‘Galactic Warlord’ – Douglas Hill (Piccolo)

 

Page Count: 127 Pages

This last week has been awful for reading anything so over the weekend, I pushed every single half read book to one side (of which there are loads at the moment, I’m really having trouble finishing anything…) and decided to go with an old favourite that had somehow landed on a shelf that I very rarely look at. And… it worked.

I say ‘old favourite’… They don’t come a lot more ‘old favourite’ than Douglas Hill’s ‘Last Legionary’ books, a series that I loved to read back in primary school and slowly collected over the last few years, just for that sweet nostalgia buzz :o) It has taken me a while to get round to it but this weekend was suddenly the best time to give this series another go; starting with ‘Galactic Warlord’.

He stands alone… His planet, Moros, destroyed by unknown forces. His one vow – to wreak a terrible vengeance on the sinister enemy.

But Keill Randor, the last Legionary, cannot conceive the evil force that he will unleash in his crusade against the Warlord, the master of destruction, and his murderous army, the Deathwing.

‘Galactic Warlord’ did just the job that I needed it to; a short, fun read that I knew I’d finish and will hopefully give me a little impetus to finish off some of the other books that I have on the go. On the other hand though. I was reminded that ‘Galactic Warlord’ is actually my least favourite instalment and that’s not a great way to kick off a series…

For a book that’s only 127 pages long, ‘Galactic Warlord’ takes far too long setting up its premise. Maybe that approach makes more sense in the context of the series as a whole but here, what we have is a lot of build up, and world building, but then hardly any time for much to happen at the end. To be fair, Hill can clearly write a great fight scene (and he does), he just doesn’t give himself a lot of room to do what he’s good at.

I don’t want to moan too much though because we are talking about a book about a bad-ass space warrior who has unbreakable bones and flies through space with an alien companion who loves to laugh at the ridiculousness of humans. There is still a lot to enjoy here and I still love watching Keill and Glr’s friendship slowly grow. That and the fights, we all know how they are going to end up but the fun is in watching them play out.

‘Galactic Warlord’ is a little too uneven to be a really effective ‘series opener’ but still had enough going for it to be a fun bit of pulp sci-fi, which was just what I needed over the weekend.

Comments

  1. Bookstooge14 July 2025 at 01:19

    Holy smokes, I remember these! I think my library had 2-3 but that was it. They had cool covers :-D

    ReplyDelete

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