Series: Family D'Alembert

This note contains spoilers for the series.

By Stephen Goldin, based on a story by Doc Smith.

Certainly buckles some swashes. The Service of the Empire covers their top troubleshooting teams as the Circus of the Galaxy, which tours everywhere. This carries forward Smith's tradition that the high end of physical combat gets very acrobatic—rather like martial arts films, actually.

The bad guys and mysteries are fairly shallow and caricatured, unfortunately. And there isn't really enough attention to the world-building. And it's an aristocratic society, something Smith didn't make much use of (the first story here, and the Lord Tedric stories, but nowhere else).