Three novels and a short story. And that appalling, off-putting cover.
Nothing much to say about A Plague of Masters, the first novel. Hunters of the Sky Cave has much of interest, including a delightful demonstration of Anderson’s ability to fully imagine interesting aliens. The short story’s–well, a short story, about how the empire’s disintegrating right before Flandry’s eyes.
A Knight of Ghosts and Shadows–the final novel in this book–is by far the most elaborate tale in the entire van Rijn/Falkayn/Flandry set. Captain Flandry’s getting old, and it’s starting to wear on him. The novel’s convoluted, carefully plotted, and a bit experimental. I can’t say everything works, but it’s an impressive effort, and on the whole it’s successful. And Kossara’s far more appealing than most of the women in this series.
By the way, this is the first ebook in the set which was clearly built from scanned pages. I was a bit surprised. There weren’t a lot of errors, but enough to annoy. One rather suspects the editors are growing bored with the project….
This review was originally published on LibraryThing.
I completely disagree about Kossara. I found her to be a self-righteous prig and Flandry only think he loves her is because she tweaks his self-hatred just like mother used to. Kit was compassionate and emotionally available. Ella was awesome, pure awesome. Either one would have been a better match for Flandry than Kossara.