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Man-Kzin Wars IX (Man-Kzin Wars)

Man-Kzin Wars IX (Man-Kzin Wars)

List Price: $7.99
Your Price: $7.19
Product Info Reviews

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Rating: 3 stars
Summary: Worth a look for two good stories.
Review: (...)This addition to the long-running Man-Kzin sharecrop series is
worth your attention for two stories: Niven's Own "Fly-by-Night", which
is pretty good, but had an uncredited earlier appearance in (IB)
Asimov's. And newish author Paul Chafe, whose "Windows of the Soul" is
the best of the book, and the one that makes MK-IX worth looking for,
even if you've already seen the Niven. "Windows" starts out as an ARM
police-procedural on Tiamat station, after the brutal murder and
dismemberment of Miranda Holtzman, a 19 year-old student engineer. ARM
Captain Joel Allson develops a hot romance during the investigation --
which veers off into a disturbing political-terrorist operation, and
finishes with a truly nasty twist. Nice. Chafe's had a couple of
previous (unmemorable) appearances (in MK-VII & VIII).

The other two stories are a Poul Anderson novella ("Pele"), set aside
after a slow, dull start, and "His Sergeant's Honor" by Hal Colebatch,
which reads like a novel outline. For a bad, dull novel: "As you know,
Raargh-Sergeant, we Wunderkzin..." [note 1]

Did I mention the Lurid Baen Cover...? It's Howling Time!

Conclusion: one of the weaker of the Man-Kzin books, but the Chafe is
first-rate entertainment.

Happy reading!
Pete Tillman

Note 1) I see that the old saw "As you know, Bob...", used to lampoon lumpy exposition,
may not be as widely known as I thought.
So: this wasn't a real quote, folks, it was parody.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Maintains and improves a great tradition
Review: All the Man-Kzin stories are teriffic and this does not disappoint. Taut action, real charcters and original ideas in all of them. Sad that the story Pele was one of the last by rhe late, great Poul Anderson. I would like to see more illustrations of the very exciting and often weird scense described - for example the confrontation between the old Kzin warrior Raargh and the human woman resistance fighter Jocelyn in the ruined sergeant's mess in His Sergeant's Honour and the desperate ploy of the kzin cub Vaemar to defuse the situation. More please, and soon!

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: One of Poul Anderson's last stories
Review: Contrary to what an earlier reviewer said, the Poul Anderson story, "Pele" is not OLD. The first and third volumes in the M-K Wars series both had Anderson stories, but this is not one of those. The story previously appeared in an sf magazine (ANALOG, I think) about a year ago, but it is one of the last stories that Anderson wrote before his untimely death. Having corrected that misinformation, I'll say that no book with grand masters Anderson and Niven on board should be missed. And newer writers Chafe and Colebatch are no slouches either.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: A correction to the previous reviewer's ethics!
Review: I have reviewed this book previously but am having a second bite because I am annoyed by the conduct of the previous reviewer. He claims, apparently trying to dam the dialogue, there is a phrase: "As you known, Raargh Sergeant, we Wunderkzin ..." No such phrase occurs in the book. A human says to a Kzin born on Wunderland "We sometimes call you Wunderkzin ..." I suggest that if the reviewer wishes to pick holes in the style of a particular story he quote the actual words he complains of and not something he has invented. I believe this is related to a thing called ethics, you know, like honesty and truthfulness.

And all thes stories in the book are teriffic! Scream and Leap!

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: A correction to the previous reviewer's ethics!
Review: I have reviewed this book previously but am having a second bite because I am annoyed by the conduct of the previous reviewer. He claims, apparently trying to dam the dialogue, there is a phrase: "As you known, Raargh Sergeant, we Wunderkzin ..." No such phrase occurs in the book. A human says to a Kzin born on Wunderland "We sometimes call you Wunderkzin ..." I suggest that if the reviewer wishes to pick holes in the style of a particular story he quote the actual words he complains of and not something he has invented. I believe this is related to a thing called ethics, you know, like honesty and truthfulness.

And all thes stories in the book are teriffic! Scream and Leap!

Rating: 3 stars
Summary: Not one of the better books in this series
Review: I've thoroughly enjoyed the other books in this series, so it was all the more disappointing that the stories in this volume weren't more entertaining. The first story, Pele, about a competition between human and kzinti science teams investigating a stellar phenonenon was the weakest and least interesting. The second, His Sergeant's Honor, was the best. The third story, Windows of the World, was a whodunit. Technically, it qualifies as a Man-Kzin story, but it's substanitively a story about humans. The roles played by the Kzin could easily have been written out of the story without much loss. Finally, the fourth story, Fly-By-Night, was written by Larry Niven. It was pretty good, but by no means one of his best.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Excellent!
Review: If you like Sci-Fi and you like Space, then You've GOT to read Larry Niven's Man Kzin books. He's gotten together with scientists and over 20 writers and created a so-fi world unlike any that's ever been created.

His sci-fi world will continue perpetuating itself long after he's gone because many young writers have bought into his sci-fi version of space as well as MANY older well established ones.

Rating: 1 stars
Summary: Repeated book material & out of place reviews
Review: Man Kzin Wars IX has four stories. The lead story by Poul Anderson is OLD, a repeat from another in the series. However, neither the Amazon entry nor the book itself make note of this; the publisher's dishonesty here is a real shame. The other three stories vary in quality, but at least two are good enough for this to be worthwhile in paperback next year.

The one star rating reflects my poor opinion of repeated material with no warning. It probably would rate 3 stars otherwise. BTW, I am an old Niven fan, have read all his SF multiple times, and have read all of the Man-Kzin series.

Amazon's automated machinery, or a hurried employee, has mixed in a bunch of reviews here that apply to other books in the series. It's too bad, but I've seem them mix up numbered series before. (See World Radio TV Handbook which is an annual series; they were selling the 2000 edition at a small discount to those who bought the 2002 edition!)

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: A fine col;lection by four great authors
Review: This has one of the great Poul Anderson's last stories in it, which wopuld alone be a sufficient reason to buy it, plus one by Niven himself. The others are by tried-and-tested favourite Man-Kzin authors Paul Chafe and Hal Colebatch. Between them they add up to a fine portrait of the complex human-Kzin interaction after the Kzinti have to try to come to terms with the fact that they can lose wars.

In Anderson's Pele, they must acknowledge human superiority in space-craft. But can they? Like most of Anderson's stories, has a strong science as well as human element.

In Hal Colebatch's "His Sergeant's Honour", the collection's strongest story, a battered old Kzin sergeant holds the last Kzin fort on Wunderland, a planet long occupied by the Kzinti but now re-conquered by humans, charged with guarding, among others, a human collaborator and a Royal kitten - Vaemar-Riit, last son of the great Chuut-Riit, who is destined to play a big part in "Music-Box" in Man-Kzin 10, "The Wunder War," and, I hope, in adventures to come. He is too good a charater to waste.

In the meantime, old Raargh-Sergeant must choose between death and dishonour. Or Has it become dishonourable to choose death in this strange new time of Monkey victories?

Windows of the Soul, also set in post-occupation Alpha Centauri, is a rather dark detective story in the Raymond Chandler Tradition. Best not say too much for fear of revealing the plot.

Larry Niven's "Fly-by-Night" is a follow-on from Hal Colebatch's "Telepath's Dance" in Man-Kzin VIII - what happened ot the dewscendents of the first rogue telepath when he turned against the Patriarchy and threw in his lot with Selina Guthlac and the humans of the "Angel's Pencil"?

All these stories are taut, pacy and well-written. The Kzinti, or somne of them. show they are more than just dumb killing-machines and are capable of thoughtfulness.


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