In the third book of Tubb’s Dumarest series, Earl Dumarest has found his way to the planet Toy where he hopes to gain information from the massive computer there, the most powerful computer in the galaxy. But on Toy, everything revolves around violence and Earl Dumarest is going to put his life on the line if he wants the information. Meanwhile, a power struggle rocks the highest levels of the Toy Corporation as a secret conspiracy seeks to unseat the psychopathic planetary leader. And once again, a Cyber is at the heart of the conflict.
I’ve praised Tubb’s characterization and the way he makes Dumarest a player in a large ensemble and this book is the best so far in the series in both of those ways. I would have said Dumarest was the main character with a large supporting ensemble in the first two books, but in this book, he’s really a supporting character in terms of page count. The main character, Stockholder Leon Hurl, is the most well rounded and multi-layered character Tubb has yet created. He’s a man struggling to hold together a crumbling conspiracy to overthrow the leader of Toy while simultaneously maintaining a close relationship with the leader’s sister and trying to protect her from both his own conspirators and her violent brother. His internal struggles are compelling and well-written. And for most of the book, he and Dumarest aren’t even aware of the existence of the other, but the way they come together and end up aligning with each other makes sense and feels organic. All the supporting characters are good here. And there’s a great sequence involving a mysterious facility that utilizes genetic technology to create some really awful things; the lengthy scene there is really more horror than sci-fi and it’s genuinely disturbing. And the action is, in my opinion, even better here too. Discovering this series has been one of the great pleasures of the year so far and it just keeps getting better. And, like the first two books, this one’s only about two-hundred pages and a real page-turner. 4 stars.
tl;dr – third book continues the upward trend of the Dumarest series with even better characterizations and plotting; pulp at its best. 4 stars.