Customer Reviews

Flandry of Terra: Ensign Flandry, Book 3

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Sir Dominic Flandry of the Terran Empire is the James Bond of the 31st Century. Set in a time when humankind has established an interstellar empire consisting of 4 million stars, Flandry finds himself charged with the role of preserving a decadent, tired empire. But these stories are for the most part great fun. Flandry is a character, and as always Poul Anderson the author has something to say and a fair amount of fun saying it. Flandry notes that real decadence is fun, not "lolling around on cushions eating drugged custard!" In any case, he manages to get plenty of adventure, which he defines as "someone else, somewhere else, having a devil of a hard time!"

Although this particular set of "Flandry" stories are not my favorite ("Agent of the Terran Empire" is far and away the best of the "Flandry" series) this collection is perfect for an afternoon at the beach with beer and chips, which is exactly how and where I enjoyed it. This is good space opera and a "don't miss" for fans (like me) of that genre.

_Flandry of Terra_ (1965) is a collection of three stories that take place a bit later in the career of Dominic Flandry than those recounted in _Agent of the Terran Empire_ (1965). Flandry is still dashing, still brave, still in fighting trim (though he hates the regimen of calisthenics that he must endure to stay that way). But he's been around the galaxy a time or two, now. He's a little craftier, a little wiser, a little more world- weary. He has a greater Sense of an Ending. He's more conscious of the oncoming Long Night. He's a bit more philosophical (even relieved) if he loses the girl.

Anderson makes good use of colorful settings for his stories. There is the aquatic planet of Nyanza with its rugged islands and undersea keeps in "The Game of Glory" (_Venture_, 1958). There are the harsh, icy steppes of Altai in "A Message in Secret" (_Fantastic_, 1959), where Flandry must spend time as a guerrilla fighter. And there is the deadly atmosphere of Unan Besar in "A Plague of Masters" (_Fantastic_, 1960-61) which creates one of the most fiendishly effective dictatorships in all of science fiction.

The problems that Sir Dominic grapples with in these stories seem to be a bit more difficult to solve than the problems in the earlier tales. And there is frequently some kind of painful sacrifice that must be made before things can be put in the right. The sacrifice in "The Game of Glory" is perhaps not exactly what you think it will be; and you may feel at the close of "A Plague of Masters" that true justice is not done. But I think that Anderson means for us to see that politics and war are frequently not as nice and neat as we would like them to be. This does not mean that the stories are not still crackling good adventures. Like other Dominic Flandry adventures, this book is still worth reading.