Berserker Kill (Paperback)

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Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Saberhagen's Berserker series chronicles the ongoing conflict between space-faring humanity and the doomsday war machines of the title, programmed to exterminate all life. Emerging from the depths of the Mavronari Nebula, a berserker ship takes human prisoners, steals a research station orbiting the nearby planetoid Imatra--which carries a billion stored human zygotes intended for a colonization effort--and heads back to its Mavronari hideout, leaving Imatrans mystified. Premier Dirac Sardou, believing his newlywed wife may still be aboard the station, assembles a makeshift force and pursues, never to be heard from again. Three centuries later, a new berserker attack demolishes Imatra; another human expedition gives chase, and what they find in the Mavronari dust cloud is stranger than anything they expected. Saberhagen breathes life into the often-arid soil of future-war SF with intriguing characters, neat plot twists, rousing action and no trace of the gung-ho macho posturing that marks much military science fiction. This smart, fast-moving story is edge-of-the-seat reading.
Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Library Journal

When an orbiting laboratory containing human germ plasm--the seeds of a future space colony--is seized by a berserker ship, a rescue fleet sets out in pursuit, knowing that it faces humanity's most formidable enemy. The latest in the author's popular berserker series features a cast of nonstereotypical characters as well as an unexpected conclusion. Though familiarity with earlier series titles is helpful, this fast-moving sf adventure works well on its own. A good additon to most sf collections.
Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 448 pages
• Publisher: Tor Books; Reprint edition (February 1995)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0812550595
• ISBN-13: 978-0812550597
• Product Dimensions: 6.7 x 3.8 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 7.2 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 3.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (8 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #1,731,674 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Excellent, epic space adventure, featuring Berserkers., May 5, 1997

By A Customer

The longest and most complex and ambitious of Saberhagen's Berserker stories, this one carries the weight well. He weaves together a larger varied cast of human and non-human characters, using them to investigate the grand theme of the Berserker tales: the boundaries between human and non-human. Intriguing characters include various ordinary folk, a cyborg combat pilot last seen in Berserker Man, an AI personality impinging on the real world, a disembodied human in simulated world, and a serial killer. But the situations dominate: why have Berserkers stolen a biological laboratory ship? The ride is fascinating, the problems, compelling, and the denoument, a treat, rich in the sense of wonder that first attacts fans to the genre

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A little long winded, but worth it if you're a Berserker nut, January 9, 1997

By A Customer

I love Berserker stories, but I felt this novel sort of dragged through the human sub plots. There's a heck of a suprise in the last fifty pages or so that made it worth reading, but when I re-read it I skimmed through a lot of it. Sorry, Fred..

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Uninteresting with too many loose ends, January 30, 2006

By	OccasionalReviewer - See all my reviews

This review is from: Berserker Kill (Saberhagen, Fred, Berserker Series.) (Hardcover)

I haven't read a lot of Saberhagen, a few Berserker short stories (that I enjoyed)and probably a few novels that escape my memory over the years. This book is really weak. It is long and uninteresting until the final 25%. The book repeats points over & over. Worst, there are more loose ends than a bowl of spagetti. The big event that most of the first third of the book builds up to is skipped over, later referred to in past tense with incomplete descriptions. The last words of a character are significant and referred to many times, but never fully explained. When the big climax comes, it is ***an explanation***, and a predictable one at that!!! Battles just end as if someone turned off a switch. At the end of the book, the fates of two major characters are left hanging.

Finally, boarding and hand-to-hand fighting in space battles? Come on! I thought Niven buried that idea long ago. If I can get a small craft grappled to an enemy's hull, I'd be inclined to fill it with explosizes than little-itty-bitty-fighter machines.