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Sliding Scales is another Alan Dean Foster book about Pip and Flinx.
We were first introduced to Flinx in 1972 in a book with a very curious name:
The Tar-Aiym Krang. Somewhere, he had acquired a pet Alaspinian mini-dragon
(mini-drag for short) named Pip and the two of them managed to confound all of the adults
in the book.
Fast-forward about 25 years or so of Foster's Commonwealth time and Flinx is
no longer just a boy with a strange pet who confounds all of the adults. Now he
is a grown man -- a wanted fugitive -- with a lady love that needs saving. And
his life is complicated by his need to find the strange alien weapon he encountered
before: the Tar-Aiym Krang, now called the Tar-Aiym weapons platform.
Although Mr. Foster has written many novels about Flinx and Pip over the years,
this is one of the best. The revelations about the Commonwealth's enemy, the AAnn,
are very enlightening. The action seems well-paced. The character development is
up to Mr. Foster's unusually high standards. The indigenous species of the planet
Jast is, I think, without parallel in Science Fiction. And Mr. Foster does
know how to create a twisty plot. For a story that (apparently) does not advance the
over-all plot of the series of books, there certainly seems to be a lot going on.
I really wish I had read this one sooner!
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