Mid-Flinx

Flinx of the Commonwealth: 7

ISBN: 0345406443 Order from: Amazon.com

Another novel in the Flinx series, moderately entertaining, but adding nothing to Foster's previous books.

Reviewed by David on September 06, 1998

Genre: Science Fiction (Space Opera)

Synopsis: Flinx, a young man who, as a result of prenatal illegal genetic experiments, is erratically empathic, lands on the forest planet of Midworld, where he encounters adapted natives as well as murderous pursuers, both human and alien.

Full Review: In Foster's best known series, the young orphan Flinx grows up from early teens through about twenty. The red-headed orphan starts to discover his origins, as well as the genetic manipulations that apparently gave him his remarkable but unreliable ESP talents in For Love of Mother Not. In several subsequent adventures, Flinx and his affectionate but dangerous pet Pip escape a number of attempts on his life and liberty, usually helping others avoid terrible danger.

In this novel, Flinx shows few of the remarkable abilities which allowed him to save the day in some of the earlier plots. Most of his accomplishments consist of surviving attempts on his life, sometimes with the help of others, and using a common instrument to navigate through the forest. The giant, sentient jungle has been first introduced in Midworld. As a matter of fact, this book is basically having a known character, Flinx, encounter a known world, Midworld. There is not much character or action development, although there is a lot of hinting about Flinx's future duties.

Based on character and skill development, the action seems to take place before Bloodhype. Flinx's skills are still unreliable, and he is still mostly learning. That's one of the problems with giving a character god-like powers. You either have to invent ever-more powerful villains, and become like comic strips; invent progressively more ridiculous internal problems and calamities (angst works well) and lose all sympathy for the character. Or you freeze the character at an immature level of power and knowledge.

Foster chose to do the latter for the last several Flinx books. Unfortunately, this book adds absolutely nothing to our previous knowledge of either the world or the character, and is recommended only for Flinx aficionados.

Universe: The Humanx Commonwealth

Overall: 5; Plot: 5; Characters: 4; Style: 4.5; World-building: 5.5; Originality: 5;

ISBN: 0345406443 Order from: Amazon.com