Thu 17 Nov 2022
SF Diary Review: JOHN JAKES – When the Star Kings Die.
Posted by Steve under Diary Reviews , Science Fiction & Fantasy[8] Comments
JOHN JAKES – When the Star Kings Die. Dragonard #1. Ace G-656, paperback original, 1967. Cover by Jack Gaughan. Second printing, 1978.
When Max Dragonard, ex-Regulator, is broken out of prison by his old commander, he is assigned to investigate the revolutionary organization called Heart Flag. The Lords of the Exchange, rulers of II Galaxy and previously immortal, are dying, and no one seems to know why. Dragonard is captured by the High Commander of the Regulators and betrays his friend.
At the command of Lord Mishubi II, he is sentenced to die. Escape to the Heart Flag movement reveals to him the secret of immortality which has been kept from the ordinary people of the galaxy.
Quite better than expected, the story improves as it continues. One can hardly help but think of the old Planet Stories tradition, but it would seem that there is more complexity and development in this novel than the usual stereotyped space-adventure.
Dragonard’s own mental defect, correction of which was denied him, helps persuade him of the Lords’ treachery, a nice touch. The girl he loves is killed under bitter circumstances, but there is another who is waiting for his love. And Jeremy’s dream of life for all must be destroyed, but only temporarily, to free the galaxy from one man’s control.
Rating: ***½
The Dragonard series –
1 When the Star Kings Die (1967)
2 The Planet Wizard (1969)
3 Tonight We Steal the Stars (1969)
November 17th, 2022 at 11:15 pm
You don’t mean THE John Jakes, same author of Civil War romps like, “North and South”?
Well, shut my mouf.
You coulda knocked me over with the bullet that killed Billy Adams.
You coulda mailed my shoes COD to Esther, Wisconsin.
November 17th, 2022 at 11:20 pm
One and the same, Lazy. Before he became famous, Jakes was considered a second or third rate SF writer. Little did anyone know.
November 17th, 2022 at 11:38 pm
I haven’t been this stunned since I learned Ed McBain wrote one of my favorite feel-good childhood yarns
November 18th, 2022 at 7:24 am
You’re not giving Jakes enough credit, Steve. Besides being a second-rate or third rate SF writer, he was also a second or third rate mystery, fantasy, western, soft-core, and historical writer. (Although I did enjoy his Brak the Barbarian tales. shame on me.)
November 18th, 2022 at 8:26 am
You’re quite right, Jerry. Full credit where credit is due!
November 18th, 2022 at 12:19 pm
I liked the Brak the Barbarian stories I read when some of them were first reprinted in paperback (by Avon, as I recall) during the Howard boom in the Sixties. Tried to read some of the Brak novels later on and didn’t make it through them. However, when I first started reading his Kent Family books, I ripped through them as fast as I could check them out from the library. I’ve always felt that that series taught me how to write historical fiction/family sagas, something I did plenty of later on. When I tried to read Jakes’s later historical epics, though, I couldn’t make it through any of them. Too much a sense of “Been there, wrote that”. I used to have some of his early mystery novels featuring private eye Johnny Havoc (like Tokey Wedge, a tough little guy), but I don’t think I ever read any of them.
November 18th, 2022 at 12:29 pm
And Jakes apparently wrote 3 detective novels as “William Ard” after Ard’s untimely death. https://thrillingdetective.com/2020/05/17/lou-largo/
November 18th, 2022 at 10:35 pm
This and its sequel are my favorite Jakes SF efforts. If he wasn’t quite in the first class of genre writers he wrote some good Westerns, and I enjoyed his Johnny Havoc stories.
I never could get through Brak, but I loved MENTION MY NAME IN ATLANTIS the perfect send up of sword and sorcery.
That skill at multiple genres probably contributed to his success teaming with Lyle Kenyon Engel on his Kent Family Chronicles. I don’t know that his big books were any better written than his early work, but it brought him great success and he made the most of it, and his learned abilities from his early work showed in his skill at balancing multiple plots and keeping the pot boiling even in a blockbuster.
GOLD IN CALIFORNIA is a solid historical novel by anyone’s standard.