Earl Dumarest’s search for Earth seems closer to being fulfilled when he crosses paths with an art dealer and a painting that includes a representation of Earth’s moon on it. When they reach the home world of the artist he soon gets embroiled in in a revolution, and a love triangle with the art dealer and his on-planet host, who seems to know a lot about Earth. Again there’s some interesting ideas here on how an alien society and culture might operate, but the portrayal of the woman is bordering on creepy and insulting misogynistic at times (even for something written in the late 1970s - though I guess the cover art should have been a clue! ) which undermines what could have been a more thoughtful story. ( )

He never runs out of new and different ideas for his planet populations. I am feeling a bit like the days of Mulder and Scully where every time the spaceship flies overhead or the alien is standing right there..she is looking in the wrong direction and doesn't see. Then the next time she ridicules Mulder for his beliefs you want to smack the shit out of her for her cruelty because YOU know he is right and are frustrated at the sameness of the reasons for her blindness. It is the same sort of feeling with these books...he misses getting the information he desperately wants by inches and for such simple reasons that you feel impatient ...you too want the next clue even though you know there cannot be many and, in my case, know this is book 12 and he still has so many books to go where Dumarest is still looking and not finding. That is becoming the single problem of reading a series with a single goal (aside from ripping good story lines) all in one lump together so close in time. The books, if read together, were meant to be read as written a year apart to give the reader time to anticipate and look forward to the chance at another piece of the puzzle and not get frustrated at the lack of progress. ( )

For my money, the Dumarest Saga of E.C. Tubb ranks up there as one of the best science fiction series written in English.

Set in the far distant future, when mankind has spread across the galaxy, they feature the inimitable Earl Dumarest, a man with lightning fast reflexes who is forever trying to find the home world he fled as a child and has long since lost: Earth.

The galaxy he travels through is a hard, deadly place for a man with no affiliations and little money. Tubb pulls no punches in his depictions of the many harsh, hellish worlds and people whom Dumarest encounters, and invariably survives, if only just, during his quest.

Perhaps one of the best things about this series (which consists of some 32 books) is that each book is short, with no unnecessary padding; they're generally between 150 and 190 pages long. So they're a reasonably quick read, too.

I recommend reading all books in the series, preferably in the intended order. If you can, though, avoid the Arrow Books editions - the cover illustrations are, to put it simply, the pits. The artists clearly had never read the books, or if they did, didn't bother to note down a lot of details about the scenes they chose to portray in these illustrations, e.g. clothing, weaponry, etc. Shame on Arrow Books for using such second-class amateurs.

Did I mention? Unlike the seemingly interminable Wheel of Time series of Robert Jordan, or the never-ending Chronicles of Thomas Covenant by Stephen Donaldson - both of which I find way too verbose, i.e. a lot of words pass by without very much happening - the Dumarest Saga has an actual ending - in volume 32, The Return, Dumarest finds his way home! ( )