Man-Kzin Wars V

I just read the first story, "In the Hall of the Mountain King". It's an excellent homage to the old Humphrey Bogart movie,"Treasure of the Sierra Madre". It has enough Known Space detail that I didn't realize it until Jonah and two Kzin were in the mountains with an old man and some mules, panning for gold. I especially liked how the authors avoided Goldhat and his now infamous "Badges...We don't need no stinking badges" line - instead replacing him with Ed "Ti Kwan Leep/Boot to the Head" Gruedermann (by the Fanatics as heard on Doctor Demento). 5 Stars just for this story.

Like volume IV, (and unlike I-III) this book contains only two stories, rather than three. Unlike volume IV, the stories are a bit more even in length, 202 and 129 pages respectively. The first story, by Jerry Pournelle and S.M. Stirling, is a continuation of their story in volume III of the series, and is quite good, more interesting than I've found any of their previous stories set in the Wunderland system. The second story, by Thomas T. Thomas, is a little bit of a comedown from the quality of the first story, but only a little bit; it's much better than the second story in volume IV of the series.For those of you unfamiliar with the series, I wouldn't really advise starting with this book, although it wouldn't be as disastrous a mistake as starting with book five of SOME series. All you REALLY need to know going in is that Kzinti are a sentient, spacefaring race evolved from carnivorous hunting cats, seven feet tall and 500 pounds of mighty warrior who consider it marginally dishonorable to plan an attack against so trivial an opponent as an omnivorous monkey, and whose general "strategy" amounts to "first you scream and then you leap". For this reason, and this reason alone, humanity always wins in the long run. The short run, however, can get quite unpleasant for the unwary monkeyboys.The entire series is excellent, and highly recommended.

A lot of the later Man-Kzin Wars stories take place on or in the vicinity of Wunderland, which I just find utterly cool considering the ways the authors use this locale. I WANNA FIGHT IN A MAN-KZIN WAR!!!