Trouble Magnet (Pip and Flinx Adventure Series #12) » (Reprint)

Alan Dean Foster has written in a variety of genres, including hard science fiction, fantasy, horror, detective, western, historical, and contemporary fiction. He is the author of the New York Times bestseller Star Wars: The Approaching Storm and the popular Pip & Flinx novels, as well as novelizations of several films including Star Wars, the first three Alien films, and Alien Nation. His novel Cyber Way won the Southwest Book Award for Fiction in 1990, the first science fiction work ever to do so. Foster and his wife, JoAnn Oxley, live in Prescott, Arizona, in a house built of brick that was salvaged from an early-twentieth-century miners’ brothel. He is currently at work on several new novels and media projects.

From science fiction icon Alan Dean Foster comes a blazing new Pip & Flinx adventure for fans of the green-eyed redhead with awesome mental powers and his miniature flying dragon. In this dazzling new novel, Flinx confirms his status as the galaxy’s greatest magnet for big trouble.

Wandering out there in some remote region of the galaxy is a gargantuan sentient Tar-Aiym weapons’ system. All Flinx has to do–while his pals look after his injured love Clarity Held–is find the hefty object and persuade it to knock out the monstrous evil that is hurtling through space to waste the entire Commonwealth.

A no-brainer, really, especially for Flinx, who is never without his loyal entourage of official snoops, crazed zealots, assorted goons, and the occasional assassin. Indeed, the boy wonder and his mini-drag, Pip, are eager to commence their heroic task . . . just as soon as Flinx visits Visaria–a dangerously depraved planet–to convince himself that humans are indeed worth saving.

The chances of stumbling across high moral values and utopian ideals don’t look promising–what with Flinx playing a lawless Pied Piper to a gang of lying, thieving juvenile delinquents. But prospects really go south when Flinx runs afoul of the corrupt planet’s ruthless crime king.

Still, life is full of surprises, and Flinx is about to get smacked by a passel of them–by turns devastating, heartening, and positively jaw-dropping. For although Flinx came to Visaria to plumb the enigma of humankind, there’s another mystery waiting here, a shocking clue about his own shadowy past.

Publishers Weekly

Plagued by doubts about his quest to find the ancient alien weapon that will one day save civilization from the destruction of the Great Emptiness, adventurer Flinx along with his empathic mini-dragon Pip take a detour to the criminal-run planet of Visaria in the 12th fast-paced novel (after 2005's Running from the Deity) of Foster's space opera series. There, Flinx rescues Subar, a teenage gang member, who makes the mistake of trying to mug some insectoid aliens. Not much wiser, Subar and his cohorts later rob a valuable Terran antique shipment from a warehouse. This puts local crime lords on Subar's trail and once more brings Flinx and Pip to the rescue. Over the course of their adventures, Subar nearly loses his life to save his girlfriend, Ashile, and Flinx only survives thanks to last-minute intervention by some old comrades, aliens from another dimension. This deus ex machina resolution renews Flinx's conviction about his greater role as civilization's savior and reassures the fans that the series will go on. (Nov.) Copyright 2006 Reed Business Information.