Are you overlook Harry Harrison ’s Stainless Steel Rat novel ? Me too . It become out there ’s a placebo useable , for your space - opera anti - hero needs . Philip Palmer ’s Debatable Space , which came out earlier this yr , is a very Rat - corresponding tale of a space pirate who kidnaps a princess .
In Debatable Space , the pirate Flanagan kidnaps Lena , who ’s purportedly the daughter of the Cheo , the dictator who rules over most of the inhabited world , except for the “ debatable distance ” in the borderlands . We quickly learn that Lena is n’t the Cheo ’s daughter , but his mummy , who ’s live on for hundreds and hundreds of years . The story of Flanagan and Lena is interspersed with long stretching of Lena ’s journal , narrating her experiences from the former 21st century to today . We learn how she helped humans colonize the star , and why she gave birth to a total ogre .
Debatable is basically several high mallow trays Charles Frederick Worth of cheese , and Lena ’s long diary excerpts get a bit tiresome . But it successfully duplicates the tongue - in - cheek tone of the Stainless Steel Christian Bible , and Flanagan ’s pirate is pretty much precisely the wizard no - good - nik you desire to see in a record book like this . He ’s a famous rock principal who was like all of the members of Van Halen baffle together ( but no Sammy Hagar ) and then he gave it all up to rifle the universe . But then his dwelling house planet was wrecked in a comet strike that bend out not to be an fortuity , so it could be re - terraformed and turn into a leisure time planet for the tiptop - full-bodied .
The section where Flanagan outwits the bad guy wire , including the Cheo ’s US Army , are worth read for the pure escapism . At one point , he unleashes a swarm of millions of nano - bots on the Cheo ’s fleet – but they ’re almost all fake . The fleet reckon this out and onslaught , but then he unleaseashes a big equipment that spells out the words “ ANTI - MATTER BOMB . ” The fleet think it ’s another fake – but it is n’t . Later , trying to win over Lena to become his associate or else of his prisoner , he arranges to have a fellow brigand named Black Jack fake a fight with him and his men , so Lena will leap to his assistance . alas , Black Jack has a grudge due to a quite a little that went haywire , and smashes Flanagan ’s skull and spine for real .
So if there ’s a Rat - sized trap in your reading aggregation right now , you might need to check Palmer ’s playscript out . [ Amazon ]
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