Flinx's Folly: A Flinx & Pip Novel [Hardcover]

Alan Dean Foster (Author)

Book Description

Series: Foster, Alan Dean | Publication Date: November 4, 2003

New York Times bestselling author Alan Dean Foster delivers the eagerly awaited new Pip and Flinx novel featuring a certain twenty-four-year-old with red hair, growing powers, and a loyal sidekick who just happens to be a flying mini-dragon. Sure to delight longtime fans and win new ones, Flinx’s Folly follows Flinx on a thrilling quest to unravel the mysteries of his mind and body. It is a quest that forces him to confront a horror almost beyond human comprehension concealed somewhere in the universe . . . and coming closer.

It’s a good thing Flinx is no stranger to trouble, because he’s swimming in it. Even before the latest murderous attack by a new gang of assailants, there seems no end to people determined to arrest, examine, or kill him. To add insult to all that injury, Flinx has been spirited away and enlisted in a battle against a monstrous extra-galactic threat. Hidden behind the Great Emptiness, in a place where it seems matter and energy have never been, there is only evil. Pure evil that is approaching him, accelerating.

Against such a quintessence of colossal evil what can one puny human and a formidable mini-drag protector do? Flinx must tell someone or go out of his already addled mind. Choosing a confidant is easy: Clarity Held, a crush he hasn’t seen in six years. She is a young woman who has clearly gone on with her life in ways that (he soon learns) don’t necessarily include Flinx.
Whatever happens, Flinx makes up his mind to act quickly. His decision is the beginning of a terrifying, high-stakes adventure through perilous new realms that will rocket him into the very heart of danger–and into the arms of the only woman he’s ever loved. As he and Pip bravely travel to a place where no man or mini-drag has gone before, Flinx discovers he has a few more friends than he thought–and far more enemies than he ever imagined.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Bestseller Foster (Drowning World) offers brisk, lightweight SF entertainment in his eighth novel about Flinx (aka telepath Philip Lynx) and his Alaspinian flying snake (or minidrag) Pip. On the planet Goldin IV, Flinx discovers that his dreams about a monstrous evil beyond the Great Emptiness are now reaching other people with deleterious results. He also learns that he's being chased by the Order of Null, dedicated adepts who want a cleansing death for the whole universe and are afraid he'll prevent it. Fleeing in his alien-built supership to the paradise planet New Riviera, he takes up with his old lover, Clarity Held. Unfortunately, she's picking up the dreams, too. Still more unfortunately, Clarity's fiance, Bill Ormann, is becoming homicidally jealous. In fact, he's about to kill them both when Flinx's old mentors, the thranx Truzenzuzex and the human Tse-Mallory, do a good imitation of a deus ex machina and dispose of Mr. Ormann. Much of the rest of the book dissolves into informational dialogue about several long-vanished alien species who may hold the key to preventing the evil from coming out of the Great Emptiness and making an end to all things. Fans of serious SF will give this a pass, but Foster's large following should ensure another bestseller.
Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Booklist

Series hero Flinx's empathic powers go out of control, and then there is a massive blackout. After escaping hospital workers, who want to further test his decidedly strange brain, Flinx realizes he needs to tell someone about his strange dreams, not to mention the mental power surges and the worsening of the headaches that come with his empathy. There is only one person he trusts enough, his ex-lover Clarity. Visiting her on New Riviera, he discovers that his dreams are, for lack of a better term, contagious. Those dreams, which involve a great, destructive evil traveling toward occupied space, also seem to cause his power surges. While with Clarity, he unintentionally manages to kill all nearby plants and cause her to see something of what he sees. Between the mad jealousy of Clarity's almost-but-not-quite fiance and the appearance of bizarre death cultists, Flinx has his work cut out for him. Despite its nasty cliffhanger ending, a fast, light, adventurous afternoon read. Regina Schroeder
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 272 pages
• Publisher: Del Rey; 1 edition (November 4, 2003)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0345450388
• ISBN-13: 978-0345450388
• Product Dimensions: 9.5 x 6.5 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (14 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,551,703 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Alan Dean Foster's work to date includes excursions into hard science-fiction, fantasy, horror, detective, western, historical, and contemporary fiction. He has also written numerous non-fiction articles on film, science, and scuba diving, as well as having produced the novel versions of many films, including such well-known productions as "Star Wars", the first three "Alien" films, "Alien Nation", and "The Chronicles of Riddick". Other works include scripts for talking records, radio, computer games, and the story for the first "Star Trek" movie. His novel "Shadowkeep" was the first ever book adapation of an original computer game. In addition to publication in English his work has been translated into more than fifty languages and has won awards in Spain and Russia. His novel "Cyber Way" won the Southwest Book Award for Fiction in 1990, the first work of science-fiction ever to do so.

Foster's sometimes humorous, occasionally poignant, but always entertaining short fiction has appeared in all the major SF magazines as well as in original anthologies and several "Best of the Year" compendiums. His published oeuvre includes more than 100 books.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

23 of 24 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars All Sizzle, No Steak, November 20, 2003

By 

Rusir-10 (Gaithersburg, MD United States) - See all my reviews

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Flinx's Folly: A Flinx & Pip Novel (Hardcover)

Okay, I've been reading the stories of Flinx and Pip for years now and I'm a huge fan. I'll admit that Foster's habit of jumping around chronologically in the novels he releases gets a little old (i.e. not within each story, but you're never certain where each new novel will fall in Flinx's life). Even given that I've usually enjoyed each one as it was released. The relationship between Flinx and Pip is explored in each book, Flinx learns more about his past, his powers continue to develop and Flinx matures and learns.

However, there's little of that in this novel. The only real development in this novel is that Flinx hooks up with Clarity again (and a few other characters, but I won't spoil that).

His powers are no more understand at the end of this book. The evil that he senses in earlier stories is about the same in this book. The powers that are influencing his powers and headaches are only developed in the smallest way.

Overall, I just found it kind of boring. Not much happens. Most of the story is driven by a jealous boyfriend and Flinx's headaches.

I'm not saying skip this one. If you're a fan of Flinx and Pip, you'll definitely be getting it, but save yourself some money and wait for the paperback. If you're new to the series, do not start with this story, but read some of the earlier stories like "For Love of Mother Not"

14 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Space Opera Lite for Flinx and Pip fans [Mild Spoilers], January 11, 2004

By 

"fighteer" (Sterling, VA USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Flinx's Folly: A Flinx & Pip Novel (Hardcover)

I think the title of this book really should have been "Yet Another Flinx and Pip Novel." Serving mainly to reunite Flinx with some of his old friends and allies, introduce a few new (and somewhat implausible) enemies, and further propound on the "Great Evil That Threatens The Universe As We Know It," this novel feels annoyingly like filler intended to keep fans happy until Foster gets around to wrapping up the series.

In Flinx's Folly, true to its name, a number of the titular hero's choices, from past stories and current, come back to haunt him. Fleeing both from a mysterious new group of fanatics devoted to the cleansing of the universe and from his own increasing mental turmoil, Flinx seeks out his former lover, Clarity Held, on the paradise planet of New Riviera. There he becomes the unwitting target of her would-be fiancee's jealous rage. The orphan prodigy who has outwitted interstellar crime lords, hostile aliens, and Commonwealth authorities is inexplicably defeated by a scheming corporate ladder-climber, and rescued by one of the least credible deus-ex-machinas in the entire series.

The one and only thing that is actually resolved in this novel is Flinx's ultimate choice: whether or not to accept his role in confronting the aforementioned Great Evil. In the end though, his choice is rendered moot by an annoying plot twist that once again leaves him fleeing from enemies and friends alike.

With all of my objections, however, this is still a Flinx and Pip novel, and as such is worth reading for devotees of the series simply so as not to have missed anything. I heartily wish that I'd waited for the paperback version to come out, however, as the hardcover price is too much to pay for filler. I await the release of Sliding Scales later this year with equal parts trepidation and anticipation.

10 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Flinx meets, well, everyone, and becomes the Fifth Element, May 9, 2004

By 

Christopher B. Browne "cbbrowne" (Scarborough, Ontario, Canada) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Flinx's Folly: A Flinx & Pip Novel (Hardcover)

I "panned" the previous Flinx book, _Reunion_, as being little more than a placeholder.

This one does a tad better, as it actually is something of a "reunion" with Flinx meeting up with several of the past favorite characters. Unfortunately, it's all pretty rushed.

And the story is being transformed to Flinx as an unwitting "Fifth Element" (ala Luc Besson), albeit without a Gary Oldham to play the central Zorg "bad guy." Well, actually, the "corporate VP" would have fit that fairly well, except that he's a too-easily vanquished monster that started the story masquerading as a thoughtful wannabe-fiance.

Did I mention that the story seems rushed?

I get the sense that Foster isn't really interested in Flinx anymore except as a salable franchise. There's a clear way to progress the story, because there's the "Fifth Element" thing; Flinx as the not-totally-understood weapon against the Ultimate Evil.

Unfortunately, the results aren't as engaging as the earlier books in the "Saga."