Battlestar Galactica 04

THE YOUNG WARRIORS Marooned! Starbuck didn't know whether to laugh or cry. Sure, he was sick of war... but he also didn't want to spend the rest of his life stranded on this hunk of rock where he had crashed. It was too much for an adventure-loving skypilot to stand! Then he met Miri, riding like the wind on her thinking unicorn, and agreed to lead her band of guerrilla kids in their war against the Cylon killer robots...

I bought all 14 of the Berkley/Ace 'Battlestar Galactica' novels when they first came out (mainly out of loyalty to the TV series, which -- for all its flaws -- had been the high-point of my week during a particularly trying time in High School), and I was VERY pleasantly surprised by this one, co-authored by Robert Thurston (who also co-authored all four of the quite-decent original novels, #11-14 in that series). All of the rampantly sexist attitudes in the TV episode "The Young Lords" (which made me cringe even in 1978) are redeemed and turned on their heads in THE YOUNG WARRIORS, beginning with the change in title. Instead of a younger brother giving orders to his submissive older sister and obsessing about rescuing his father from the Cylons, this novelization gives us an oldest sister who is as much real warrior/leader as eye-candy for Starbuck, and the leader of their resistance movement, whom they wish to rescue, is the children's wise and formidable MOTHER. There was, as I recall, nothing cheesy, juvenile, or misogynistic in the TV episode which THE YOUNG WARRIORS didn't at least ATTEMPT to transform into something intelligent, intriguing, and empowering, whenever possible. As in Glen Larson's novelization of the 'Battlestar Galactica' pilot, which became the first book in this series, the Cylons in this book are still organic life-forms within their armor, rather than the inorganic artificial life-forms they became in the on-air version of the BG pilot. Once you accept that we're dealing with Larson's alternative model for the Cylons, here, the avid BG fan should find this an enjoyable read, and a vision of what the aired episode MIGHT have been, had the TV series been given the time to mature and build on its strengths.

I've read books 1 through 9 in this series, and found this one of the deepest and most entertaining of them. It attempts to deal with Starbuck's weariness with war as well as the weariness of the population of the 12 colonies being in the depth of a thousand year war. The telepathic unicorns did not turn me off and I actually thought Starbuck's connection with one of them was carried off very well. Spectre was also a standout. This character was fleshed out more than he was in the tv show (and even in that episode, regardless of how well received it was, Spectre was one of the best guest characters to come along in BG).The Larson/Thurston novels were by far the best. (The Larson/Goulart novels were terrible, the writing horrible.) And this is the best of the first four Larson/Thurston's. Thurston co-wrote some or all of the books between 11 and 14 also, but I haven't gotten to those yet. But this is definitely the best of the first four.