Customer Reviews

The Young Warriors (Battlestar Galactica)

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I bought all 14 of the Berkley/Ace 'Battlestar Galactica' novels when they first came out (mainly out of loyalty to the TV series, which -- for all its flaws -- had been the high-point of my week during a particularly trying time in High School), and I was VERY pleasantly surprised by this one, co-authored by Robert Thurston (who also co-authored all four of the quite-decent original novels, #11-14 in that series).

All of the rampantly sexist attitudes in the TV episode "The Young Lords" (which made me cringe even in 1978) are redeemed and turned on their heads in THE YOUNG WARRIORS, beginning with the change in title.

Instead of a younger brother giving orders to his submissive older sister and obsessing about rescuing his father from the Cylons, this novelization gives us an oldest sister who is as much real warrior/leader as eye-candy for Starbuck, and the leader of their resistance movement, whom they wish to rescue, is the children's wise and formidable MOTHER.

There was, as I recall, nothing cheesy, juvenile, or misogynistic in the TV episode which THE YOUNG WARRIORS didn't at least ATTEMPT to transform into something intelligent, intriguing, and empowering, whenever possible.

As in Glen Larson's novelization of the 'Battlestar Galactica' pilot, which became the first book in this series, the Cylons in this book are still organic life-forms within their armor, rather than the inorganic artificial life-forms they became in the on-air version of the BG pilot.

Once you accept that we're dealing with Larson's alternative model for the Cylons, here, the avid BG fan should find this an enjoyable read, and a vision of what the aired episode MIGHT have been, had the TV series been given the time to mature and build on its strengths.

OK, the big question is why in the world was this episode of Battlestar Galactica chosen to be a novel? I just don't understand. It is the TV episode which was called "The Young Lords" and chronicles Starbuck's adventures on the planet Antila when he gets shot down by a Cylon raider during a patrol. Glen Larson and Robert Thurston try hard to make a good story out of this, but I'm afraid that the original material is just not there. It's OK, as a minimal action-adventure story, but it doesn't light the world on fire. Starbuck is rescued by a band of children who have been fighting the Cylon garrison on the backwater swamp planet Antila. The story centers on rescueing Megan, the mother of some of the children. It is pretty faithful to the TV episode except for three major items: 1) Cylons are really sentient beings who are dying off because of diseases; 2) Spectre, the Cylon base commander, is making his own robotic versions of the centurions and lying about it to the Cylon leaders; and 3) the children ride and communicate telepathically with unicorns!! These points were not in the original TV show. Of course, in the show, the Cylons were already robots! The other interesting thing about this book is that it is told partially in excerpts from Miri's book, a diary of one of the elder children (a beautiful girl who Starbuck eyes, of course). In the end, they save the captured prisoners of the Cylon garrison and Starbuck is rescued. For a fan of Battlestar, you should read it, and I recommend it for anyone who might be interested in this story or TV episode, but I still can't figure out why they tried to make a novel out of this story. It is constantly rated as one of the worst episodes of the series. A much better choice could have been The Hand of God, which was the last episode. Some of the other episodes which were converted into novels are questionable too, but I will get to them when I finish reading those.

never liked the planet of children episode with starbuck ,couldnt see kids taking the cylons on one on one ,still dirk benedit did get to lock lips with audrey landers that in itself has inspired fantasies over the years, anyway dont buy unless you want more back story on the tv episodes

I've read books 1 through 9 in this series, and found this one of the deepest and most entertaining of them. It attempts to deal with Starbuck's weariness with war as well as the weariness of the population of the 12 colonies being in the depth of a thousand year war. The telepathic unicorns did not turn me off and I actually thought Starbuck's connection with one of them was carried off very well. Spectre was also a standout. This character was fleshed out more than he was in the tv show (and even in that episode, regardless of how well received it was, Spectre was one of the best guest characters to come along in BG).

The Larson/Thurston novels were by far the best. (The Larson/Goulart novels were terrible, the writing horrible.) And this is the best of the first four Larson/Thurston's. Thurston co-wrote some or all of the books between 11 and 14 also, but I haven't gotten to those yet. But this is definitely the best of the first four.