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Rings of the Master #2
Pirates of the Thunder
A continuation of "Lords of the Middle Dark". Hawks has escaped from the prison planet Melchior and is determined to find the five gold rings that could break Master System's hold over mankind. Master System, however, is out to capture him and the only place to hide is in pirate territory.
306 pages, Paperback
First published February 12, 1987
8 people are currently reading
346 people want to read
About the author
Jack L. Chalker
132 books354 followersBesides being a science fiction author, Jack Laurence Chalker was a Baltimore City Schools history teacher in Maryland for a time, a member of the Washington Science Fiction Association, and was involved in the founding of the Baltimore Science Fiction Society. Some of his books said that he was born in Norfolk, Virginia although he later claimed that was a mistake.
He attended all but one of the World Science Fiction Conventions from 1965 until 2004. He published an amateur SF journal, Mirage, from 1960 to 1971 (a Hugo nominee in 1963 for Best Fanzine).
Chalker was married in 1978 and had two sons.
His stated hobbies included esoteric audio, travel, and working on science-fiction convention committees. He had a great interest in ferryboats, and, at his wife's suggestion, their marriage was performed on the Roaring Bull Ferry.
Chalker's awards included the Daedalus Award (1983), The Gold Medal of the West Coast Review of Books (1984), Skylark Award (1985), Hamilton-Brackett Memorial Award (1979), as well as others of varying prestige. He was a nominee for the John W. Campbell Award twice and for the Hugo Award twice. He was posthumously awarded the Phoenix Award by the Southern Fandom Confederation on April 9, 2005.
On September 18, 2003, during Hurricane Isabel, Chalker passed out and was rushed to the hospital with a diagnosis of a heart attack. He was later released, but was severely weakened. On December 6, 2004, he was again rushed to hospital with breathing problems and disorientation, and was diagnosed with congestive heart failure and a collapsed lung. Chalker was hospitalized in critical condition, then upgraded to stable on December 9, though he didn't regain consciousness until December 15. After several more weeks in deteriorating condition and in a persistent vegetative state, with several transfers to different hospitals, he died on February 11, 2005 of kidney failure and sepsis in Bon Secours of Baltimore, Maryland.
Chalker is perhaps best known for his Well World series of novels, the first of which is Midnight at the Well of Souls (Well World, #1).
He attended all but one of the World Science Fiction Conventions from 1965 until 2004. He published an amateur SF journal, Mirage, from 1960 to 1971 (a Hugo nominee in 1963 for Best Fanzine).
Chalker was married in 1978 and had two sons.
His stated hobbies included esoteric audio, travel, and working on science-fiction convention committees. He had a great interest in ferryboats, and, at his wife's suggestion, their marriage was performed on the Roaring Bull Ferry.
Chalker's awards included the Daedalus Award (1983), The Gold Medal of the West Coast Review of Books (1984), Skylark Award (1985), Hamilton-Brackett Memorial Award (1979), as well as others of varying prestige. He was a nominee for the John W. Campbell Award twice and for the Hugo Award twice. He was posthumously awarded the Phoenix Award by the Southern Fandom Confederation on April 9, 2005.
On September 18, 2003, during Hurricane Isabel, Chalker passed out and was rushed to the hospital with a diagnosis of a heart attack. He was later released, but was severely weakened. On December 6, 2004, he was again rushed to hospital with breathing problems and disorientation, and was diagnosed with congestive heart failure and a collapsed lung. Chalker was hospitalized in critical condition, then upgraded to stable on December 9, though he didn't regain consciousness until December 15. After several more weeks in deteriorating condition and in a persistent vegetative state, with several transfers to different hospitals, he died on February 11, 2005 of kidney failure and sepsis in Bon Secours of Baltimore, Maryland.
Chalker is perhaps best known for his Well World series of novels, the first of which is Midnight at the Well of Souls (Well World, #1).
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 34 reviews
July 28, 2022
Chalker at his best (or worst, depending on your opinion). The rag tag (or perhaps not so rag tag) crew who escaped from the asteroid prison and stole a massive, ancient colony ship from the last volume now head out of the solar system looking for contacts and booty. They rename the ship Thunder and basically become pirates, hence the title. The crew, led by Hawks, now begins their quest to obtain the five rings and hence the ability to shut off the Master System. The question is, how can they manage to steal the four rings (one is on Earth already, and they know who has it), especially now that the Master System is on to their plan.
Pirates of Thunder is something of a 'place holder' in the series and depicts the meshing of the odd-ball crew. First, they decide they need a land base, and some time, as the massive (14 KM long) ship needs to reconfigure itself suitable to humans to live on. It also needs the special, extremely rare ore that makes the transmuters function. The transmuters can produce just about anything given the right specs, even transform humans. In fact, the Master System found it easier to transform humans, adapt them if you will, to the specific environments of the colony planets rather than spend centuries terraforming planets for 'normal' humans. Over 400 planets were partially terraformed and then 'seeded' with the transformed humans over 900 years ago.
While our pirate crew is doing all of this, the master system is doing all it can to track them down and wipe them out. Yet, they have some leads on the rings and are determined to acquire them by any means necessary. Chalker's usual shape/mind changing and so forth plays a major role as each of the colony worlds is populated by transformed humans; some of these changes are relatively minor, while others are hardly even recognizable as humans. The 'sticky wicket' so to speak is that once a human is transformed, there is no going back.
This series is lots of fun! Pure space pulp, but with some decent existentialist meanderings and enough plotting to keep you entertained. Chalker moves the plot along nicely and it seems that the crew is finally ready to start their ring quest, after many trials and tribulations. 4 pulpy stars!!
Pirates of Thunder is something of a 'place holder' in the series and depicts the meshing of the odd-ball crew. First, they decide they need a land base, and some time, as the massive (14 KM long) ship needs to reconfigure itself suitable to humans to live on. It also needs the special, extremely rare ore that makes the transmuters function. The transmuters can produce just about anything given the right specs, even transform humans. In fact, the Master System found it easier to transform humans, adapt them if you will, to the specific environments of the colony planets rather than spend centuries terraforming planets for 'normal' humans. Over 400 planets were partially terraformed and then 'seeded' with the transformed humans over 900 years ago.
While our pirate crew is doing all of this, the master system is doing all it can to track them down and wipe them out. Yet, they have some leads on the rings and are determined to acquire them by any means necessary. Chalker's usual shape/mind changing and so forth plays a major role as each of the colony worlds is populated by transformed humans; some of these changes are relatively minor, while others are hardly even recognizable as humans. The 'sticky wicket' so to speak is that once a human is transformed, there is no going back.
This series is lots of fun! Pure space pulp, but with some decent existentialist meanderings and enough plotting to keep you entertained. Chalker moves the plot along nicely and it seems that the crew is finally ready to start their ring quest, after many trials and tribulations. 4 pulpy stars!!
May 2, 2015
After a slightly slow start this picked up to be a decent read. It was similar in quality to the first book. Fast paced pulp sci-fi with some cool technology.
The slow start can be blammed on the fact that the first 15% of the book was spent with the characters recapping what they had done in the first book. That would have been great if I'd read the books a year apart, but since I went straight from the first to the second it left things a bit dull and frustrating.
This picks up where we left off in Lords of the Middle Dark with Hawk and his band of misfits having escaped both Melchior and the solar system in the Universe ship they have stolen. In order to escape the attention of Master System they hide out in the Freebooters area of space. From there they seek to build contacts and allies from the space pirates and to identify the planets where the remaining 4 rings are located.
The story had a bit of mystery and plenty of action, and was actually fairly engaging once it got going. It was great to meet some of the modified humans and see more of what life is like under Master System for the non-Earth humans. A few of the new characters added to the team stole the show. Especially former Melchior security chief Arnold Nagy.
It should be interesting to see how things play out in third book.
Rating: 3 stars.
Audio Note: Jamie Du Pont MacKenzie did an OK job with this.
The slow start can be blammed on the fact that the first 15% of the book was spent with the characters recapping what they had done in the first book. That would have been great if I'd read the books a year apart, but since I went straight from the first to the second it left things a bit dull and frustrating.
This picks up where we left off in Lords of the Middle Dark with Hawk and his band of misfits having escaped both Melchior and the solar system in the Universe ship they have stolen. In order to escape the attention of Master System they hide out in the Freebooters area of space. From there they seek to build contacts and allies from the space pirates and to identify the planets where the remaining 4 rings are located.
The story had a bit of mystery and plenty of action, and was actually fairly engaging once it got going. It was great to meet some of the modified humans and see more of what life is like under Master System for the non-Earth humans. A few of the new characters added to the team stole the show. Especially former Melchior security chief Arnold Nagy.
It should be interesting to see how things play out in third book.
Rating: 3 stars.
Audio Note: Jamie Du Pont MacKenzie did an OK job with this.
April 2, 2021
Recommendation: this is a good continuation of the series. If you liked the first book, you will probably enjoy this one, too, though some of the ways the story develops may surprise you, and the book ends on a cliffhanger rather than reaching any kind of resolution.
Review: Broadly, this does still feel like "Blake's 7," but the differences that were minor in the first book are growing larger and larger over the course of this narrative. Pirates of the Thunder starts right where the previous book ended, with the group having just escaped from Melchior on a reprogrammed ship.
Critique: It's been a bit more than ten years since I read the first book in this series, and I have changed as a reader since then. At some point in the past, I read another reader dismiss Chalker as "into body modification" and at the time I thought that was overstated. But it has definitely affected how I read this book, which admittedly does have a hell of a lot more body modification built into the narrative than there was in the first book of the series. Body modification is a requirement of the setting, in fact: in order to populate the various habitable worlds of the galaxy, Master System redesigned humans a thousand times for a thousand different biospheres, some of which it created as wholly different from Earth so that humans would be less able to coordinate with each other in efforts to overthrow its computer rule. But in this book it isn't enough to set up a situation where people have to change into utterly alien bodies (as in Chalker's more-known Well World series); in this the mechanism for changing bodies is the same as the instant transportation technology: a device known as the "transmuter." Chalker's transmuter is the obvious precursor to the combination of transporter and replicator that we see in all the "new" Star Trek stories of the 90s. Star Trek's authors may have copied Chalker, because it works the same: you disassemble an object down to the molecular level, scanning and recording every detail perfectly, and then you reassemble that object someplace else and sometime later. But in these novels, the transmuter has a limitation: inanimate objects can be 3D printed endlessly, but living creatures can only be transmuted once. So if you use the transmuter to "beam down" to a planet's surface, you need to find another way back. It's the same thing if you change your body at all: give yourself gills so that you can breathe on that waterworld, and you can never be changed back again. It's not enough for Chalker that people would have to experience true alienation from their bodies; for him in this series, it has to be permanent. I think it's an interesting conundrum, though it feels very artificial to limit it to one time without going into any metaphysical reasons for why living creatures are different than inanimate objects. "They just are" is all the explanation we get.
A further wrinkle of this body modification that the Master System conducted on humanity is that, at a minimum, the Master System computer is very sexist. Multiple women in this book are explained to have been modified so that they effectively go into heat when they're not pregnant and desperately seek to mate until they get pregnant again. This is simultaneously repellent and weird to me. Repellent because...obviously because it's repellent. But it's presented really weirdly, in a clinical way that doesn't really emphasize the horror of it. It would be easy to dismiss this as Chalker writing some kind of male sex fantasy, but I'm not convinced that's actually the case. He certainly doesn't get into anything prurient in the book; I was dreading the point where the one character would give birth and then try to seduce someone, but if that happened, it happened "off-stage" and no description is given. There are two explanations, I think. One is a misogyny so profound that Chalker has to write his female characters out of the action entirely, and "barefoot and pregnant" was the solution he implemented. But I rather think that this "in heat until pregnant" is just part of the body modification horror that he explores. It's gross either way. I really found myself longing to see more of any of the other female characters, like Manka Warlock, who is simultaneously educated, fierce, and competent.
But the other thing that we don't really get in this book - and maybe this is typical of Chalker in general - is characterization. Reading this with a modern sensibility, I was struck by how dispassionate and interchangeable the character voices were on the page. Even though this was published twenty years later, it reads very much like a lot of male-authored science fiction of the 50s and 60s: Heinlein and Asimov in particular tend to have very dispassionate, talky characters who narrate what they're thinking about big picture questions, rather than dissembling or engaging in jokes or small talk like actual people often do. So the enjoyment in this book is almost entirely plot-based.
The plot had some pleasures and surprises for me. I knew where the plot was going at a high level, but the path that the book takes to get there often went in unexpected directions, with developments I wouldn't ever have guessed. That surprise - the tension of not knowing what was going to happen next even as I knew where we were going to end - is what kept me reading this.
Many times I expected a lot more detail and focus on certain parts of the story that ended up getting glossed over or mentioned in passing. Setting up the colony/base, for instance, happened almost entirely in a break between chapters: in one chapter they're about to do it, and as the next chapter begins they've already completed the work. The group notices that the Thunder has a bridge made for people, and they begin to wonder why this is. But there's no mystery to it, no time spent gradually finding clues and putting the implications together into possible reasons. No, the group just intuits why this is, and they are apparently correct because they all accept it as given from that point. This would've annoyed and disappointed me except that I found the stuff that the story does focus on also very engaging.
Ultimately the book feels old-fashioned: sexist, dispassionate, dismissive of details. It also feels like a transition, part of a build-up without reaching any kind of climax or conclusion; hopefully we'll get a beat like that sometime in the third book. But for all that, I enjoyed the rest of it. The plot twists kept me engaged, and while the narrative answers a bunch of questions rather more easily than I expected, it introduces a bunch of new situations that beg questions that I didn't imagine. I'm definitely going to dig up a copy of the third book to read where this story goes.
Review: Broadly, this does still feel like "Blake's 7," but the differences that were minor in the first book are growing larger and larger over the course of this narrative. Pirates of the Thunder starts right where the previous book ended, with the group having just escaped from Melchior on a reprogrammed ship.
Critique: It's been a bit more than ten years since I read the first book in this series, and I have changed as a reader since then. At some point in the past, I read another reader dismiss Chalker as "into body modification" and at the time I thought that was overstated. But it has definitely affected how I read this book, which admittedly does have a hell of a lot more body modification built into the narrative than there was in the first book of the series. Body modification is a requirement of the setting, in fact: in order to populate the various habitable worlds of the galaxy, Master System redesigned humans a thousand times for a thousand different biospheres, some of which it created as wholly different from Earth so that humans would be less able to coordinate with each other in efforts to overthrow its computer rule. But in this book it isn't enough to set up a situation where people have to change into utterly alien bodies (as in Chalker's more-known Well World series); in this the mechanism for changing bodies is the same as the instant transportation technology: a device known as the "transmuter." Chalker's transmuter is the obvious precursor to the combination of transporter and replicator that we see in all the "new" Star Trek stories of the 90s. Star Trek's authors may have copied Chalker, because it works the same: you disassemble an object down to the molecular level, scanning and recording every detail perfectly, and then you reassemble that object someplace else and sometime later. But in these novels, the transmuter has a limitation: inanimate objects can be 3D printed endlessly, but living creatures can only be transmuted once. So if you use the transmuter to "beam down" to a planet's surface, you need to find another way back. It's the same thing if you change your body at all: give yourself gills so that you can breathe on that waterworld, and you can never be changed back again. It's not enough for Chalker that people would have to experience true alienation from their bodies; for him in this series, it has to be permanent. I think it's an interesting conundrum, though it feels very artificial to limit it to one time without going into any metaphysical reasons for why living creatures are different than inanimate objects. "They just are" is all the explanation we get.
A further wrinkle of this body modification that the Master System conducted on humanity is that, at a minimum, the Master System computer is very sexist. Multiple women in this book are explained to have been modified so that they effectively go into heat when they're not pregnant and desperately seek to mate until they get pregnant again. This is simultaneously repellent and weird to me. Repellent because...obviously because it's repellent. But it's presented really weirdly, in a clinical way that doesn't really emphasize the horror of it. It would be easy to dismiss this as Chalker writing some kind of male sex fantasy, but I'm not convinced that's actually the case. He certainly doesn't get into anything prurient in the book; I was dreading the point where the one character would give birth and then try to seduce someone, but if that happened, it happened "off-stage" and no description is given. There are two explanations, I think. One is a misogyny so profound that Chalker has to write his female characters out of the action entirely, and "barefoot and pregnant" was the solution he implemented. But I rather think that this "in heat until pregnant" is just part of the body modification horror that he explores. It's gross either way. I really found myself longing to see more of any of the other female characters, like Manka Warlock, who is simultaneously educated, fierce, and competent.
But the other thing that we don't really get in this book - and maybe this is typical of Chalker in general - is characterization. Reading this with a modern sensibility, I was struck by how dispassionate and interchangeable the character voices were on the page. Even though this was published twenty years later, it reads very much like a lot of male-authored science fiction of the 50s and 60s: Heinlein and Asimov in particular tend to have very dispassionate, talky characters who narrate what they're thinking about big picture questions, rather than dissembling or engaging in jokes or small talk like actual people often do. So the enjoyment in this book is almost entirely plot-based.
The plot had some pleasures and surprises for me. I knew where the plot was going at a high level, but the path that the book takes to get there often went in unexpected directions, with developments I wouldn't ever have guessed. That surprise - the tension of not knowing what was going to happen next even as I knew where we were going to end - is what kept me reading this.
Many times I expected a lot more detail and focus on certain parts of the story that ended up getting glossed over or mentioned in passing. Setting up the colony/base, for instance, happened almost entirely in a break between chapters: in one chapter they're about to do it, and as the next chapter begins they've already completed the work. The group notices that the Thunder has a bridge made for people, and they begin to wonder why this is. But there's no mystery to it, no time spent gradually finding clues and putting the implications together into possible reasons. No, the group just intuits why this is, and they are apparently correct because they all accept it as given from that point. This would've annoyed and disappointed me except that I found the stuff that the story does focus on also very engaging.
Ultimately the book feels old-fashioned: sexist, dispassionate, dismissive of details. It also feels like a transition, part of a build-up without reaching any kind of climax or conclusion; hopefully we'll get a beat like that sometime in the third book. But for all that, I enjoyed the rest of it. The plot twists kept me engaged, and while the narrative answers a bunch of questions rather more easily than I expected, it introduces a bunch of new situations that beg questions that I didn't imagine. I'm definitely going to dig up a copy of the third book to read where this story goes.
May 2, 2022
Garsaus JAV fantastikos rašytojo J. L. Chalker nauja "Žiedų valdovo" versija. Skirtumai - žiedai paslėpti skirtingose planetose, juos surinkus bus galima nugalėti superkompiuterį, kuris valdo žmones. Šioje knygų serijoje yra 4 knygos, deja, iš karto įšokau į antrą - teks skaityti iš naujo ir iš eilės. Bet bent viršelis knygų iššūkiui 2022 tiko - nupiešta planeta.
July 24, 2024
When I was a little bit of the way through the FIRST book of this series (Rings of the Master), I zipped off back to the store where I'd got it from to grab the other three that I saw there, because hey, it seemed weird, and creative, and neat.
But then I FINISHED the first book, and after endless pages of exquisitely detailed imprisonment fetishry, it ended by bringing all the characters together in a scrappy band to go off, scour the galaxy, and find the rings that would shut down the evil AI machine controlling everything. ...At least, that's how it finished AFTER we indulged in a whole lot of other oddness, including important ("Important" I say sarcastically) details like "Here's a weird lady WHO HAS A TAIL" and "All of the women have had their boobs and hips expanded a little, and been mildly brainwashed to want to take care of children" and "One of the main characters has been re-named 'China' and genetically altered to be blind, and always have to be pregnant because every moment she's NOT pregnant she'll lose all personality and self-control and turn into a horny bimbo".
So, you know. I took my time moving on to book number 2, because I had better things to read. But here I am, 'Pirates of the Thunder' finished (sort of. At some point I started loosely scanning entire pages and flipping them, though without much lost but extensive descriptions of alien women's boobs and the characters expositing obvious shit to eachother).
With my little pre-amble established, let's get on to the review proper.
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I think I can highlight much of what is strange about this book simply by describing the characters.
- "Hawks", the leader, a native american man who routinely got brain-washed to move between living in a traditional, primitive first-nationer society, and living in a technological overlord world. He's now on a quest to find five rings with microchips hidden in them that will shut down/control the evil AI that is ruling the universe. Somewhere along the way he got two wives, who are....
- "Cloud Dancer". A smart lady from primitive society who had enough screen time and purpose in the last book, but has really fallen to the wayside in this one, most likely because she (along with all the other women) got genetically modified to have bigger boobs and hips and brain-washed to be more caring and nurturing towards children (Something that's not really treated as much of a problem by anyone. In fact hey, maybe it even makes things BETTER having all the women be brainwashed into being good little wives, yeh?)
- "Silent Woman", Hawk's second wife, a former slave who had her tongue cut out, lived a tortured life, but now has a nice man to take care of her and stuff, so yay.
- "China". I forget what her name USED to be, but, for absolutely no reason, she got her mind re-programmed in the last book to be named China. She's the prodigy of a man trying to breed a super-human race, and her motivation was to not let her father turn her into a brain-washed 'Baby Factory' (I say Baby Factory because that is the term the book uses, over and over and over and over). ...a motivation she fails to achieve, as by the time THIS book begins she has been permanently blinded and genetically altered so she MUST always be pregnant, otherwise she'll lose her mind and go into heat. ("Why not Birth control? Why not self-surgery? Why not a lot of solutions to try and fix this?" The book is quite clear that there are lots of technical, permanent reasons why she's going to have to be a 'pregnant baby factory' for the rest of her life. ...And by the way she's also been genetically altered to be youthful and long living, so, she'll be young and hot for 70-80 years, pumping out babies the whole time).
- "Koll" Or (in the traditional of people losing their identities and changing their names that these books seem to have) "Sabatini". She/he/it is basically "The Thing" from John Carpenter's movie, but severely nerfed, and reasonable and intelligent.
- "The Twin Sisters" (I forget their names because they're so unimportant to most of this book), a pair of enslaved twin sisters who, it is repeatedly stated, come from a primitive society, but have a supernatural knack for picking locks.
- "Raven". He's some sort of badass security agent or something I guess, and he likes to smoke cigars.
- "Warlock". We're told she's a badass security agent or something I guess, but because she's a woman she doesn't get as much to do as Raven. (The last book also ominously ended with some note that she'd had her personalty 'tweaked' to be more docile.)
- "Sabatini". The evil, rapist space-captain from the last book. God knows why they didn't just kill him and get it over with. Oh wait, I know- because he needed to get eaten by "The Thing".
- "Nagy". He's a guy. Except it turns out he's not just a guy, because he's secretly working for some sort of conspiracy or something.
- "Evil Scientist". I forget his name, but he's a scientist who, among other things, made The Thing, turned China into a forever-pregnant blind woman, and committed various other atrocities which we are TOLD people are upset about, but as far as actual on-page interactions go he just gets along with people as politely as anyone does.
- "And... um.... Uhhh..." Well, there MUST be more, but jesus christ it's all so weird and such a blur and people turn into other characters or lose their personality I can't even keep track. Oh, but I WOULD like to highlight...
- "The Crew of Hot Furries". At some point the merry band of heroes joins up with some space pirates. One of the ships that Raven happens to get on board is crewed entirely by women (A fact that immediately gives him pause, causing him to speculate that surely they must all be lezzing out with one another, right?). We're introduced to the crew one by one, and have their boobs describes one by one, from a lizard woman to a lion woman to a shortstack dwarf woman. They all lounge around naked on their ship, and make Raven get naked too because hey why not. The Dwarf woman then, as one does in casual conversation, tells her backstory, about how she comes from a world where women of her race have been genetically altered to be utterly submissive to the advances of men, perfectly weak and feeble and helpless and incapable in any way of saying 'no' because every time they smell a man they go into heat and have to fuck. The only way they can at all defend themselves is passively, with chameleon camaflouging and the ability to stand still and hide.
SO. With a colorful collection of characters like that, how could this book possibly have any problems?
Oddly enough, being TOO DANG DRY is the problem. For all the prevalence of strange sex-stuff going on, I don't know if I can recall even a single sex scene in the book. There's one part where some of the characters go to a pirate city and they're waited on by some sexy sex slaves (We're told how sexy these slaves are, explicitly. They are, to quote, 'bombshells'), and one of the characters is like (not an exact quote) "Hu hu hu, some sex would be fun, wouldn't it guys?" but nothing comes of it. It's as if the author is brimming over with bizarre fetishes, but consistently chickens out and becomes too shy to actually describe the act of sex, and so just becomes a weird voyeur, describing the breasts of every woman (and alien) that comes onto the page.
The dryness taints everything, even the overarching story. The WORLD and the setting is fascinating, with so much possibility to all of it. But, though the characters have ostensibly been set on a quest to save the galaxy by finding five 'magic rings', not a single ring is recover in the entirety of this book. The pages are instead devoted to going over every tiny little detail of every technical thing the characters do, while they... *Drum roll* ...try to establish a working colony of rebels, discussing whether it'd be better to be mobile aboard their colony ship, or have a base of operations on a planet somewhere, or both.
There is absolutely no urgency to anything. Never at any point does this feel like an exciting QUEST full of adventure. Instead they seem content to try and slowly gather allies, establish how they're gonna feed everyone, house everyone, make sure people have comfy furniture, where they're gonna put all the babies China is going to make, and just generally give the impression that they're content to maybe breed a few generations of descendants and let THEM worry about overthrowing Master Computer.
The book ends with 'The Thing' character finally going down to a planet where a ring is to check it out and try and steal it, but all of their actions are performed 'off screen', with them reporting back via communications to be like "Nupe can't get it". The final solution, which is promised to happen in the NEXT book, is that the twins will have to be permanently transformed into some uggo gross aliens in order to go down to the planet and get the ring. ...their transformations being permanent because that's just how the technology works in this world, doncha know.
In the same vein of dryness and exposition, characters love to talk and talk and talk and go over the most obvious of shit, and rationalize and reason everything out. "If we try to steal one of the rings, won't Master Computer try and stop us?" Someone asks. "Well yes," another characters says. "But here's my long, stupid, contrived and psycho-analytical reason why it'll be fine, and why this will start a revolution that every pirate in space will support bla bla bla" they'll reply. "But what if we need to use the bathroom in the middle of a mission?" someone might interject. "Well maybe we should set up a rotating schedule to monitor the pee routines of everyone, and see if..."
...Okay I made that last one up, but, it's close.
In the end, all the sexist, weird fetish stuff isn't the real problem. It's just how DULL everything is. Maybe if some people had human emotions, or actually had sex, or behaved in any sort of normal way with high-stakes high-drama, then maybe this wouldn't be a dull, dry snooze-fest. But as it stands, at least it's easy to get through, because you can flip through entire pages and manage to not get lost in the plot, because nothing will have happened in any of those pages.
But then I FINISHED the first book, and after endless pages of exquisitely detailed imprisonment fetishry, it ended by bringing all the characters together in a scrappy band to go off, scour the galaxy, and find the rings that would shut down the evil AI machine controlling everything. ...At least, that's how it finished AFTER we indulged in a whole lot of other oddness, including important ("Important" I say sarcastically) details like "Here's a weird lady WHO HAS A TAIL" and "All of the women have had their boobs and hips expanded a little, and been mildly brainwashed to want to take care of children" and "One of the main characters has been re-named 'China' and genetically altered to be blind, and always have to be pregnant because every moment she's NOT pregnant she'll lose all personality and self-control and turn into a horny bimbo".
So, you know. I took my time moving on to book number 2, because I had better things to read. But here I am, 'Pirates of the Thunder' finished (sort of. At some point I started loosely scanning entire pages and flipping them, though without much lost but extensive descriptions of alien women's boobs and the characters expositing obvious shit to eachother).
With my little pre-amble established, let's get on to the review proper.
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I think I can highlight much of what is strange about this book simply by describing the characters.
- "Hawks", the leader, a native american man who routinely got brain-washed to move between living in a traditional, primitive first-nationer society, and living in a technological overlord world. He's now on a quest to find five rings with microchips hidden in them that will shut down/control the evil AI that is ruling the universe. Somewhere along the way he got two wives, who are....
- "Cloud Dancer". A smart lady from primitive society who had enough screen time and purpose in the last book, but has really fallen to the wayside in this one, most likely because she (along with all the other women) got genetically modified to have bigger boobs and hips and brain-washed to be more caring and nurturing towards children (Something that's not really treated as much of a problem by anyone. In fact hey, maybe it even makes things BETTER having all the women be brainwashed into being good little wives, yeh?)
- "Silent Woman", Hawk's second wife, a former slave who had her tongue cut out, lived a tortured life, but now has a nice man to take care of her and stuff, so yay.
- "China". I forget what her name USED to be, but, for absolutely no reason, she got her mind re-programmed in the last book to be named China. She's the prodigy of a man trying to breed a super-human race, and her motivation was to not let her father turn her into a brain-washed 'Baby Factory' (I say Baby Factory because that is the term the book uses, over and over and over and over). ...a motivation she fails to achieve, as by the time THIS book begins she has been permanently blinded and genetically altered so she MUST always be pregnant, otherwise she'll lose her mind and go into heat. ("Why not Birth control? Why not self-surgery? Why not a lot of solutions to try and fix this?" The book is quite clear that there are lots of technical, permanent reasons why she's going to have to be a 'pregnant baby factory' for the rest of her life. ...And by the way she's also been genetically altered to be youthful and long living, so, she'll be young and hot for 70-80 years, pumping out babies the whole time).
- "Koll" Or (in the traditional of people losing their identities and changing their names that these books seem to have) "Sabatini". She/he/it is basically "The Thing" from John Carpenter's movie, but severely nerfed, and reasonable and intelligent.
- "The Twin Sisters" (I forget their names because they're so unimportant to most of this book), a pair of enslaved twin sisters who, it is repeatedly stated, come from a primitive society, but have a supernatural knack for picking locks.
- "Raven". He's some sort of badass security agent or something I guess, and he likes to smoke cigars.
- "Warlock". We're told she's a badass security agent or something I guess, but because she's a woman she doesn't get as much to do as Raven. (The last book also ominously ended with some note that she'd had her personalty 'tweaked' to be more docile.)
- "Sabatini". The evil, rapist space-captain from the last book. God knows why they didn't just kill him and get it over with. Oh wait, I know- because he needed to get eaten by "The Thing".
- "Nagy". He's a guy. Except it turns out he's not just a guy, because he's secretly working for some sort of conspiracy or something.
- "Evil Scientist". I forget his name, but he's a scientist who, among other things, made The Thing, turned China into a forever-pregnant blind woman, and committed various other atrocities which we are TOLD people are upset about, but as far as actual on-page interactions go he just gets along with people as politely as anyone does.
- "And... um.... Uhhh..." Well, there MUST be more, but jesus christ it's all so weird and such a blur and people turn into other characters or lose their personality I can't even keep track. Oh, but I WOULD like to highlight...
- "The Crew of Hot Furries". At some point the merry band of heroes joins up with some space pirates. One of the ships that Raven happens to get on board is crewed entirely by women (A fact that immediately gives him pause, causing him to speculate that surely they must all be lezzing out with one another, right?). We're introduced to the crew one by one, and have their boobs describes one by one, from a lizard woman to a lion woman to a shortstack dwarf woman. They all lounge around naked on their ship, and make Raven get naked too because hey why not. The Dwarf woman then, as one does in casual conversation, tells her backstory, about how she comes from a world where women of her race have been genetically altered to be utterly submissive to the advances of men, perfectly weak and feeble and helpless and incapable in any way of saying 'no' because every time they smell a man they go into heat and have to fuck. The only way they can at all defend themselves is passively, with chameleon camaflouging and the ability to stand still and hide.
SO. With a colorful collection of characters like that, how could this book possibly have any problems?
Oddly enough, being TOO DANG DRY is the problem. For all the prevalence of strange sex-stuff going on, I don't know if I can recall even a single sex scene in the book. There's one part where some of the characters go to a pirate city and they're waited on by some sexy sex slaves (We're told how sexy these slaves are, explicitly. They are, to quote, 'bombshells'), and one of the characters is like (not an exact quote) "Hu hu hu, some sex would be fun, wouldn't it guys?" but nothing comes of it. It's as if the author is brimming over with bizarre fetishes, but consistently chickens out and becomes too shy to actually describe the act of sex, and so just becomes a weird voyeur, describing the breasts of every woman (and alien) that comes onto the page.
The dryness taints everything, even the overarching story. The WORLD and the setting is fascinating, with so much possibility to all of it. But, though the characters have ostensibly been set on a quest to save the galaxy by finding five 'magic rings', not a single ring is recover in the entirety of this book. The pages are instead devoted to going over every tiny little detail of every technical thing the characters do, while they... *Drum roll* ...try to establish a working colony of rebels, discussing whether it'd be better to be mobile aboard their colony ship, or have a base of operations on a planet somewhere, or both.
There is absolutely no urgency to anything. Never at any point does this feel like an exciting QUEST full of adventure. Instead they seem content to try and slowly gather allies, establish how they're gonna feed everyone, house everyone, make sure people have comfy furniture, where they're gonna put all the babies China is going to make, and just generally give the impression that they're content to maybe breed a few generations of descendants and let THEM worry about overthrowing Master Computer.
The book ends with 'The Thing' character finally going down to a planet where a ring is to check it out and try and steal it, but all of their actions are performed 'off screen', with them reporting back via communications to be like "Nupe can't get it". The final solution, which is promised to happen in the NEXT book, is that the twins will have to be permanently transformed into some uggo gross aliens in order to go down to the planet and get the ring. ...their transformations being permanent because that's just how the technology works in this world, doncha know.
In the same vein of dryness and exposition, characters love to talk and talk and talk and go over the most obvious of shit, and rationalize and reason everything out. "If we try to steal one of the rings, won't Master Computer try and stop us?" Someone asks. "Well yes," another characters says. "But here's my long, stupid, contrived and psycho-analytical reason why it'll be fine, and why this will start a revolution that every pirate in space will support bla bla bla" they'll reply. "But what if we need to use the bathroom in the middle of a mission?" someone might interject. "Well maybe we should set up a rotating schedule to monitor the pee routines of everyone, and see if..."
...Okay I made that last one up, but, it's close.
In the end, all the sexist, weird fetish stuff isn't the real problem. It's just how DULL everything is. Maybe if some people had human emotions, or actually had sex, or behaved in any sort of normal way with high-stakes high-drama, then maybe this wouldn't be a dull, dry snooze-fest. But as it stands, at least it's easy to get through, because you can flip through entire pages and manage to not get lost in the plot, because nothing will have happened in any of those pages.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
July 6, 2022
I am really loving the journey of these characters. Hawks and his crew might have started out as a rag-tag band of somewhat nobodies, but they are developing into a seasoned group that even Ocean would be proud of. This sophomore entry into the Rings of the Master series deals primarily with the aftermath of the group's escape from the prison Melchior, their attempt to trust each other and come up with a plan, and work with Star Eagle to rework the giant ship into one they can use, all while keeping out of sight from Master System and its minions. It ends up being largely politics, and I can see most readers losing interest. Chalker's writing is really what kept me engaged, and I found dozens of pages easily flying by. I love this universe he has created, the heist storyline, and the myriad of alien races that populate it. His descriptions are extensive without being over the top, and there's very little sci-fi mumbo jumbo to stumble over. The plot is sensical and direct, and there aren't a bunch of side stories to slow down the action for no reason (I'm looking at you, Classic Who). Now that they have a fleet and a plan, I'm really jazzed to see where this story will go next, and how the group will attempt to snag the rings of power.
September 29, 2024
Pirates of the Thunder by Jack L. Chalker (Rings of the Master #2)
The second book picks up where the first one ended: the rag tag team in the process of stealing a giant, 14 kilometre long colony ship orbiting Jupiter to escape pursuit from agents of the Master System, the computer tyrant that rules the known galaxy and mankind.
Following a daring escape in the claimed ship, the crew of the now renamed Thunder seek allies amongst the freebooters living on the edge of the system and work out their plans for finding the five rings required to take control of Master System but it won't be rhat easy, most of them may have to make the ultimate sacrifice and take the one way trip to become one of the modified colonial humans in order to do so.
I really enjoyed this sequel to Lords of the Middle Dark.
The second book picks up where the first one ended: the rag tag team in the process of stealing a giant, 14 kilometre long colony ship orbiting Jupiter to escape pursuit from agents of the Master System, the computer tyrant that rules the known galaxy and mankind.
Following a daring escape in the claimed ship, the crew of the now renamed Thunder seek allies amongst the freebooters living on the edge of the system and work out their plans for finding the five rings required to take control of Master System but it won't be rhat easy, most of them may have to make the ultimate sacrifice and take the one way trip to become one of the modified colonial humans in order to do so.
I really enjoyed this sequel to Lords of the Middle Dark.
Read
October 23, 2025Hawks had refused to help the ambitious Lazlo Chen in his quest to find the five gold rings that could break Master System's hold over humankind -- and that refusal had landed him on the deadly prison planet Melchior.But when Hawks and some fellow prisoners engineered a bold escape, it seemed almost too easy. Hawks guessed that Chen was pulling the strings, but he couldn't shake the feeling that there was another, greater power involved. And that scared him.Now the stakes were rising, and Hawks was more determined than ever to find the gold rings. But Master System was out to capture him, and Chen was trying to follow him -- and the only place his small band of rebels could hide was smack in the middle of pirate territory...
July 8, 2018
Yeah - not enjoying these book as much as I remember from first time round. Maybe with greater maturity comes more criticism.
This, the second of four, doesn't really move the series on much at all - at the end of it, the renegades still have none of the five rings they are looking for, but have gained allies. Allies that, it seems to me, are more there to show how much the Master System has changed various member of humanity for its own purposes.
Reading this, I couldn't help but think of Blake's 7 - hmmm, coincidence that the books were published a few years after the TV series ended.
I doubt these will remain on my shelves after this re-read.
This, the second of four, doesn't really move the series on much at all - at the end of it, the renegades still have none of the five rings they are looking for, but have gained allies. Allies that, it seems to me, are more there to show how much the Master System has changed various member of humanity for its own purposes.
Reading this, I couldn't help but think of Blake's 7 - hmmm, coincidence that the books were published a few years after the TV series ended.
I doubt these will remain on my shelves after this re-read.
June 2, 2025
Although at times it reads like an adventure game walkthrough, it's still something of an interesting tale. The characters are mostly cardboard, and the party is too big; certain characters get forgotten along the way.
Chalker is definately weird and some of his fetishes are on full display here. The plot slowly moves forward and I have this feeling that things are going get rushed to finish things in the next two books.
Chalker is definately weird and some of his fetishes are on full display here. The plot slowly moves forward and I have this feeling that things are going get rushed to finish things in the next two books.
May 26, 2017
The follow up to "Lords of Middle Dark". It's a totally different kind of book. But still the author comes up with a unique story, and totally bizarre tech and worlds. It's bizarre, but it all fits together in a way that seems totally believable. Now the primitive cultures are in space. Good read.
January 16, 2018
For a four-book series, this book still felt like more set-up than questing. I have ordered the two remaining books used online, so I can read them at my convenience, rather than requesting them via ILL.
September 30, 2017
Still waiting for the 12 days of Christmas reference. At least in here there was a Fellowship of the Ring(s) reference, a popular book at the time.
August 10, 2018
Enjoyable, but it didn't make much progress with the plot. Setting the scene for what comes next I guess.
October 31, 2025
Probably 3.5 stars, really good world building and alien design concepts, cool problem solving and cliff hangers. A lot of characters at work now, excited for the next one
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
August 31, 2020
Fitting neatly into a genre of dystopian SciFi novels where an evil overlord is challenged by an unlikely band of misfits, this series rethinks and expands the SkyNet premise of the Terminator franchise and mixes it up with the Asimovian Laws of Robotics to land in a place that feels familiar while also being a well rounded universe with some unexpected but logical inflections. The rationale behind the expansion of humanity as controlled by the Master System is a remarkable invention, but one that begs the question of just what logic Master System uses to modify the genetic structure of humanity yet allows it to proceed categorizing these creations as human. Humans that breathe water aren't humans by any usual cladding. Still, this creates a rich world for the crew of the Thunder to bang around in.
The greatest flaw to the novel is that nothing much happens except staging the rest of the series. The book opens with an episode that moves them from a ragtag group of prison planet refugees to a major military power. Then there is the building of the alliance and the single act of piracy that liberates them from the Master System and makes them a major economic power as well. In short, this book is what happens when an author decides to shortcut the narrative project by having a major character inherit a million dollar estate. No more petty worries, and going forward everything can go on the charge card.
And that main character, Hawks, he is essentially a cipher. We are told repeatedly that he is a great leader and wise, but mostly that involves descriptions of his feeling pensive. To be fair this only makes hm a little less interesting than the other characters who are mostly interchangeable. I never did learn to distinguish between the members of the crew since there is no real reason to, with the exception of the sex crazed Chinese girl who must remain eternally pregnant to retain her genius. Her character premise is interesting, but Chalker wastes that premise by doing not much with her aside from descriptions. Given that this is book two out of four I am giving credit to this novel as a bridging book between the set up and follow through, but even within those limits it is possible to be interesting.
The greatest flaw to the novel is that nothing much happens except staging the rest of the series. The book opens with an episode that moves them from a ragtag group of prison planet refugees to a major military power. Then there is the building of the alliance and the single act of piracy that liberates them from the Master System and makes them a major economic power as well. In short, this book is what happens when an author decides to shortcut the narrative project by having a major character inherit a million dollar estate. No more petty worries, and going forward everything can go on the charge card.
And that main character, Hawks, he is essentially a cipher. We are told repeatedly that he is a great leader and wise, but mostly that involves descriptions of his feeling pensive. To be fair this only makes hm a little less interesting than the other characters who are mostly interchangeable. I never did learn to distinguish between the members of the crew since there is no real reason to, with the exception of the sex crazed Chinese girl who must remain eternally pregnant to retain her genius. Her character premise is interesting, but Chalker wastes that premise by doing not much with her aside from descriptions. Given that this is book two out of four I am giving credit to this novel as a bridging book between the set up and follow through, but even within those limits it is possible to be interesting.
February 2, 2013
Just saw this series and it has been years but I was in the mood... so a marathon re-read of the series ensued... and it was fabulous!
We start out many years in the future... Earth is under control of Master System, a computer. The population has been culled, changed, the universe seeded with our oddly changed descendants, and what is left on Earth has been reduced to limited populations of racially distinct groups isolated in area as well as era.
Each generation any who have the potential to challenge are eliminated or are allowed into the inner sanctum. They live most of the year with science and technology, and the other times within their "primitive" cultures.genius,
What if there was a way to challenge the status quo? Enter an AmerIndian Historian, a Chinese teenage genius, and more...
Book 2 carries the story further. We are now in space with a band of pirates determined to break the system that has enslaved humanity. We go with them on a quest to collect 5 golden rings... on different planets where humanity was settled by Master System. Or at least versions of humanity...
We start out many years in the future... Earth is under control of Master System, a computer. The population has been culled, changed, the universe seeded with our oddly changed descendants, and what is left on Earth has been reduced to limited populations of racially distinct groups isolated in area as well as era.
Each generation any who have the potential to challenge are eliminated or are allowed into the inner sanctum. They live most of the year with science and technology, and the other times within their "primitive" cultures.genius,
What if there was a way to challenge the status quo? Enter an AmerIndian Historian, a Chinese teenage genius, and more...
Book 2 carries the story further. We are now in space with a band of pirates determined to break the system that has enslaved humanity. We go with them on a quest to collect 5 golden rings... on different planets where humanity was settled by Master System. Or at least versions of humanity...
August 8, 2012
My review for "Pirates of the Thunder": “Don’t judge a book by the cover” I’m told, but that’s what I did many years ago with this one and it was a good choice. This was the first “real” out-of-high-school book I can remember purchasing. I was at Safeway and saw it on the rack and decided I’d give it a try, because it “looks” cool. Well, it was great, but I had to stop a couple chapters into it and go to the book store to find the book before it in the series so I knew how the story began (Didn’t occur to me then that the book with the cool cover was the second in the series). I enjoyed this story so much that it sparked my interest in reading books and gave me something to “compare” to when searching. Loved the epic struggle of the rag-tag group against the “system”. Great book for the Sci-fi reader! (but be smart and read “Lords of the Middle Dark” FIRST. :) )
January 14, 2022
3.5 stars
Following on directly from Lords of the Middle Dark, Hawks and the other escapees from Melchior have managed to find a deep space ship.
Now they have to try and avoid Master System while searching for clues to the location of the first ring that could be its downfall.
Mostly concerned with them finding more people that could help, there's a bit less action and more discussion going on in this book, although it still moves at a decent pace.
Adds a whole bunch of new characters with different backgrounds.
The ending was a bit flat, leaving the way open to the next book, but with no big plans achieved.
Following on directly from Lords of the Middle Dark, Hawks and the other escapees from Melchior have managed to find a deep space ship.
Now they have to try and avoid Master System while searching for clues to the location of the first ring that could be its downfall.
Mostly concerned with them finding more people that could help, there's a bit less action and more discussion going on in this book, although it still moves at a decent pace.
Adds a whole bunch of new characters with different backgrounds.
The ending was a bit flat, leaving the way open to the next book, but with no big plans achieved.
November 19, 2014
In this book, our heroes make it out into deep space. They make contacts among the freebooters, a community of space pirate types who fly under Master System's radar. Our heroes have some successes, including stealing some stuff they need and visiting a few planets, but their real quest for the secret gold rings hasn't yet begun. I'm really enjoying reading these again. Can't wait to move on to book 3!
::edit:: reread in October 2014
::edit:: reread in October 2014
April 23, 2021
I highly recommend this entire series of books. I have read, and re-read the series, worn out a half-dozen paperback copies, and have my current paperback copies inside of shrink-wrapped bags. Now I enjoy the series on Kindle and Audible.
This series, along with many others, is part of the literature that shapes my own writing, world building, and character generation. Mr. Chalker, thank you for creating such a wonderful series of books.
This series, along with many others, is part of the literature that shapes my own writing, world building, and character generation. Mr. Chalker, thank you for creating such a wonderful series of books.
February 6, 2014
I found this series after I got hooked on Chalker and it is now one of my favorites. This is a series I was sad to finish. There is in these books such depth of creativity that it is staggering. The possibilities are endless and this takes you on the ride of your life.
April 16, 2017
Best book of the series by far. Excellent sci-fi, good action, good drama, and good look at the "big questions", which is always essential for sci-fi.
Fantastic, and I recommend the series to anyone who can find it.
Fantastic, and I recommend the series to anyone who can find it.
March 7, 2015
The renegades no running and hunting for the five gold rings that will end their slavery to Master computer who has tight hold on all the planets. This was a book two of The Rings of the Master and was good read. Looking forward to reading Book three: Warriors of the Storm.
May 31, 2015
The gathered have made plans and found allies. They are being sought and there is no room for a single error. One slip or loss of a member may be the end of the task in taking on Master System.
Great storyline. So many tangents in keeping the tale interesting.
Great storyline. So many tangents in keeping the tale interesting.
June 29, 2008
Book 2 in the series. Find it! Read it! :-)
July 8, 2016
This isn't the greatest sci-fi series but has some nice twists. I would recommend to any sci-fi fan. It is easy to tell that it was written in the Star War era of the eighties.
May 5, 2010
See what I said on "Lords of the Middle Dark".
August 7, 2010
I started the series at this book, not great but by no means awful. Definitely dated science fiction, but the commentary on human nature still applies.
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