The Tar-Aiym Krang by Alan Dean Foster

On my old blog at Yahoo, I reviewed For Love of Mother Not, the first book in the Pip and Flinx novels. I enjoyed it and went out and picked up book two, The Tar-Aiym Krang. These are quick little books, brain candy so-to-speak, a light read between weightier tomes. Book two was no exception. One thing I'd like to note is it seems Foster has written these so that it is not necessary to have read the previous volume. I applaud that in this day and age of R. Jordan and G.R.R. Martin and others.

In The Tar-Aiym Krang young Flinx has moved out of the apartment he shared with Mother Mastiff into a place of his own. One evening on his way to get some dinner, he gets involved in a scuffle in an alleyway where a star map comes into his possession. The next day, a Bartender friend of his directs his attention to a human and a Thranx (think large ant) who are in need of a guide. The next thing Flinx knows he is included in an expedition to a planet in the blight system where they are looking for either a very large weapon, or a musical instrument left behind by the Tar-Aiym. The only think they know is it is named the Krang. What about the starmap? It just so happens that the two he is guiding around and the merchant who funds the trip are the ones looking for the starmap.

Like I mentioned, these are not deep technical books. The biggest thing I found in this one was that the writing style between book one and book two seemed so very different. Almost as if someone else had written the books. Book two had more background information about Flinx's home planet - some of which was different - it had slight deviations between Flinx's own street knowledge from Book one and two, and there was almost no reference to Flinx's escapades from book one.

Now the gentle reader is wondering why I haven't looked at the copyright dates and compared them, and I assure the gentle reader I would do this, except my copy of book one is currently in Savanna, Georgia, and will be there for the duration of the month.

In the meantime, I am content with having enjoyed this book and I will shortly (if not sooner) be obtaining book three. It's nice to have these little books to read between the book group selections and some of the weightier (literally) scifi that I tend to gravitate to.