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Dorsai! – Gordon R. Dickson
Ace, copyright 1960, printed 1982, 305 pages
ISBN 0441-16025-5
Read: December 2012, at age 34
It’s the first book of the Childe Cycle – in which
humanity grows up, apparently. It’s
apparently unfinished. Sigh.
From the back cover:
Dorsai!
Not all the other
worlds of men combined would dare to try conclusions with that one world of
soldiers born and bred.
Dorsai!
More than wealth,
more than fame, more than beauty, that name sets them apart from ordinary
humanity.
Dorsai!
But though it is
the heritage of them all, still it belongs more to one certain individual than
all the rest. His name is Donal Graeme. He is the ultimate, perfect man of war. This is his story.
Dorsai!
…well, that’s certainly pretentious.
Pretty much tells you all you need to know about the book, too.
My reactions: (there may be spoilers)
Dorsai! – in which we get to see Donal, the epitome of the Dorsai
warrior race, be better at everything than everyone.
One good thing: The individual
scenes were well written and everything flowed well.
One bad thing: The individual
scenes were just triumphs. Our hero was
so much better at everything that there was no suspense. At all. Ever.
Random thoughts:
There was no try-fail ever. He
just won every time. It got boring.
None of the characters were really that appealing to me, not even the
main character. That’s a problem.
I didn’t hate this book, but I didn’t like it either. It’s short.
The writing was fine. The plot
was dull – small-town warrior takes over the known world without ever miss-stepping
along the way.
The book is the start of an ambitious cycle of books, as the afterword
takes great joy in telling us. It also
spells out the plots of the subsequent books.
It sounds like more of the same. I
think I’m going to do some review-surfing to see if the rest of the series is
worth reading.
Rating: 2
Other Opinions:
It was a bad book.
It was a great book.
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