Fliers of Antares (Dray Prescot, #8)

Dray Prescot #8

by Alan Burt Akers (Pseudonym), Kenneth Bulmer

The eighth book of the Dray Prescot series. Dray Prescot, the Earthman who had been brought across interstellar space as the tool of the mysterious Star Lords, confronted his most baffling task while he was a hunted and harried wanderer of the continent of Havilfar. That task was to discover the means by which the aircraft of that continent's most advanced civilization operated. Prescot is no scientist, but fulfill his task he must or he would never return to the princess and homeland he had won. So, for Dray Prescot there was but one course -- with a whole continent against him, with time itself conspiring to balk him, the secrets of an unknown science must be made his...

Genres: Fantasy, Sword and Planet, Science Fiction, Fiction, Science Fiction Fantasy, Pulp

Kindle Edition

First published April 1, 1975

About the author

Pseudonym for Kenneth Bulmer

Reviews

[Karl · Rating 4 out of 5]

DAW Collectors #145

Cover Artist: Jack Gaughan

Name: Bulmer, Henry Kenneth, Birthplace: London, England, UK, (14 January 1921 - 16 December 2005)

Alternate Names: Alan Burt Akers, Frank Brandon, H. Ken Bulmer, H. K. Bulmer, Ken Bulmer, H. Kenneth Bulmer, Henry K. Bulmer, Rupert Clinton, Ernest Corley, Arthur Frazier, Peter Green, Adam Hardy, Kenneth Johns, Philip Kent, Neil Langholm, Karl Maras, Manning Norvil, Dray Prescot, Andrew Quiller, Nelson Sherwood, Richard Silver, H. Philip Stratford, Philip Stratford, H. Phillip Stratford, Tully Zetford.

The eighth book of the Dray Prescot series, in the epic fifty-two book saga of Dray Prescot of Earth and of Kregen .

Dray Prescot was a hunted and harried wanderer of the continent of Havilfar. His task? To discover the means by which the aircraft of that continent's most advanced civilization operated.

[Richard · Rating 5 out of 5]

I picked this up for our Group Read Sword & Planet. Another great installment in the series. The Star Lords will have their way and poor Dray Prescot is their tool.

I couldn't help but be reminded of the television series Quantum Leap. Every time the Star Lords place Prescot he is defenseless with absolutely no clue what his objective is. The biggest differences are that Dray remains himself unlike Sam Beckett and Dray always appears naked.

Fliers of Antares brings Dray closer to discovering the secrets of manufacturing reliable air ships.
Recommended!

[Little Timmy · Rating 3 out of 5]

If you are a John Carter of Mars fan or enjoy the "displaced person on another world" then this series is for you. The books run in long story arcs so you can read just a few to complete a plot line or go for the whole set. Akers creates a very complex world for the hero to adventure in. Recommended

[Art the Turtle of Amazing Girth · Rating 2 out of 5]

2.5

Far too many words that made no sense, the author is clearly trying way too hard to create his own Tolkien-esque world, and it falls flat for a reader like me

[Charles · Rating 5 out of 5]

Another excellent one. Akers (aka Ken Bulmer) had an outstanding imagination. He may have followed in ERB's footsteps with this series but he enlarged the prints and left some intersting tracks of his own.

[Derek · Rating 2 out of 5]

There comes a saturation point where the author-narrator keeps throwing in-setting words at you.
Unless you're very in-tune with all of it, it all washes over you and becomes noise. After a long spell of not reading the Dray Prescot stories and skipping ahead a bit, it's safe to say that I'm in that window.

Prescot again is being jerked around by inscrutable forces and this imposes a typical Burroughs episodic adventure with disjoint elements, only instead of Our Hero traveling over unknown lands and being dumped by circumstance into weird situations, here the inscrutable forces whisk Prescot through time and space for purposes he guesses at and a larger plan that he speculates about. He has no real agency or sense of mission.

(You would, incidentally, think that Time Space Superpowers could organize a commando raid, or at least arrange for a detailed mission statement.)

The upshot is a game that the author starts in earlier books and becomes ridiculous here: the reader can't invest in any event because it may become irrelevant due to act of Time Space Superpower or the 'loss' of some section of Prescot's narrative.

[Joseph · Rating 5 out of 5]

Dray finds himself once again stranded on the beach of a land with which he knows nothing about, where only moments ago he was sailing swiftly through the night sky's with his friends and his sweat Delia, Delia of the Blue Mountains! Immediately, per usual, Dray is shackled and sold into slavery to do another Apim's bidding until he either kills everyone, or grows bored and does something about it. For the next 11 years Dray grows and Army, is a Slave, becomes a King and takes part in the murder of a Kovneva. An interesting and key factor to this volume is how Dray is forced to be a miner in the Heavenly Mines. To dig and produce a relatively bland and boring looking material, yet very important to the Hamalese and their flying machine.

In this book we are introduced to the propulsion science behind the flyers, well sort of, and it appears that all the mystery and science lies simply in a box of dirt, or so Ackers would have us believe! In Book 9, Bladesman of Antares I have a dirty suspicion that we will finally find out what all that materiel Dray was digging out of the Heavenly Mines is all about, and how that ties in together with the levitating properties of the Fliers.

[Mike S · Rating 4 out of 5]

As always, a rollicking good read.