This is an amazing book, written by Harry Harrison my favorite author. It's about a gambler with psi powers (basically psychic) who gets offered 27 million credits to get 3 billion credits by gambling/cheating to fund weapons for this colony on a planet that's really really angry at the humans and is actively evolving and fighting the humans (pyrrans the colonists call themselves) away.

Just a great read. What do you guys think about this book and this author? Anyone ever hear of him?

 

Aye, reading it right now, I'll let you know what I think of this story.

 

Its an awesome trilogy, though a little contrived at the end of the first book. Second and third books were epic though.

 

I've not read this trilogy, but somewhere in my closet I have about 2/3 of the Stainless Steel Rat stories by the same author. I don't remember much besides it being a fun read, pulp science fiction from an era when "good criminal" Esperanto-speaking atheists espousing curious gender politics wasn't considered charmingly retro.

 

Moved to appropriate area. >_>

 

THROUGH THE WONDERS OF THE PUBLIC DOMAIN, I GIVE TO THEE:

Deathworld
The Ethical Engineer

Project Gutenburg has several other pieces of his work, but among them is not the third book in the series, The Horse Barbarians. I'm of the amateur opinion that this is because of American copyright law, which places a longer expiration date on works published after 1964. Therefore, downloading them would be illegal and also very naughty. Also, there's four more books in the series that for some reason were only ever printed in Russian.

I'll give this a read later on, sounds interesting.

 

So I just read the first book. Thanks alot for the link, Tehan!

Surprisingly engaging, if rather plain writing. I honestly looked forward to a psychic!gamber!protagonist, but he ended up something totally different.

The 'reflex' training was a bit unbelievable, and everything just went too nicely for the protagonist. So convenient key pieces basically fell on his lap. Well, at least he was a somewhat interesting of a person.

The main planet was well done, though.

It kept me entertained. 3.5/5, rounded to 3 for rating purposes.