Berserker's Planet: Library Edition

Rating:
Summary: Berserkers Planet
Review: One of the best novels in the Fred Saberhagen Berserker series. The juxtaposition between an alien culture just entering its Middle Ages and the future of interstellar space travel, mixed with a Berserker on the same planet make for a very interesting read. The book has good momentum and great characters. Though it is out of print I recommend trying to acquire this excellent Berserker story.

Rating:
Summary: Berserkers Planet
Review: One of the best novels in the Fred Saberhagen Berserker series. The juxtaposition between an alien culture just entering its Middle Ages and the future of interstellar space travel, mixed with a Berserker on the same planet make for a very interesting read. The book has good momentum and great characters. Though it is out of print I recommend trying to acquire this excellent Berserker story.

Rating:
Summary: Planet of Crap!
Review: The worst of the Berserker books I've ever read, this novel barely has enough meat to work as a short story.

The centerpiece of the book is a tournament where vaguely Norse warriors fight to honor the god "Thorin" and his right hand "Mjolnir", in classic Saberhagen allegory. However, the story instead chooses to follow a weakling who's dragged to the planet on a hunting trip and turns out to be the only one who'll lead the fight against the Berserkers.

...and that description is actually a lot more interesting than the book, which mills around, trying to find something interesting to do for about 200 pages or more, failing the entire way through. As a matter of fact, there was only one mild surprise in the entire story, and it was foreshadowed in the beginning. Go figure.

If you're going to read a Berserker book, put this one at the bottom of your list, then burn the list before you get that far down, then burn it again, just to be sure.