6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Pleasure Unalloyed, January 11, 2007
What a joy it is to read (or reread) the Stainless Steel Rat books. I hope that the whole series will become available again so I can fill in any I may have missed. Harrison is one of the very few writers able to combine humor with good science fiction. You can usually just hand one to a friend and say please read the first page and if you're not hooked, quit.
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4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
YOU HAVE TO LOVE THE RAT! The three novels here are pure Harrison., June 17, 2011
If you are a Rat fan, then this is sort of a must read. If you have never read of the Rat, then you are missing out on a lot of fun reading and this is a good place to start.
A Stainless Steel Trio is actually three novels and each of the three are prequels to the first book in the series, The Stainless Steel Rat. The three novels here are:
A Stainless Steel Rat is Born
The Stainless Steel Rat Gets Drafted
The Stainless Steel Rat Sings the Blues
Harrison has taken the hero of eight previous novels, Jim diGriz, aka Slippery or Slick Jim, and has added some background to how he became the master criminal of the galaxy and why he is so prone to thumb his nose at all authority and refuses to follow the "rules."
These three novels should be read in sequential order to fully appreciate them, but it is not absolutely necessary. The other eight novels in the series, after the first, can be read in any order you chose.
These novels, like most in the series are more or less character driven with Slippery Jim being the primary source. Many who read these three and the others, will be strongly reminded of Harrisons Death World Series...three outstanding reads.
Slippery Jim, The Stainless Steel Rat is funny, quite introspective and has a complete set of rules and morels which are completely his own. Even though he breaks every law in the known universe (Except killing) his ethics and morals are actually much higher and more demanding than the rest of the human (and some not so human) species.
I have been a Rat Fan since Harry Harrison published his first work (which was actually a short story featuring Slick Jim) and continue to be so to this date.
The work being reviewed here is a Kindle down load and it came through in pretty good shape. There was, as is often the case, a bit of a problem here and there with the punctuation and the sentences were broken in odd places at times but this was not bad enough to distract from the work all that much.
These books are simply fun to read. The author does not take himself all that serious and the main character in the book certainly does not either. Much fun is poked at just about everything and some of the situation Jim finds himself in, unlikely though they may be, are quite unique and interesting.
Don Blankenship
The Ozarks
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11 of 15 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A good series, September 12, 2003
By A Customer
Actually, this is a four star series. The extra star is to balance out bad reviews given for reader errors that have nothing to do with the book.
It is a solid, entertaining read, well worth the time, and this edition gives you three novels out of this sometimes hard-to-find series.
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