Book #3 of 2024: Orion and King Arthur by Ben Bova (Orion #6) This is a pretty good rendition of the classic Arthurian legend, especially in its emotional build-up to the king’s fated tragic end. (I like the initial wrinkle of him meeting Beowulf in his younger days, too.) It’s a little stranger as an …
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Book #124 of 2023: Orion Among the Stars by Ben Bova (Orion #5) Author Ben Bova’s time-traveling super-soldier Orion was originally introduced as an agent who could be sent by his all-powerful Creators to anywhere in the continuum that was in some way under threat, but for the most part, each subsequent novel in the …
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Book #118 of 2023: Orion and the Conqueror by Ben Bova (Orion #4) This isn’t the worst title of the Orion saga — it’s a noticeable step up from the angst-ridden previous volume — but it might well be the most boring. Much how the first half of Vengeance of Orion was little more than …
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Book #98 of 2023: Orion in the Dying Time by Ben Bova (Orion #3) This time-travel adventure sequel offers probably the most problematic of its saga’s dabbles in what the back of this book calls ‘speculative theology,’ taking as its premise the wild notion that the ancient Egyptian god Set is the same being as …
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Book #96 of 2023: Vengeance of Orion by Ben Bova (Orion #2) This first Orion sequel is interesting in its own right, but not nearly as good as its predecessor. That previous novel introduced humanity’s demigod champion by hurtling him progressively backwards in time, having to stop an adversary in each era determined to throw …
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Book #82 of 2023: Orion by Ben Bova (Orion #1) I loved this science-fiction novel — and to a lesser extent the loose series that follows — when I was a teen, and I’m glad to find that it holds up pretty well today. It’s definitely a product of its 1984 publication date in some …
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