Customer Reviews

The Imperial Stars (Family d'Alembert)

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Circus secret agents, that is what it boils down to, here. The d'Alemberts are a family of Galactic circus entertainers, from DesPlain. They are highly skilled, as you would imagine, if there services are in demand on more than one planet.

However, there are some nogoodniks around that need dealing with, and other agents have failed to deal with them. Time to send in the clowns.

It has most of Doc's regular trappings, heroic, square jawed men (& in this case a woman too) facing down evil that wants to destroy civilization. But it's just bad. It doesn't put you in the world. Further, I found myself rooting for the bad guy.

I hope that Stephen Goldin does better work when he isn't expanding someone else's story. As it was, I'm not sure I would have hated it so much had it not been ostensibly a Doc Smith novel.

If you plan on reading any of the Family D'Alembert series, then I strongly reccomend that you read this first. It sets the plot and introduces the main characters. Frankly, without reading this book, you will probably get lost in the others!

"Imperial Stars" is, apparently, the only book in this series that is, mostly, written by Doc Smith. However, it is not a good book. For me, the plot was unbelievable and the writing was not up to Smith's standards. And, unfortunately, in my opinion, the rest of the series is worse.

I understand that some folks liked this book and the rest of the series. I did not.