Flinx Transcendent (Pip & Flix Adventures) [Mass Market Paperback]

One final story in which our guy again overachieves, one final grand adventure for Philip Lynx and his empathetic (and very venomous) Alaspinian flying snake, Pip. This series began in 1972, and after more than 35 years of regaling us with Flinx's evolution and his search for identity and his quest to halt an encroaching cosmic evil, Alan Dean Foster has at last produced the finale. In one sense, I honestly don't know that this has been worth the wait because, frankly, the past decade or so hadn't produced a lot of terrific Pip & Flinx novels. Somewhere along the way, these books lost the heart and fun that made the earlier books so enjoyable to read. Somewhere along the way, the series started dragging. FLINX TRANSCENDENT, however, is a return to what's good, and I really liked how Foster paced the story. There were rarely lulls. Of course, if you've been tracking this series all along, this has to qualifiy as a must-read, if only so that you know how everything turns out.

It's the longest Pip & Flinx installment yet, and it does seem as if Foster had just opted to paste three story arcs together. The first segment informs us that a jaded Flinx has breached the AAnn's homeworld and has been skulking around in a lizard suit, passing himself off as AAnn (just because he can). But Flinx isn't as clever or as circumspect as he thought he was. The AAnn soon enough suspect something shady, and Flinx has to go on the run. Finding himself trapped in the AAnn's capital, his salvation may rest on an unpredictable young Aann. What happens next demonstrates yet again that, despite his best intentions, Flinx just cannot do things on a small scale. His actions will have a profound effect on Humanx-AAnn relations. This story arc, which just may be my favorite of the three, is highlighted by the interactions between Flinx and the young AAnn, Kiijeem.

The middle arc finds Flinx reunited with his sweetheart Clarity Held and with his old scholarly mentors Truzenzuzex and Bran Tse-Mallory. There's time enough also for another assault from the Order of Null, that murderous cult that worships oblivion, worships the impending cosmic "Great Cleansing." And then, in one of them deus ex machina moments, a character I was pretty fond of, who debuted way back in ORPHAN STAR, resurfaces. She pulls Flinx's asssterisk out of the fire.

The third and final arc has Flinx once and for all addressing the Great Evil, that malignant entity hurtling from the Great Emptiness and speeding ever nearer to our galaxy, consuming all matter in its path... and accelerating. Down the years, Flinx and his companions have criss-crossed the breadth of the Humanx Commonwealth, desperately seeking a solution. They've just about run out of options. More than ever, Flinx, with his wild, erratic Talents, is the key. He still doesn't know what this means.

Longtime readers will enjoy this. New readers may get lost a bit. Alan Dean Foster ties loose threads that have been dangling from previous novels. This being the final book, it's apropos that familiar faces we met in those previous novels make a curtain call. My most favorite aliens introduced in the Pip & Flinx series have always been the massive, vastly inventive, very inquisitive Ulru-Ujurrians. So I'm very glad they showed up. What I didn't like was the manner in which they were summoned by Flinx. I thought he pulled a chump move on that one, and you can see why Clarity was so ticked off. Foster throws us another bone by providing an epilogue to another of his Humans Commonwealth novels, QUOFUM. Of course, if you haven't read QUOFUM, that bit of closure won't signify diddly.

I enjoyed reading this book; it had me reminiscing a lot about those fantastic early novels in the series. I am definitely glad this cosmic threat was resolved at last. It's been a long time coming. I still hope to see more of Flinx and Pip and friends. Just because the writer's done writing novels about Flinx doesn't preclude his featuring him in short stories. Philip Lynx, he isn't even thirty yet. Surely he can top that "God's Ruler" thing he did.

Since Flinx Transcendent by Alan Dean Foster is the last book in the Pip and Flinx series, I've been looking forward to it, but before ordering it, I read the reviews on amazon, which as usual were mixed, so it was a pleasant surprise that I enjoyed the first part of the book, which some readers thought was too unrelated to the rest of the book; but I thought that it did fit in with his thoughts about saving the universe. There was more action in the latter half, I admit, but it was all well written and suspenseful with a good--and believable--ending. I'm glad to have that wrapped up, but I'd love to see those characters again in a completely different adventure!(And it doesn't have to involve saving the universe.)

This book has two parts. The first part is another "wander around" sort of Flinx & Pip adventure. Flinx is on the AAnn homeworld, in disguise as an AAnn. I loved this part--well written, interesting, inspired even. 5-stars.

The second part wraps up the whole Flinx&Pip series, as promised on the book cover. It was very nice to have closure, but I just couldn't get excited about the writing or the plot.

Overally, I would recommend this to any Flinx & Pip fan.