Valerian and Laureline Book 3: The Land Without Stars
Valerian and Laureline Book 3: The Land Without Stars, by Pierre Christin & Jean-Claude Mézières, Cinebook
ONE BY one, our two spatio-temporal agents stop off at each individual new planet colony within a star cluster, with Valerian being taken aside to partake of the alcoholic hooch brewed by its inhabitants, getting drunker with each collective stop-off then sobering, though not quite abruptly, as news of a rogue planet heading towards the cluster and about to bring doom to all is revealed.
Our hero and heroine rush towards the planet, landing and finding living creatures, though ones living underground and unaware of the outside world let alone the universe. They befriend nomads but learn of two warring citadels; one ruled by women, the other men. A battle of the sexes might have been all the rage in the 70s when this first appeared but it’s hard to get excited and not find it all a bit too twee several decades later. That stated, the imaginative take on differing races and how they develop their cultures still has worth and is more space fantasy than sci-fi.
The resolution is a little forced, and rushed it has to be said, and perhaps a step back from Book 2’s development.
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