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jaceyI'm trying to get round to a number of books that have been sitting on my bookshelf for years making me feel guilty. This is one such. I read one or two of Hill's Last Legionary Quartet many years ago and enjoyed them. This is a 1982 prequel collection of stories about the training of the legionary who was to become the last of his kind, published by Piccolo, a junior imprint of Gollancz..
There are four stories, each taking a snapshot of Keill Randor's life, one age 12 as he takes the dangerous right-of-passage test that shunts him into the Young Legionary Programme. The second is Keill at the age of 14 trapped with his fellow trainees in a dangerous desert situation with deadly spine-eels swarming. The third is Keill aged 16, assigned to give a trio of potentially hostile customers a tour of the Legion's mercenary facility, and dealing with things when the situation goes pear-shaped. And lastly there's Keill aged 18, facing his last test before being assigned to adult responsibilities as a full legionary.
The stories are slight and as a prequel you know that Keill is going to survive whatever the book throws at him (always the problem with prequels) and you know that all the other characters are eventually going to be killed off between the end of this book and the beginning of Galactic Warlord, the first of the Last Legionary books, so it's difficult to get invested in characters such as Oni, Keill's longtime (girl) friend, though she's well written.
If anything Keill and Oni are a little too perfect and competent, but each story develops the characters a little further. I found this fairly bland by today's standards and probably for completists only, though as the intended audience is a young readership (and bearing in mind the time it was written) it stands up quite well to other SF children's books of the period.
There are four stories, each taking a snapshot of Keill Randor's life, one age 12 as he takes the dangerous right-of-passage test that shunts him into the Young Legionary Programme. The second is Keill at the age of 14 trapped with his fellow trainees in a dangerous desert situation with deadly spine-eels swarming. The third is Keill aged 16, assigned to give a trio of potentially hostile customers a tour of the Legion's mercenary facility, and dealing with things when the situation goes pear-shaped. And lastly there's Keill aged 18, facing his last test before being assigned to adult responsibilities as a full legionary.
The stories are slight and as a prequel you know that Keill is going to survive whatever the book throws at him (always the problem with prequels) and you know that all the other characters are eventually going to be killed off between the end of this book and the beginning of Galactic Warlord, the first of the Last Legionary books, so it's difficult to get invested in characters such as Oni, Keill's longtime (girl) friend, though she's well written.
If anything Keill and Oni are a little too perfect and competent, but each story develops the characters a little further. I found this fairly bland by today's standards and probably for completists only, though as the intended audience is a young readership (and bearing in mind the time it was written) it stands up quite well to other SF children's books of the period.
