Tease

John Gordon believes he is going mad when he starts hearing voices. Yet mad he is not, and soon Gordon is flung two hundred thousand years into the future, where he must live the life of a Galactic Prince during a period of great turmoil . . .

Review

Now this is more like it! I’ve enjoyed the two John Brunner omnibuses I’ve read so far, but when I first learned of the Venture SF range, it’s books like The Star Kings that I hoped to find. The premise is sheer pulp goodness. An ordinary man swaps minds with a denizen of the year 200,000, and proceeds to go on a rollicking great adventure. If that appeals to you as much as it did to me, then stop reading this review and go read the book instead.

The Star Kings was first published in 1949, and very much is a book of that period. The protagonist is a World War Two veteran, with the conflict still very much in his mind. He’s an everyman who nevertheless lucks his way through life and gets out of all manner of tricky situations. And you can tell that the book was originally serialised form the short and punchy chapters that all end on cliff-hangers. Honestly, so much happens in this book. In the span of a few chapters our hero Gordon has gone to the future, been kidnapped, been rescued, discovered he is heir to the Empire, become involved in a love triangle, and then become embroiled in a coup. The hits just do not stop coming. I think if the book was published in its current form today, it wouldn’t get very far. But like a lot of older works, there’s an almost naïve charm to it. Everything is so alive with possibilities that it’s hard to focus on the overstuffed plot or the insanely quick pacing. I genuinely can’t remember the last time I had this much fun with a book.

Hamilton’s writing is fantastic, and I’m already on the lookout for more of it. It’s compulsively readable, lacking the overblown stylings of other pulp writers like E.E ‘Doc’ Smith, but with a distinctive flair nonetheless. Science (and I use the term loosely) is hand waved in a series of footnotes. Even the constant stop-start of the cliff-hangers somehow works in Hamilton’s favour. I can’t believe I’m writing this, but even the romance largely worked for me, unrealistic though it was.

However, I feel like the original The Sar Kings was something of a lightning-in-a-bottle situation, as Return to the Stars is a much weaker novel. Suddenly the galaxy is crawling with aliens and telepaths, and characters who were killed off are now alive through contrived circumstances. The climactic battle is basically a re-tread of that from the first book. And then there’s the fact that John Gordon has seemingly become a much worse person in the gap between books. Even taking into consideration the attitudes of the time, as we must with older books, Gordon’s behaviour towards his beloved is downright appalling at times. None of this dilutes the impact of the first book, but it doesn’t live up to the expectations set either.

Chronicles of the Star Kings is worth reading for the opening novel alone, which is proof that some stories are either truly timeless, or that they grow better with age.

Deeper Dive: Unplanned Sequels

There is a clear difference, I believe, between the second book in a series, and a sequel. In the former case, the story is planned for. The seeds have been sown in the first book and are picked up on in the second. It is a part of the same story, rather than a simple extension of it. A sequel, however, is an additional story. It may build on the first one, but it is inherently distinct.

Around two decades passed between the writing of The Star Kings and Return to the Stars, and that gap is hard to bridge. Aside from a romantic reunion, there is no set plot for book two, so it ends up being a repeat of the first in many respects. The universe Gordon finds himself in feels like a different one, with its many alien inhabitants. Some stories cry out for sequels, but I’m unconvinced that The Star Kings was one of them.

Book Stats

• Contains both novels of the Chronicles of the Star Kings series. The Stars Kings and Return to the Stars.
• Published by Arrow
• Part of the Venture SF Range
• First published in 1986
• Space Opera
• 397 pages