| Author: | Poul Anderson |
| Copyright: | 1966 |
| Date Reviewed: | 4/21/85 |
| Rating: | 8.0 |
Synopsis: Centuries from now, the Terran empire has expanded to four million solar systems, still a small part of the spiral arm of our Milky Way. However, the imperial empire is decaying. It is large and corrupt. The up and coming master race is the Merseians. They hold as much land as Terra and are growing. Though open warfare does not exist, hostilities do. One such place is Starkad. The year before this planet was largely unexplored. It was populated by two indigenous, intelligent species; the land dwellers and the sea dwellers. Tension has also always existed between the two, because of fishing rights, but suddenly the Merseians have begun to arm the sea-folk. Naturally Earth can not allow this imbalance so it begins to supply the Toborko and hostilities escalate.
Ensign Flandry, barely nineteen years old, becomes a victim of these hostilities when his plane is shot down. He survives and is picked up by a Toborko ship, captained by an important female. When the ship is attacked he helps them defeat the enemy which makes him highly respected among the locals. Flandry's new found popularity gets him in good with Commander Abrams, chief of intelligence, and he is invited to assist the sea-folk where he learns that they are just as intelligent and deserving as the Toborko.
Next Flandry is invited to Merseia for peace talks, along with Abrams and Lord Hauksberg, the ambassador. Flandry is to be used for espionage purposes. While peace talks drag on, a double agent working for Abrams, more mechanical than human, steals the secret of why the Merseians are so interested in Starkad. The plan was to have the spy give Flandry the information on the night he is caught in bed with Hauksberg's mistress. Sent home in shame this will give him the opportunity to pass on the information to his superiors. Unfortunately for the spy, after obtaining the information, which turns out to be nothing more than a list of coordinates, he is fatally shot. With the Merseian authorities now on to an espionage plan, Flandry barely escapes back to Starkad. On the way he discovers the secret to the numbers. It seems there is a plant headed towards Starkad's sun, Saxo, which will cause it to go nova in five years. The Merseians all along hoped to escalate the war so that during the nova, most of Terra's force would be caught. With Flandry on board, a fleet of ships heads for the rogue planet. They meet and destroy the Merseian force guarding the planet. Once the secret is known, the Merseians loose interest in Starkad and leave the job of its evacuation to Terra.
Review: "Ensign Flandry" has some problems but is essentially a very good novel. The last few I read were real bombs. I'm very glad I got the chance to read a good book again. For about half of it, I found it very difficult to put down. The more boring parts were when Flandry met the Toborko (advanced man meets barbaric civilization - I got my fill of that in "Starship"). The best parts had to do with espionage. I'm hoping the next three books in the series will deal more with this. I was also disappointed in the ending. For about 50 pages we were told that there was a definite hidden reason for the Merseians interest in Starkad but not what it was. The longer the wait, the better the answer must be but in this case it was just bad science. There's no way that a planet could cause a star to go nova. "Ensign Flandry" was written in 1966 during the Vietnam war and the parallels are obvious. The beginning of the story is also very much like a "Star Trek" episode titled "A Private Little War". I suppose it's a common theme. Powerful nations use smaller ones as an excuse to fight each other.