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"Jude
Watson concludes her Zan Arbor/Ona Nobis storyline in The
Dangerous Rescue. This particular trilogy of books is, I feel, a
weak set in the series, being based on unappealing characters and
unnecessarily convoluted storylines.
"The first gripe has to be the characters. I found Astri Oddo’s
naïve stubbornness to be rather boring and as for the trio of
aliens from Simpla-12, the less said the better – the three
stooges they are not. Then there was the plot itself. The title
implies, curiously enough, that a rescue attempt will be undertaken
and that it will, surprisingly, be dangerous. However, although
there are no less than three separate rescues made in the book, they
take up a scant five chapters of a twenty-nine chapter book. The
rest of the time is spent on a variety of different pursuits, all of
which are as uninteresting as each other. They have their purposes,
of course, such as allowing Obi-Wan to show how much he has matured
by using rational thinking instead of impulsiveness to affect his
decision-making, but for the most part they feel like time fillers.
"It’s not all bad. As with all of Watson’s writing it is
detailed enough to paint interesting pictures, but so overly
complicated as make it description for description’s sake and the
combat is neatly conveyed. There is also the return of Adi Gallia, a
character who deserves more development than she gets, and the
satisfying fate of the two main antagonists (despite both
conclusions being rather hastily achieved).
"Generally, I didn’t like this storyline. The book is OK, but
OK is the best praise I can really offer it."
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