The Judas Solution (Blackcollar Series #3)

First Blackcollar Book in 20 years fun to read.

The original two Blackcollar novels are now available in a one book format and were exciting SF/Action stories with interesting plots and characters. Reading the original novel's' is not essential to but will greatly add to the enjoyment of this new Blackcollar novel which is set less than a year after the other stories. The setting of all of these stories is several hundred years in the future when the human Terran Democratic Empire 'TDE' has been conquered by the alien Ryqril and is tightly controlled via loyalty-conditioned puppet governments and security forces. The Blackcollars were TDE special forces combat teams with greater than human speed and reflexes who were not able to prevent the Ryqril conquest but are not working to end it. In each novel including this one the special abilities and unexpected tactics of the Blackcollars are pitted against the overwhelming logistical advantages of the Ryqril and there human allies. The greatest adversary of the Blackcollars in each story is Security Prefect Jamus Galway who has a far greater tactical ability than many other loyalty conditioned humans. Galway uses his abilities not just as a puppet but wants to defeat the Blackcollars to spare his world from Ryqril reprisals, making him a much more sympathetic adversary than he would otherwise be. In ¿The Judas Solution¿ some of the plot elements from the other stories are recycled a bit and there are some small continuity problems 'including the Ryqril being a bit less formidable than in past stories'. However, the plot, characterization and action in this book is similar in quality to the past ones and several of the plot twists make the book almost impossible to put down in the last half of the book! I found that the first half of the book was a bit slow paced and too similar to the prior stories for my taste, but as I indicated above the second half of the book more than made up for this. In particular I enjoyed seeing the character arc of Jamus Galway concluded in a very satisfying way. The overall story arc of defeating the Ryqril is also brought to a fairly good conclusion, not quite as expected but actually fairly believable. If you like good action adventure stories with a science fictional background you will likely enjoy this book. If after reading this you are looking for other good books by Timothy Zahn with a similar feel to them you could try his Cobra or Conqueror series books.

20 Year Too Late and Much Too Little

I have waited on this book for 20 years. Timothy Zahn's last Blackcollar book was written and published in 1986. I wish I could say it was worth the wait!!! I WISH I could give it 5 stars but I am stretching it to give 3 stars. I have read the first 2 books at least 10 times and even bought the hard back copy so I could continue to read them when I need a little ¿Derring Do¿ in my life. In the first two books all of the characters were fully developed and Mr. Zahn made you care about what happened to them. No so much in this book. The character were pretty lackluster, there was none of the drama of the first two books between the characters. In fact there was no real tension between any of the characters except the aliens. In this book although he tied up a lot of loose ends and the Humans finally rid the TDE of the EVIL aliens, it was more of a ¿What the Hell, lets leave the poor humans alone¿ instead of the Good Guys defeating the Bad Guys. Also in the first books the Ryqril were supposedly the fiercest of warriors and even a ¿Blackcollar¿ hesitated about taking one on in a hand-to-hand fight. But in this book five, six and more were killed by individual Blackcollars. And this was treated as¿Eh no big deal ¿ business as usual¿¿ Jamus Galway¿s plan: to turn the Blackcollars and their combat skill into unknowing tools of the Ryqril was OK but to think that he could do so on a permanent basis was ¿too hard to swallow¿ Also having the clone Judas act as a spy was very original but the clone played a Very small role in the book. Basically he stood around and let everyone do everything. He didn¿t even make a very convincing spy. I am sure that if I were new to the books and just now reading all three together then my opinion might be different. But after waiting 20 years for the good guys to win, I felt it was too little, too late.

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No text was provided for this review.