End of the Circle

Robotech #18

by Jack McKinney

A Warp In The Space-Time Continuum...

The SDF-3 has remanifested from spacefold, but no one aboard has the faintest idea where they are. The ship appears to be grounded in some glowing fog, ensnared by light itself. Lang and Rem dub the phenomenon "newspace" -- but are at a loss to explain what it really is and who, or what, is keeping them there. For Lang, it seems like old times: The ship's Protoculture drives have disappeared.

But other events are transpiring, unbeknownst to the stranded crew of the SDF-3.

In Earthspace, the Ark Angel has been spared the fate suffered by the REF main fleet after the Invid transubstantiation. Vince and Jean Grant decide that the only logical course of action is to try and locate the SDF-3...

On Haydon IV, something has awakened the Awareness -- and a mysterious change comes over the Haydonites. Exedore and the four Sterlings suddenly find themselves imprisoned beneath the surface -- as the planet leaves orbit, destination unknown...

All of the pieces of this strange cosmic puzzle are about to come together...and the ultimate conflict is imminent. The question is:

Will The Universe Survive?

Genres: Science Fiction, Fiction, Space Opera, Speculative Fiction, Military Fiction, Science Fiction Fantasy, Aliens

343 pages, Mass Market Paperback

First published January 1, 1990

About the author

pseudonym of authors Brian Daley and James Luceno.

Reviews

[Alejandro · Rating 4 out of 5]

The Robotech saga comes to an end!


HEROES UNITED!

Rick Hunter & Lisa Hayes; Dana Sterling; Scott Bernard.

The heroes of the Robotech Wars.

Rick Hunter eventually becomes Skull Leader, while Lisa Hayes was First Officer of the SDF-1, both defending Earth against the mighty Zentraedi Fleet.

Dana Sterling was field leader of the 15th ATAC, on a devastated Earth, right in the front, against the insidious Robotech Masters.

Scott Bernard lead a rag-tag squad along a dangerous journey on an Occupied Earth trying to reach Reflex Point, main hive of the Invid Regis’ army.

And once again, Rick Hunter & Lisa Hayes, now a married couple and with ranks of Admirals, leading the SDF-3 in a desperate mission to Tirol space, making an alliance with the alien Sentinels group to fight against the Invid Regent and later dealing with the treachery of General T.R. Edwards.

And in this closing prose novel, The End of the Circle, these heroes of different generations, fighting in different Robotech Wars, finally are together in this final adventure, but before they’d be able to combine strenghts…

…Scott Bernard meets The Ark Angel, is the only REF surviving vessel, after the mysterious rising of the Invid Regis, transformed along her entire army, in a literally phoenix made of Protoculture energy, destroying in her path the REF fleet, and dissapeared.

…Rick Hunter & Lisa Hayes-Hunter, in command of the SDF-3, while making a fold to Earth along with the rest of the REF fleet, now they got separated from it, and stranded in a strange place dubbed by them as “newspace”.

…Dana Sterling, finally reunited at the mysterious Haydon IV world, with her family; her dad, Max Sterling, REF Veritech Ace Fighter; her mom, Miriya Parino-Sterling, Zentraedi Ace Fighter; and her sister, the enigmatic Aurora Sterling, with powers beyond human comprehension.

…the Robotech heroes are clueless about an odd series of events and they need to find each other soon since they have been caught in the middle of a game of powers between the vindictive Invid Regis and the second coming of the mythical Haydon and an unholy alliance with the Robotech Elders!


ZOR OR HAYDON… WHO’S BETTER?

I won’t discuss if Zor or Haydon were good people, since their actions were highly questionable.

Here, I am commenting about who was better in the sense of skills.

Sure, Haydon became a “god” for the varied races of the Local Star Group, and no wonder about it, since Haydon was a being skillful that he was able to form a symbiotic enviromental bond between Garudans and their homeworld; he was able to begin a crystalline evolution in Spheris; he was able to generate the means for an endless civil war in Peryton; he was able to create a whole artificial world, Haydon IV, and populate it with artificial forms of life; he was able to provoke the means for self-sufficient reproduction in Praxis leading to all-female race; he was able to move the entire race of the Invid to their new homeworld, Optera, and seeding it with the Flower of Life; and even he was able to create the Ur-Flower, a different kind of pseudo flower of life that only responds to the native race of Karbarra.

Haydon didn’t do all that for caprice. Every experiment was relevant for the future plans of Haydon, for her second comming when the pieces of his insidious puzzle would be in their right places.

And in a casual glimpse, people could think that Zor’s action weren’t any near of impressive, BUT…

…Zor conceived the Protoculture Matrix, the only machine in the universe able to process Flowers of Life into Protoculture energy which is crucial to make Robotech devices to work!

Zor’s origins are as mysterious as Haydon’s, even the Robotech Masters weren’t sure where Zor was born. Fans have speculated that Zor and Haydon are the same character. But I don’t think so, since nevertheless that Haydon performed truly technological miracles in the worlds of the Local Star Group…

…even Haydon wasn’t able to build his own Protoculture Matrix.

Sure, Dr. Lang and Cabell participate to build the Protoculture Matrix facsimile (almost as good as the original built by Zor, BUT not quite) but only with essential collaboration of Rem, the second clone of Zor, which got access to some of the memories of the original Zor.

So, my chips are on Zor, since he was a humanoid able to conceive a machine that not even a god-like being was able to replicate.

And the whole Robotech saga was developed around the search for the priceless Protoculture Matrix.


THE BATTLE OF THE INTELLECTS

Without wanting to be harsh, I have to say that in the “battle of the intellects” in the Robotech saga, Dr. Harry Penn is the great loser, due that since he was introduced on the saga, he didn’t do anything so relevant that nobody else could do it too, or even to offer a single valuable theory. I honestly don’t know why they bother to create such character that didn’t contribute with anything important in the storyline. Which is something quite sad, since while Dr. Lazlo Zand was evil, one has to admit that Zand was at least quite brilliant in comparison with good ol’ Penn that he never show anything in the narrative to justify his value in the technological field.

Zor, obviously is the great winner, since not even Haydon was able to replicate the Protoculture Matrix, the key element of the whole storyline of Robotech.

Dr. Emil Lang is the most loyal apostle of Zor’s Robotech teachings, that while they never were in the same room, actually Zor died before than Lang would ever got in contact with the Robotechnology, is quite obvious that while Lang didn’t have all the answers always, and in many times he worked based on leaps of faith. If you need to bet on someone, the safest bet was on Dr. Lang, since while he didn’t know everything about Robotech, he was the one who did know more about it, besides Zor, and more important than technological knowledge, it was the incorruptible moral values of Lang, where Zor was quite morally questionable on his methods and motivations, you always could trust in Dr. Lang with closed eyes.

And finally, the unexpected genius of Professor Louie Nichols, initially a soldier member of the 15th ATAC, his natural talents gave him an absurdly advantage and understanding in levels that not even Lang was remotely close, but was it safe to trust in Nichols? Mmh… kinda. It was clear that he wasn’t evil like Dr. Zand, but Prof. Nichols shown a clear detachment of human compassion, empathy or civilized tact. For Nichols the only relevant is the goal, finding the answer to the problem at hand, not matter how and who would result hurt, so curiously enough where Nichols openly declared that Robotech was an obsolete concept and virtual technology was the real future, Nichols could be seen as the most similar to Zor in his manners to attain results.

[Matt · Rating 3 out of 5]

Just in case you were wondering, I'm a McKinneyist.

What's that, you ask?

A McKinneyist believes the books are the canonical version of the Robotech saga.

Not the cartoons, nor the comic books, nor any other supplementary materials tell the "real" story. All hail the printed word!

[hotsake (André Troesch) · Rating 3 out of 5]

A decent if unneeded and unwanted sequel that fortunately doesn't do anything to ruin the series. Much like the sentinel subseries this suffers by not being based on an existing script, unlike the first and best 12 volumes of the series.
3/5

[Butterflykatana · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is my childhood fav sci-fi book series that I've just re-read. This was a good finish to the robotech story. Its not a deep read as some others out there. But reading 19 books of the heroes and villains of this universe and growing up with them. It was a perfect finish. These books will be on my shelf's always!

[Joe Davoust · Rating 3 out of 5]

Well this completed the many-book story with a crazy off-the-rails kind of conclusion. Literally anything could and did happen with characters, ships, planets, whole races of beings and even universes. To get to this point in the story characters from all previous books and tv shows were brought together. It was contrived but still satisfying to see different sets of protagonists, from four very different story lines, brought together to get through the final chapter. (Well I say it's final, but there are three more books in the series I still have to get to, but I believe they are side stories that run before or adjacent to the events that have already occurred, but I may be wrong about that. Stay tuned.) At times this story was hard to follow, maybe because it was such an alien experience, or maybe because the author tried to do too much. Either way if you read all the others up to now, you have to read it. I liked it but not as much as what came before.

[Nicole · Rating 4 out of 5]

Interesting conclusion. I think I liked the last chapter the best of the whole thing.

[Yonatan · Rating 5 out of 5]

One of my all time favorite books. Brings the plot of all of the Robotech related series to a close.

[Kevin · Rating 5 out of 5]

One of my all-time favorite sci-fi books. Great way to close out a great series.

[Niraj · Rating 5 out of 5]

An interesting ending, especially with the way they handled Scott Bernard. Was nice to see Rick Hunter and Lisa Hayes again though!

[Kitap · Rating 3 out of 5]

It's funny... when I first read the series I was in my late teens and as I finish it, I near my 40th birthday. Sort of like Rick Hunter.

Anyhow, I hadn't seen the show when I first began reading the Robotech books. Instead I picked up the first volume of The Sentinels series as vacation reading because (gasp) the cover looked interesting. Of course, I had to put the book down when I realized it started in media res (if Jack McKinney can drop references to classical culture with Rubicon then so can I), and check out the first twelve books from the public library. Seventeen novelizations, several Palladium role-playing games, a handful of TV episodes, and 20-odd years later, I finally got around to closing the Robotech cycle.

I wasn't disappointed in this book, in part because I wasn't expecting great literature. Old synapses got dusted off as I remembered favorite characters like Max Sterling and Miriyala. I was surprised by how much of the Robotech universe remained mapped out in my mindspace, waiting to be rediscovered after two decades of disuse. The Sentinels stuff was a little blurrier, but by the end of this novel, I had recollected enough old material for this to make sense and be an enjoyable read. If I had read it immediately after finishing the other books, way back in the late 80s, it probably would have left a more lasting impression on me.

But then I wouldn't have had the fun Rick Hunter analogy to start this review.

[Jeff Crosby]

As I begin. In 1994, before they lost their way, Del Rey republished the Robotech saga in three volume anthologies. In those days I still took great pleasure in browsing bookstore shelves and judging books by their covers. The first omnibus caught my eye.

I was aware of the origins—anime retooled for an American audience, but I had never seen the animation. If I had, I would almost certainly have turned away. I find the show awful. But, I encountered these stories on the printed page, where my imagination rules. Second, these novelizations were written by Brian Daley and James Luceno (as Jack McKinney).

I read and enjoyed 20 of the 21 books in a condensed period of time. Now, 25 years later, I have finally read The End of the Circle.

[Chris Ross · Rating 3 out of 5]

I read every Robotech novel written by Jack McKinney 20 years ago, when I was in college. They did a fine effort of making the three separate series that made up Robotech make a bit more sense in their novels, but this, the final, be-all, end-all story... The one that wraps up everything that came before (all the generations, all the characters, all the ships)... It's just strange.

So much needed to be tied up in End of the Circle, and they did a decent enough job with what they were given (doing their best to pull in the Macross, Southern Cross, Mospeada, and Sentinels plots), but it's just too much, and the final outcome is simply very bizarre.

I was glad to have read it and gotten some closure in the end, but wow... Trippy. And what was the deal with Minmay's final bow?

[Edward · Rating 2 out of 5]

An interesting ending for the Robotech series. I wasn't exactly thrilled with it, but it was an ending, as compared to the epic cliffhanger the "offical" series was at until recently. While some of the things McKinney came up with I wasn't a fan of (like the Shapings of Protoculture as some kind of metaphysical entity, Scott being more xenophobic than he is in the new Shadow Chronicles in relation to Ariel), the novels are still given an unfair treatment. I personally love the Sentinels storyline, and do hope that it will one day be revisited in one form or another (like Prelude to Shadow Chronicles did).

[Patrick · Rating 3 out of 5]

It's a little more Star Trek-y than the TV series with not nearly as much action and carnage. But it does wrap things up nicely.

On a side note the Kindle edition of this and other Robotech books really needs an extra proofread. When they converted it to digital it created a lot of typos. Things like calling them "Rowers of Life" instead of "Flowers" or one point Lisa is called Usa and Rick is called kick. There are periods and such cut off too. Honestly I'd never release a book that's so poorly proofread.

[Mzungo · Rating 4 out of 5]

Great series of books for kids that enjoy or are interested in science fiction. I read these books in middle school (I'm now in my 30s) and loved each one. The stories are fun, engaging and relatively fast paced. I'd be tempted to reread them now just for old time's sake if I didn't have so many new books on my to-read list.

I knocked it down a peg because, in retrospect, there are some aspects that are a bit too cheesy. I'm sure when my kids are old enough, they'll get thier own copies.

[James · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was the first book in the series that felt like authentic SF, even if it rips off a number of things (like Solaris) and uses bad time loop plot devices, but I was more engaged in this book by far. Newspace was kinda dumb still, but the Haydon stuff was pretty neat. And while the ending was a little too tidy, I enjoyed it all the same. This will probably be the only book of the series I keep to read again in the future. Anyway, on to the next adventure.

[Friedrich Haas · Rating 4 out of 5]

Ever since Robotech first hit American TV, I have wanted the back story, and the TV series didn't help much. A book about the REF taking Reflex Point read like the anime, geared to children, but it gave me more on the Invid. I was still left with the Regis going off as a Phoenix, which was wtf just happened? Now finally I have what I have wanted, the backstory and the endgame, and to top it off, it's a better read, with more adult characters. (Rick is a bit of an a--, y'know.)

[Nathan · Rating 5 out of 5]

One of my 2 favorites of the RoboTech series, and also the end of the series, which should be read last, as it is NOT #18 in the 21 book series, it is really #21.

This book ties up everything rather well, explains what happened with the space fold drive from the SDF-1, and basically ends the series on a high note, as it is one of the best books of the series.

[Timothy McNeil · Rating 2 out of 5]

I did not enjoy this book. Team McKinney struggles with the original stories, and fumbling around with main characters was most of what happened in this entry, though they do find time to completely fail to realize any of what they had been building with the shapings.

I now fully understand the de-canonization of the novels.

[Keith Bowden · Rating 1 out of 5]

Godawful. Simply not worth the effort, so disappointing. Hard to believe Brian Daley was parially responsible for this tripe.

[Theresa · Rating 4 out of 5]

End of the Circle (Robotech #18)
by Jack McKinney
It was a plan of engagement to end the Zentrasedi war, but it did not work the way they wanted.

[Little Timmy · Rating 4 out of 5]

Great SiFi series. Giant battlesuits battling outer space monsters, what more can you ask for. Very recommended

[Thomas Myers · Rating 1 out of 5]

It is worse than they say it is. Completely bizarre.