What do You think about Orphan Star (2004)?
The second (or third depending on how you count them) in the Flinx and Pip series. I had read this one back in the late 70s but had little recollection of it. Compared to "The Tar-Aiym Krang" this is a much less exciting work for me, but is still a solid bit of space opera with a little detective tale thrown in. The mental image of an adolescent with a highly venomous, near symbiotic, snake-like creature coiled on his shoulder like some alien pirate's parrot, is so iconic I almost feel as though I had seen it for decades in the movies. Yet nothing like it exists anywhere else that I know of. Foster has created a unique yet strangely familiar vision with these stories. I seem to recall more about the next work in the series, "The End of the Matter," than I remembered about "Orphan Star," so the next one promises to earn more stars. I am hoping to read the entire Commonwealth stories including those not featuring Flinx and Pip. Foster is a very engaging non-pretentious writer.
—Kevin
Aside from giggling at 2000km cliffs, valleys thousands of kilometers deep, and a plateau 14 000km high that remain uncorrected in my 1977 copy of this novel, this was a neat read. I enjoyed this story and the sci-fi world that has been created. They made for lighthearted reading (for the most part). I quite like the different species present: the insectoid thranx, the reptilian AAnn, and the ursinoid aliens we encounter at the end of the book. It didn't end entirely satisfactory for me, but as there are sequels, I am not too concerned.
—Laura
The first 3 or 4 books of this series were out when I was younger, and Flinx fired my imagination with his psionic talents, his flying, venom spitting snake, pip, and him being an orphan raised on the streets.Pip & Flinx start looking for some clues to Flinx's past and parentage. His search leads to Ulru-Ujurr, a forbidden, illegal to visit, planet. This book is a bit slow in the middle, but it does advance Flinx's story quite a bit, and the Ulru-Ujurrians are a very neat race.However, I wanted for Flinx to develop and use his psionic talents. The series is now something like 13 books and his mental talents are still unreliable and pretty much useless; this was a very, very, very big disappointment to me for the series as a whole.
—Bryan457
