallity.
There is also a woman and her husband who are tendrilless slans but don't know it. They have a baby whose tendrils have come back. VV established that this would happen in the first book, so that was fine with me. This baby helps it's parents escape from persecution and find a hidden slan base that has been deserted. The bok ends with all the good guys winding up at this base and they are going through the equipment. The baby and it's parents are in one room when a machine activates. At this point the 3 day old baby speaks and says that he is now Samuel Lann.
So we have the person that "created" slans basically murdering an innocent baby so he could live again. I hated that last part.
So, I can't say that I recommend this book. The first one is great, second one, not so much
Book # 5
Shadow Puppets by Orson Scott Card
3rd book in the Shadow series by Card. Not much to say about it. I like all of them.