Customer Reviews

The Man Who Never Missed

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If you like action and larger than life heroes, then you will love Steve Perry's Matadora Series. It's fast paced and contains plenty of original ideas which he explores ruthlessly.

Don't believe the book covers, the series actually starts with, "The 97th step", and so should you. Then comes "The Man Who Never Missed", "Matadora", "The Machiavelli Interface", "The Albino Knife", "Black Steel", "Brother Death".

The total story line mostly centers around one man and his efforts to overthrow a repressive government, on a galactic scale. Our hero is Emile Khadaji. He starts his life as one of the government's own soldiers but during a battle to put down a rebellion he experiences an epiphany. From that moment on he is no longer a soldier.

Luckily a rather mystic figure called Pen, takes him under wing, trains him in the martial arts of the ninety nine steps and then releases Emile to fulfill his destiny. Along the way he single handedly starts, maintains and ends a guerrilla war against the government and then assembles and trains a team which forces the whole system to its knees.

Perry is definitely a commercial author but I doubt he would apologize for that. The Matadora series is a good example of this. It panders to my every boyish reading desire and I thank Perry for it.

The Man Who Never Missed is the first novel written in the Matador series. However, it is the second novel in the series by internal chronological sequence, following The 97th Step.

In this novel, Emile Antoon Khadaji is an former Confed veteran with six years combat experience when he finds himself in a bloodbath on Maro, where three-quarters of a million religious fanatic ran, walked and crept into the Confed fire zones and died. This traumatic event breaks his social conditioning and gives him an epiphany about violence. He runs into the oncoming mob, discarding his equipment as he goes, and later finds himself in a nearby town, where he meets Pen (see The 97th Step).

He realizes that the amount of violence used by the Confed is wrong and looks for a way to eliminate the strong-arm tactics. Pen teaches him how to control himself and Juete teaches him to see others as they are. On Bocca, he learns the nature of politics and military force as well as many other subjects. He wallows in learning for a while, but then moves on to gaining money as a power base.

On Greaves, he buys a bar and specializes in providing a good time to the troops. At night and in his spare time, he shoots select troopers with darts carrying Spasm, a convulsant that leaves the victims totally incapable of speech and movement for six months, but leaves the mind clear and undamaged. During these six months, he shoots 2388 of the 10,000 Confed troops, including the commanding officer.

When the Confed finally catches up to him, he is on record as being the one and only member of the Shamba Freedom Forces. This spooks the System Marshall and every single trooper that learns the tale. His fame and example spreads throughout the Confed.

This novel is a SF psyops story, focusing on the use of minimum force to achieve political objectives. Underlying this is a martial arts philosophy which teaches much the same lesson. When a political system degenerates into a self-perpetuating organization that preys on its own citizens, it only takes a small event to crystallize opposition to its existence. Witness the fall of the Soviet Union from the inside.

This story is much like Eric Frank Russell's Wasp, but with a more military approach and a different objective. In Wasp, the goal was to reduce the will to resist of the planetary population, but in this novel, the goal is to increase the will to resist of the planetary populations by breaking the reputation of Confed forces.

Recommended for all Perry fans and anyone who enjoys psyops stories in a SF setting.

I first read Perry's work for Aliens and his Star Wars book, Shadows of the Empire, and liked them. So, when I saw The Man Who Never Missed at a used bookstore, I picked it up. It turned out to be one of the more entertaining pieces of fiction I've read in awhile. It is concerned solely with the life of a man who would come to single-handedly start a revolution against a corrupt universal government. Along the way, he meets the mysterious Pen, who tutors him in an ancient martial arts form. Then, using his skills, he wages a one-man guerrila war on a backwater planet. Yes, that's it. No sprawling plot. Only a few major characters. This harkens back, in my mind, to some of the great pulp novels of the 50s, but with a believable main character and a dose of martial arts. I've read it twice already, and it's still fun, especially in the face of the multi-thousand page epics which seem so popular among fantasy and sci-fi writers today. This is, incidentally, the first book in a longer se

I borrowed this book from a friend and loved it immediately. I then went on to buy all the books in the series and I re-read them regularly. It is the story of one man who gathers a group together to overthrow a vicous, uncaring government and to do it without involving huge numbers of troops an unecessary killing. As Pen says once" A man who can break eggs while smiling" is needed to bring hope and stability to the galaxy. I would love to see these books as a miniseries - a movie could not do the scope of the work justice.

I stumbled onto TMWNM in a bag of books I was culling before taking them over to a nursing home. The activities director had told me they didn't need more western novels. The cover led me to believe that this book was about an old time western gunslinger so I took it out and only later read the cover more closely and decided I would give it a try. What a jewel! It kept my attention to the point that I was carrying it around in my car so I could read it any time I had to wait somewhere. I enjoyed the book so much that I decided to go to Amazon and research their DB to find the,"Rest of the Story". Now, if I can only find the rest of the books in this series. Steve Perry, in this book, reminds me of RAH, and the protaganist in MWNM could easily be one of Heinlien's characters. New readers will like the restrained actions of our hero, Emile Khadji, as he tries to achieve his goals and satisfy his sense of right and wrong simultaneously.

The Man Who Never Missed is an exciting and engrossing space adventure about a soldier who has an epiphany one day during battle, and as a result decides to take on an empire. He encounters various characters along the way who teach him valuable lessons, both physical and spiritual, preparing him for the day when he will take his fight to the forces of tyranny in the known galaxy.

This is a great novel for what it is - a mythic tale of a hero, how he was formed, and the beginnings of his battle against an unassailable (and of course evil) foe. If you're looking for characters who are "ordinary mortals" or for some philosophy deeper than "good must triumph over evil", you won't find it here. But the thoroughly enjoyable tale that Perry weaves made me look past these points.

Sure, TMWNM isn't a great piece of literature, but it's a helluva fun story. And in the end, don't you want to be entertained as much as enlightened?

The Man Who Never Missed is, hands down, one of the finest,entertaining and most original Science Fiction novels to come out of the Eighties. The plot is both action, military and spiritual all in one as the unique journey of the Hero unfolds and we bear witness to his growth and development from a shattered, spiritualy stricken soldier to a freedom fighter capable of challenging an empire. This story remains a benchmark for all military or martial fiction in the Science fiction genre. This is the first of 3 novels in the Matador Trilogy, The Man Who Never Missed is followed by Matadora and The Machiavelli Interface. Collect them. Read them. Enjoy them and may the Spirit of Adventure never leave you.

I happened on this book in the used bookstore one day just looking for something sci-fi and not more than 200 pages. This is what I found and I was totally satisfied!! The story is engrossing and the main character very likeable. I've now found out that the story continues and I'll probably track these books down too.
NOTE: Though it is not much there is some VERY adult content in this book. Be forewarned if you or the person you are giving this book to has any objections along reading such things.

From reading the earlier reviews, I can tell that many people have thoroughly enjoyed the book as much as I did, and do. I would just like to add that I also appreciate Perry's works because, not only are they written with a refreshing, blunt realism, but he really gives the reader a lot of credit for possessing intelligence. The series is set in the future, and Perry treats it as such, using new terms and technologies that are creative and original. But, he does not force detailed descriptions of said technologies on us at first mention, rather, he gives us enough information to put them into a context that he often builds upon at a later, more relevant, time. This may seem like a small detail at first, but after being "talked" down to for years by authors, I was happy to use my brain again. They are well worth searchig for and ordering.

It's amazing that such a small book can have such a powerful effect on a person. I've read this book 3 times in a single day before, it's that good. The present/past time progession works very well to keep things interesting after the initial combat scene draws you in. And an ending that's just too perfect, and definately leaves you wanting to read the next book. A must read for everyone!