To That Far Star: Summoned Home Trilogy #3 (A VonStaufen's World Adventure) (Volume 3)

Our hero struggled and failed In the first two volumes of this trilogy to adjust from ‘civilized’ life on Earth to his ‘neobarbarian’ homeworld while proving himself by saving his brother from the hangman and escaping his niece Alexia’s attempts to ‘cure’ his addition to autoeroticism, and get him married to a ‘twit’ and producing an heir.

In To That Far Star he finds himself uncertain where to turn in the struggle of cultural forces but does hold his own against a mysterious monster, moonshiners, evil Ukrainian spies, a wild car chase, a bloody lesson in political manipulation, a space battle gone wrong, and hunting down a traitor on a distant and dangerous jungle world.

But how can he escape Alexia’s determination to marry him to a twit?

FROM FAILURE TO FAILURE he stumbles along trying to be the champion his mother wants.

He was the baby of the family with nothing much expected of him. After 17 years of happy exile on prosperous, sophisticated, and ‘degenerate’ Earth he is Summoned Home to his primitive, feudal homeworld to play hero.

His mother wants him to save her pompous elder son from execution.

His emperor wants help fighting the Traditionalists.

His old commander calls him to join the struggle against modernism.

Constanteen VonRhummelle doesn’t worry. In 17 years of exile on Earth, he’s fully adapted to the ‘galactic’ lifestyle. He’s become 110% Earthling. When he accidentally kills a blackmailer, he discovers that Earthlings have not accepted him that fully: he is viewed as a suspicious foreigner from a barbarian world and is expelled. How will this Man from Old Earth return to life on his feudal homeworld?

Can he cope with all this amid: a kidnapping and shoot-out in the dark and stormy woods, a Holmesian search for the Sacred Chaldean Blood Scroll, roto-shoveling off a villain’s face, searching the murky and haunted tunnels of an abandoned prison, and being forced to marry a twit?

‘Pasadena fills the future galaxy with intriguing cultural and historical ‘could happen’ details and sharp political allegory.’

‘(Paul Pasadena) balances the two essentials of a good story, never losing sight of fast paced action or the interaction of his all too human characters.’

‘ This may have been intended as a homage to the Vorkosigan Saga with its similar universe but the hero is much less ‘super’ (it’s his daughter who is hyper like Miles) and the logic of the galaxy is more dystopian.’

This is set in 3888, largely on primitive-but-modernizing VonStaufen’s World. Earth and her sister advanced planets (Columbia and Gagarin) complacently dominate the galaxy while allowing the second-, third-, and fourth-world planets to progress and digress, advance and stumble in their own humorous fashion toward galactic standards and acceptance.

Our hero (he might say victim), Constanteen, was born as the last of six sons, the ‘runt of the litter,’ of a middle rank baron on VonStaufen’s World. This world endured six hundred years of isolation after a supernova caused the loss of their access route to the galaxy. He was allowed to play at romantic hero, and even at soldier, but not prepared for any responsibilities; nothing much was expected from him.

After 17 stress-free, indolent years on prosperous, sophisticated (and degenerate?) Earth, he is expelled, conscripted into a civil war by a megalomaniac Amazon, and becomes a hero of her revolution.

His first thoughts uselessly turn to flight when he is recalled to take up responsibilities back home on a planet near civil war where he is expected to serve the brother who tried to kill him before and to prove innocent another brother accused of treason.

He does hold his own against kidnappers, evil Ukrainian spies, and Traditionalist militia gangs.

He can only ‘do his best and hope for a soft landing.’