Customer Reviews

Rebels' Seed

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This book continues the storyline started with the Rissa trilogy ("Young Rissa," "Rissa and Tregare," and "The Long View"). After "The Long View" comes "The Alien Debt" and then "Rebel's Seed." This story is of Lisele, daughter of Rissa Kerguelen and Bran Tregare. In many ways Lisele is similar to her parents in personality ... yet without their early harsh years of development. Too, this is the story of Arlen Limmer, son of Derek Limmer and Felcie Parager who were main characters in the earlier books as well. Arlen is even more sheltered than Lisele and this plays out in their interraction and developing relationship. It was good to see a continuation in this series, though we lose contact with many of the earlier main characters in this book.

Rebel's Seed is the continuing story of Rissa and Tregare. These two together have overthrown the evil United Energy and Transport conglomerate that had held Earth in a stranglehold by creating a Total Welfare State. This is the story of Lisele, their daughter. She survives a shipwreck on a sparsely populated planet and with great ingenuity helps her shipmates defeat the UET outpost that nearly captures them. This is an old story, but one I have read again, and again. I guess I like it so much because the welfare state could really happen. The story can also be found in a book called the "Rebel Dynasty" which also includes the "Alien Debt".

In this, the eighth in a six-book series, young Lisele continues the fight against the evil empire of the UET, the corporate government that once held known space in near-slavery. The problem is that Lisele's parents already defeated them some time back. So, just to draw things out, Busby creates a stranded outpost of UET baddies who didn't know the war was over - or even begun, for that matter. Then, the ship carrying Lisele conveniently becomes disabled near the same isolated and unknown planet. What a coincidence.

If you're willing to go along with that much, Busby's continued saga really does deliver quite nicely. We have our heroine, sixteen year old Lisele, who just happens to be the best at pretty much everything from unarmed combat and starship piloting to negotiating with the brutal leaders of the outpost regime. We have the evil outpost tyrant, the self-declared dictator with a brace of goons to enforce his evil will. Then we have his evil will which, among other things, reduces women to chattel breeding vessels. Of course, a little colony like this needs plenty of breeding because of the high mortality rate in the sadistic combat games and among those who peeve the tyrant. And, of course, we have his triumphant overthrow by a girl who, unbeknownst to the baddies, inherited all-but-godlike strength and skill from the victors of previous books in the story. In other words, we have all the tropes of swashbuckling space opera and then some. Busby binds them together into story for which we happily suspend disbelief, much as we did for Doc Smith's Lensmen and other classics of the genre.

Maybe this stretches the original series a bit more than was entirely good for it, but the result makes fun reading anyway.

- wiredweird