Customer Reviews

Rogue Berserker

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

This novel is more tightly written than some of Saberhagen's other Berserker novels -- more concise and faster moving. The plotting is really skillful. Under the experienced pen of the author, the plot of this book "turns around" to bite the reader in an almost shocking way.

Saberhagen "sets up" the reader from the first page with lots of scattered evidence that is subject to lots of interpretation. The bare facts are these: women and children have been kidnapped by the berserkers. As Harry Winston and his boss Winston Cheng puzzle over the evidence, weighing facts against facts, they work out a pretty sound theory of what has happened and why. Using their assumptions, Harry and Cheng assemble a team and devise a plan to rescue the hostages. The whole rescue mission, which is at the center of the book, is based upon this reconstruction of what really happened. Who did the kidnappings? Why? What will become of the hostages? Where were they taken?

In this respect, the novel takes on some of the suspense of a good mystery novel. And yet the author wisely plants some seeds of doubt. Harry Silver's logic wars with his instincts. "That HAS to be what happened . . . but it somehow doesn't 'smell' right." Have Harry and Cheng built a house of cards?

A blur of shocking and violent events bursts upon the reader at the end of Chapter 12 -- about two-thirds of the way through the book. As Lawrence Durrell once put it, "take but a step to the east or the west and the entire picture changes." It turns out that every key assumption of Silver and Chang was WRONG.

As weapons blaze, as his friends are dying, and as his installation is being blown apart, Harry realizes with a kind of horror that his whole picture -- everything -- was based on wrong interpretations. Some of his brothers in arms, on whom he was depending, turn out to be arch-villains, and the berserkers whom he thought he understood are acting in inexplicable ways, beyond anything Harry could have expected. Furthermore, the hostages are not where everyone assumed they were. The kidnappers are not the ones that everyone "knew" were guilty. Lastly, characters who up until now have seemed inconsequential and even silly suddenly become key and central players in the novel.

The author has managed all of this so skillfully. The plotting is almost brilliant. It is like one of those "gestalt" drawings where a picture seems to change from a lady's hat to a duck. The author takes the same evidence and lays it out in a different pattern. And, suddenly everything is up for grabs.

Harry improvises, recruiting the most improbable allies, making it up as he goes along.

When he blasts his way finally into the fortress and releases the hostages, one of them says, "where are all the others? The other rescuers?" Harry said, "I'm it. There's no one else. I'm the only one that's still alive." What a story!

The characters are marvelous. The book is full of robots or androids of one type or another, and a number of interesting human characters as well. Even though "we all know" that berserkers are unreflective killing machines, you will be surprised to find a few in this book who behave in the most extraordinary ways, reinterpreting their prime directive to make the most aberrant actions seem "logical." Motivation of these berserkers is crafted as skillfully as in Issac Asimov's masterpiece "The Naked Sun."

Saberhagen sometimes evokes Asimov. Asimov's robots relied upon their 'positronic' brains. Saberhagen's rely on their 'optelectronic' brains. Both Asimov and Saberhagen have so much fun warping and parsing their robotic "prime directives." The reader thinks, "robots can't act that way." but -- they can! They do! Because they think in their OWN eerie way!

Heck-- just READ IT. It's about as good as a shoot-em-up space novel is ever going to get.

Rogue Berserker (2005) is a Better-Than-Average Berserker tale. While we aren't presented with any really new kinds of technology in this book - there are a couple of twists on how technology is used/misused by the humans and their evil machine (Berserker) enemies, which are fairly interesting... for example, both the humans and berserkers resort to disection and experimentation on captured prisoners - of course, it is OK that we do it, because the berserker are "evil machines who can't fell anything, and who are out to exterminate life from the Galaxy".

Harry Silver is the hero of the story, but he is not a very likeable guy... and when his family gets kidnapped, he becomes even more surly, yet obsessed to "get even" with the berserkers who are evidently behind the disappearnce of his family.

Another interesting plot twist are the actions/adventures of the female android, used by one of the antogonists in the tale... she provides an interesting side-story throughout the book, and in the end, winds up having to make some interesting decisions.

The story rates 3.5 stars (rounded up to 4).

I looked forward to reading this book, the first full length Berserker novel I've read, having greatly enjoyed many short stories set in Fred Saberhagen's Berserker Universe. Perhaps there is some innate fear of artificial intelligent life we all share that makes the Berserker Universe so fascinating. Unfortunately either my tastes have changed over the years, or the longer format just doesn't have the same impact provided by the short story format. I found this book entertaining enough and there were certainly some exciting sections, but overall the book just didn't satisfy. Perhaps it is because the berserkers in this book are atypical (which makes them interesting but not so frightening), or perhaps because the book seems aimed at a young adult audience. Incidentally, congratulations to the cover artist; you've captured a key passage in the book extremely well.

Harry Silver, a repeating character in the last few of the Berserker books, finally gets to be in a good book. When a Berserker kidnaps the daughter and grandson of a very rich, very powerful Winston Cheng, Harry is asked to help rescue them. He refuses. Then his own wife and son are kidnapped and the only way to save them is to join Winston on a suicide run against a unknown Berserker base. Harry thought the plan, to try to sneak in using a secret weapon was insane and, at best, would get them all killed.
He was wrong. Very, very wrong. This was not just some normal, death dealing, Berserker. This was a rogue, see the title, and it had plans of its own. And it was being hunted not just by men but by the Berserkers also.
About two thirds through the novel you get a surprise and the action really goes into overdrive. This novel is swift, clean, exciting and has Berserkers all over the place. It almost makes up for such slow novels as Berserker Fury, Shiva In Steel, and Berserker Star.

Harry Silver, with a wife and as a new father, needs money, but a Berserker destroyed his vessel. Wealthy Winston Cheng offers him a small fortune along with a quality ship in exchange for Harry leading a private army to rescue his granddaughter and great-grandson kidnapped by a Berserker. Harry knows that if these killing machines allow a "Goodlife" to live it is only because they become subservient. Winston feels this abduction is different because the death machine is a rogue who acts dissimilar from the others. Still Harry says no as he has two reasons to live.

However, Harry learns that the rogue Berserker kidnapped his wife and son. His only hope to save his beloved Becky and Ethan, assuming they have not been terminated as "Badlife" and that Cheng's theory is correct, is the deal. Harry meets old friends, several enemies, and other adventurers while preparing for an assault. Though Winston's strategy seems logical, Harry knows from first hand experience that the best laid plans of Silver always goes astray when confronting a Berserker so why should this quest be any different especially when another machine seeks to kill Cheng's crew.

ROGUE BERSERKER is a throwback tale to the earlier novels with Berserkers in the forefront leading to non-stop action. Harry seems more complete as he seeks vengeance, prays for a miracle expecting none, and accepts any means is fine as long as he rescues his family. Fueled by anger and helplessness, his obsession makes him less ethical yet more human than hero. Fred Saberhagen provides a terrific entry in his long running series as he returns to the basics: human vs. invincible killing machine within a tense story line.

Harriet Klausner

I've suffered through some mighty weak berserker novels since first discovering Mr. Saberhagen back in 1980. This novel is certainly the best in quite some time. Nevertheless its just 3 out of 5. I guess I have always preferred his Berserker short stories to the full length novels.
I also liked Ardnehs sword, which was a recent addtion to the Empire of The East and the Swords stories. These two series have all been worthy books in novel length form and don't suffer from their length like the Berserker series. Between these two novels (Ardneh and Rogue) I now have some hope that Fred still has something to say in novel form.

First of all, it's "Rogue Berserker", not "Rougue Berserker", as titled above. Hopefully, Amazon will change that.

I am starting to think that I need to re-read some of the earlier Saberhagen books to see if they were really as good as I remember.
I hadn't bought any of his books since starting the "Book of Gods" series several years ago. Those books were so poorly written that I couldn't make it through the series and I haven't really looked for any more of his books since then.
In advance of a trip I was making this week, I visited a local book store and saw "Rogue Berserker", which I purchased, having been a fan of the series from years ago. The book started off with a bang, flowed into some fairly minor character development, set up the plot for the book and then resolved the story with rushed action scenes.
As with the Gods series, there are long passages that say the same things over and over, there are paragraphs that seem totally out of place, and there are characters introduced, seemingly for some purpose that is never resolved. A huge, "impressive" rescue effort is mentioned towards the beginning of the book, which turns out to consist of only a few people, none of which turn out to be that impressive. And unless a character has a reason to be young or old, they are all described to be of "indeterminate age", a phrase used more in this book than in all of the other books I have ever read. Combined.

All that said, the story line was creative, there were some really good plot twists and the action sequences were good, if a little bit rushed. At 370 pages, there is plenty of room to flesh out the characters better, build up a better supporting cast and resolve some the story lines - if Saberhagen would just tighten up the repetitive sequences and drop some of the clichéd phrases.