Customer Reviews

Dirge (Founding of the Commonwealth, Bk 2) (Book 2)

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(5)
3 star:		(9)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

I didn't read the first book in this series, so I can't make comparisons, but I did like the story.

Six hundred thousand humans are slaughtered on Treetrunk, a remote planet. Their destruction is mythodical and complete. However, one man survives by taking a worn out shuttle and leaving the planet before the death squad reaches him.

Once found, the survivor recovers and recounts the horrific events, but no one believes him when he reveals who was responsible for the planet's genocide.

I decided who the 'bad guys' were early on. Figuring that out so early usually ruins a book for me, but I kept reading because I wanted to see how it all turned out.

Foster cleaned up all the story lines and created a new one right at the end -- perfect planning for a sequel.

Enjoy!

It has been twenty years since the chance meeting of street thug Cheelo Montoya and Thranx poet Desvendapur revealed the bug colony hidden deep within the Amazon Basin, and not much has changed. Contact between the species is still proceeding at a far too reluctant pace for some. Sadly, that pace is further hindered by the arrival of the Pitar, a species of alien that embodies all that humankind aspire to on a physical level (i.e. a planet inhabited by Playgirl and Playboy centerfolds). However the Thranx are rather suspicious of these newly arrived and friendly, yet very secretive, aliens and fear that the humans may pay a price for their blind confidence. And pay the humans do, when 600,000 settlers are wiped out in a brutal surprise attack that has left no trace of the aggressors.

ADF's second chapter in the Founding Trilogy is a tight, brisk read. The fallout from the events of the first book is still being dealt with and the Big Picture lessons that humanity needs to learn about its own arrogance and addiction to visually pleasing lifeforms is well delivered, albeit with a heavy hand (600,000!?!). Some reviews mention the rather abbreviated ending, but this book is the second act in a three act play and, while this particular chapter's story could be expanded into a series of its own (yeah, I thought it was THAT good), in this telling it serves only as an important step in the trail that leads to the Founding. Recommended.

Phylogenesis; Alan Dean Foster was the first in the series just published in paperback last year. That book was the hook and this expensive hardback is pure publisher greed. Foster is a great storyteller and this series is a good sci-fi humanx interest tale. I would wait for the paperback, however, and save your praise for the paperback version to reward this great author and deny his greedy publisher.

This book truly stinks. But let me clarify. The first 80-90% is actually a fun read, and anyone familiar with Foster's Commonwealth-related books will enjoy that part. However, the conclusion, which we all knew was coming, was horribly and lazily constructed. The ending is just simply lousy writing and lousy Science Fiction. I don't want to spoil it for people who haven't read it yet, so I'll just say it reminded me of a very bad video game or weak SF yarn from the 80s. Not only is the writing poor in the last portion, but the motivations and characterization of the offending alien race, the actions of the humans and the method Foster achieves the pre-scripted ultimate outcome, the visionless and unimaginative science fiction elements that are supposed to justify key story elements, and ultimately the psychological and emotional denouement were so simplistic, implausible, inconsistent, incomplete and asinine that Foster and his editor should be ashamed of letting this book sit beside the otherwise unblemished family of books. Of course, I'll still read the next one, as I've read almost every other Foster book. It can only get better.

Something is wrong on the remote planet of Treetrunk. A cargo ship, with merchandise to deliver, can't reach anyone on the surface. No one responds to repeated transmissions. Six hundred thousand humans cannot possibly be this quiet, unless --- Someone has massacred every one of the colonists on Treetrunk. The work was carried out methodically, complete with systematic mutilations of the females. The devastation shatters an already tenuous alliance between humans and their alien counterparts as everyone tries to find out who carried out the genocide and why. Amidst all the carnage, one man survives to tell the horrific story of what he witnessed before he escaped in a small, worn out space shuttle. The problem is: no one believes him. Foster tosses out a few too many red herrings, and it's pretty obvious who the 'bad guys' are, but the story is developed well enough to hold a reader's interest. The author is also adept at tying up all the plot lines while introducing a new one for the third volume. Enjoy!

Terry Matthews, Reviewer

For those who have been pay attention the Commonwealth books for years, we all knew who the bad guys were here, who the good guys were, and how it ends. Unlike Phylogenisis, the major plot points here had all been referenced to in the orginial books (though as historical asides). Nevertheless, filling in the details was fun. And how many of you noticed that Mallory and Tse combine to form Tse-Mallory. Where's Bran to tell the story when you need him? A good read, and an important book in the Commonwealth history -- but not as much new and surprising information as Foster usually provides.

This seems to be another victim of Foster's ever accellerating pace of production. Sure the storyline is predictable, we were told what would happen in "The End of the Matter". Sure the basic premise of the book is a thin comic book storyline used in "The End of the Matter" to explain how Humans and Thranx got together. However, Foster managed to both make the fill narrative both more interesting, and at the same time less inventive.

The storyline which Foster weaves through the events described in "The End of the Matter" is both fun and well written. The improbable lone survivor of a brutal attack must prove humanity's new allies are really its worst enemies... but how when they seem to have so meticulously covered their tracks?

Perhaps not as well written as some of his earlier books, but very good. However, he never really fills out the plotline mentioned in "The End of the Matter" adequately enough to dispell the feeling that the entire story is just a fairy tale. Humans discover another race of "sexy" humans? There have been less likely plotlines in the annals of science fiction, but such an unlikely occurence requires a bit more support than given in this book.

I also agree that the denouement of the story was abrupt and seemed a bit unfinished. This aspect of the book seems strikingly similar to the abrupt pacing and ending of the latest Flinx novel Reunion.

Still, a good read. Any fan of the Commonwealth series will certainly be pleased.

The book starts out kind-of slow, but once the attack on Argus V takes place, things get a lot more interesting. At that point it became a bit of an interstellar murder mystery, and I couldn't put the book down. HOW everyone finds out who did it and what the Humans would do about it, and how the Thranx would get involved, was what kept me turning the pages.

The new race in the book, the Pitar, were for me a little bit unbelievable. I don't really believe in parallel evolution, so a race that looks almost exactly like humans for me was a bit far-fetched. Also, the Pitar struck me as being very 2-dimensional. They were all the same. There should have been good Pitar, bad Pitar, different Pitar with different personalities, but there weren't. That bothered me.

Nevertheless, it was interesting to see how the Humans would find out who attacked Argus V, see how they would react, and how this story would draw the Humans and the Thranx closer together. Definitely worth a read by anyone who is interested in the relationship between Humans and the Thranx, and how the Humanx Commonwealth was formed.

Dirge is Book 2 of the Founding of the Commonwealth (thus the sequel to Phylogenesis). Dirge picks up pretty much where Phylogenesis leaves off, humans and Thranx trying to figure out how to work together to grow their civilizations. I guess Foster wanted to emphasize what a big step it was for the early members of the commonweath to overcome the innate horror one would feel in the presence of the Thranx (who we remember look like big, nice smelling, bugs). In order to empasize the point Foster introduces the Pitar. Humanlike aliens who are by all accounts visually perfect to humans. The humans obsession with the Pitar threatens to delay to continuation of human/Thranx cooperation until as expected it is revealed the the Pitar are evil misanthropes who wish to destroy all life they meet (isn't that always the case?). Needless to say the Thranx help us commit genocide against the Pitar and all ends well. Overall this book was fine, but I wanted to learn more about humans and Thranx and the distraction of the Pitar meant this book really didn't fit into the founding theme. You might want to skip it unless there is another book in the founding series.

Once more Alan Dean Foster has created a world that every SciFi fan will find exciting, exotic and amazing. A world where Aliens & Humans interact, some in good ways and others not so good. One of the best SciFi writers on the planet.