Patrimony-Alan Dean Foster

Patrimony
Alan Dean Foster
Berkley Nov 2007, $23.95 288 pp.
ISBN 9780345485076

For years Flinx has searched the galaxy for his father, a man who sympathized with the goals and experiments of the Meliorare society, a group involved in evil eugenics. Flinx is experiment 12A of the society, the only experiment not mind wiped. He has powerful empathy abilities and is unable to die. When he comes close to death an unknown trigger arranges a rescue for him so that he can find the Tar-Aiym weapons platform disguised as a brown dwarf that only he can use.

The weapon system is the only hope to stop the malevolence that is advancing beyond the Great Emptiness into Commonwealth space. Once it passes, everything in its path will be gone. Knowing all this Flinx and his minidrag Pip travel to Gestalt, a cold planet where his father might be staying. Avoiding a hitman and surviving near death experiences, he hopes to get the answers he has all his life tried to find.

After a couple of lateral tales, PATRIMONY, the thirteenth Pip and Flinx thriller moves the prime quest forward, answering one of the key questions that has haunted the protagonist for years and it sets the stage for the final countdown in this mind blowing science fiction series. The native society on Gestalt, the Tlels are one of the nicest species Flinx has ever met; as they co-exist peacefully with the humans on that planet. However, this entry belongs to Flinx as his saga takes a major leap forward.

Harriet Klausner