Customer Reviews

The Cobra Trilogy

5 star:		(5)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(0)
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The Cobra trilogy was enjoyable but not worth raving about. I'd recommend it to voracious Sci-fi readers, but not many others. For someone who hasn't read much science fiction, this would be a great one to start with. There is enough science to make it seem plausible and yet not stifle or drown the stories for a new reader.

The ideas and science applications are not totally new, but the stories, characters and settings make up for the lack of originality in the science.

Also, Timothy Zahn has created a continuity with the characters and their family that really made the entire volume seems real and personal.

There are many things that could be picked apart, but wouldn't do much good at this point. I liked it a lot, and for most Sci-fi fans, especially military Sci-fi fans, they will love it as well.

This thing is hard to write a short review on since it is actually three books in one. It is about a family, beginning with Jonny Moreau, who for three generations were implanted with high tech weaponry to make them super soldiers. But as has been typical of Timothy Zahn throughout his career these stories are about far more than that. It deals quite a lot with how a society deals having such high tech warriors in their midst. A factor that leads Jonny Moureau into politics, and his oldest son Corwin, who is not a Cobra, follows in his footsteps. Being a Cobra and a politician can put a strain on family life. But it's hard to tell at times which is the bigger problem. The original story Cobra is written as a group of short stories because two of the "chapters" were originally published as short stories. I'm not sure which ones. This is well worth the read for any Timothy Zahn fan.

I always liked to mix up my reading. If I have been reading a few mysteries, I will try to grab some science fiction. If I have been reading something serious, I will look for something funny. And if I have been reading heavier, intense literature, I try and look for something light and fun. With that mindset, I grabbed up and began to listen to Cobra by Timothy Zahn. Reading the summaries Cobra was about enhanced super soldiers, so I expected something light, with a bunch of action and explosions. I had never read Zahn before, but I knew he wrote some Star Wars novels, so that is basically what I expected, a shoot em' up Western in Space.

That is not what I got. Instead, I got a detailed and intimate tale of the life of a soldier. Instead of raging armies of super soldiers taking on tanks and Mecha, there was a well told story about the effects of war on a single man. There was action, but most of it was one man, escaping bad guys, or taking on subversive plots with not just lasers and bombs but his mind. Even more so, the book was a look at what happens to soldiers when they are taken from war, and placed back into society, those people they were duty bound to protect, now looking at them with fear and scorn. The beauty of Cobra is that is followed our protagonist past his battle days, and shows you his life from multiple perspectives. It allows you to see how the active duty life of a soldier is only his first battle.

Cobra exceeded my expectations and again taught me that you can't always judge a book by its publisher generated blurb. As with many science fiction series, the seep sonorous voice of Stefan Rudnicki handled the narration. This tale was right in Rudnicki's wheelhouse, a character driven science fiction tale.

This edition brings together the first three books, written in the eighties, in a military SF series about the cybernetically and biomechanically-enhanced "Cobra" soldiers. It is the first of two trilogies about the Cobras written a quarter of a century apart.

The first trilogy consists of:

1) Cobra, published 1985, story begins in 2403
2) Cobra Strike" published 1986, set a generation later
3) Cobra Bargain published 1988, set another generation on in 2474.

Much more recently Zahn has revisited these stories to produce a second set of three books known as the "Cobra War" trilogy, which is set another generation later (the heroine of "Cobra Bargain" is the mother of one of the main characters in the Cobra War books). This second trilogy consists of

4) Cobra War Book 1: Cobra Alliance
5) Cobra War Book 2: Cobra Guardian
6) Cobra War Book 3: Cobra Gamble (Due for publication in 2012).

"Cobra" and "Cobra Strike" were also published together in one volume as "Cobras Two."


As this series begins at the start of "Cobra," some four hundred years in the future and many light years away on the frontier of human space, a group of human colony worlds are under attack from an aggressive alien race known as the Troft. The first planet they attacked was over-run in only three weeks. In a desperate attempt to stop the invaders, the Dominion of Man creates the enhanced "Cobra" guerillas: the name stands for COmputerised Body Reflex Armament.

The Cobras are indistinguishable from a normal human from the outside, but with a whole host of computer-controlled weaponry and enhancements built into their bodies and their very bones. These soldiers are deadly in combat but the process of turning a normal human into a Cobra is irreversible - which means that those who survive the war will have all manner of problems returning to civilian life afterwards. The novels examine some of the personal and social consequences of turning people into supermen - have they given up their own humanity to save humankind?

Each of the three novels which make up this first trilogy tells the story of a generation of the Moreau family who serve Aventine both as Cobra soldiers and as political leaders.

The first book tells the story of Jonny Moreau who was one of the first generation of Cobra solders from the time he joins the Cobras as a young recruit just after the war with the Troft to an agonising political choice which confronts his thirty years later as a senior politician.

"Cobra Strike" begins a few years after the conclusion of "Cobra" and continues the story both of the world of Aventine and of the next generation of the Moreau family. The main character of this one is Jonny Moreau's son Justin, who follows him into the Cobras, and one of the supporting characters is his older son Corwin, who follows him into Aventine politics. During that book an astonishing request comes from the alien Troft, who the Cobras were originally brought into existence to fight. They ask the Cobras to assist them in dealing with a world called Quasama which they claim poses a threat to Troft and humans alike - and they offer Aventine a hugely valuable payment - no less than five new worlds - if the Cobras could deal with that threat.

The offer seems too good to be true: is that because that's precisely what it is?

Cobra Bargain is set another generation later - the back cover of my copy of the original separately published edition says that it is set in 2474. I can't find this date in the actual text, but it is consistent with the chronology of the series. Corwin Moreau is now a governor of Aventine: the heroine of the book is his niece Jasmine or Jin, who is the daughter of Justin Moreau and determined to follow her father and grandfather into the Cobras.

At first there is enormous opposition to making a woman into a Cobra, but then the need arises for a dangerous mission to the world of Quasama (the world which her father visited in the previous book.) Because Jin is one of the very few people on Aventine who has mastered the difficult Quasaman language, the Aventine authorities reluctantly allow her to become the first female Cobra.

But when she arrives on Quasama, the mission begins to go wrong almost immediately ...

This three novels in the original "Cobra" trilogy are reasonably well-written, entertaining, and exciting. However, having been published in the eighties during the early days of Timothy Zahn's writing career, I don't personally feel that they are in the same league as the best of the brilliant novels which he has produced over the following decades.

If you read the first three Cobra novels expecting anything like "Warhorse," "Deadman Switch, "The Icarus Hunt" or any of the "Grand Admiral Thrawn" books set in the "Star Wars" universe, you may be disappointed.

Nevertheless if you are into Military SF it is extremely likely that you will enjoy this trilogy, and you will also find that some of the ideas in these books appear to have inspired a number of more recent books by other popular SF writers.

Loved the first book and now I have the three books in one.
Is kind of a very thick book since is three into one, but I guess there was no other choice if you wanted a paper book. If you like scifi and war stories you will love this one.

I have read all of them and love them all. When I met him, I let him know that they were my favorite over the Star Wars series.

This trilogy was written some time ago but is still a good read for today's market. Timothy Zahn is an excellent writer with believable characters and worlds.

A great piece of work from one of the giants in Sci-Fi literature. Timothy Zahn has been very successful over the years and this is an excellent example of why.