Book review: Derai

Derai, by E.C. Tubb. #2 in the Dumarest saga, of which Toyman is #3. I love the covers of these editions. See how manly Dumarest is, with his bulging thighs.

The story... well, things happen. They make some kind of sense, perhaps, but not really. Folgone, towards the end, offers some kind of life-extension - if you look at it sideways - but bizarrely rations access to that not by money but by fighting; that's weird, obvs, but also it doesn't make the fighting public, which would be the only point of doing this stuff. Hive makes money by selling its mutated-bee products, which appear also to extend life, but only at the cost of turning you into a bloated incommunicado semi-corpse, so that isn't obviously a win.

The point of all the series is that Earl keeps wandering because he is desperate to find Earth. In this one, he is sort-of offered a kingdom, perhaps even a planet, and he still prefers the search for Earth. This is taken as a given, and is merely the answer whenever he is presented with a choice, but nonetheless it is odd: the book, and the series, never really answers why he cares so much.