An exercise in frustration, most books you want resolution to whatever problem the writer has set, the crime solved, the guy gets the girl or vice versa. That happens in the Dumarest books but the main point of them is his finding his way back to Earth and each book has a trip to a new planet following a clue and every time he just misses the information by inches..it gets blown up, stolen, eaten, blown out an airlock. It is a bit like Mulder and Scully, every time he gets close and actually sees something and says 'look Scully proof'...she is always looking the other way and doesn't see and then thing vanishes and he is left begging for belief until he almost loses confidence that he actually saw what he saw. We all know it is necessary to the underlying theme to continue unsolved if the series it to continue but it is frustrating and after a while it become unbelievable. ( )