The Wunder War

Hal Colebatch

2003

On the face of it, this is an oldish book to consider for a Book of the Month - the copy I own is an original edition hardback. However, I'm rereading many of my books (and mostly enjoying the process).

This is book 10 in the sequence of stories about the Man-Kzin Wars and like the rest is a series of short stories. Unlike most of the books in the series, this book deals with a consistent set of stories apparently written with this collection in mind. The Kzin are a race of felinod beings who were originally a bunch of barbarians stuck in a civilisation equivalent to our bronze age before they were discovered by the Jokoti, a species that traded through the galaxy and thought that the Kzin would make good bodyguards. They applied a bit of genetic engineering to the Kzin and after a brief stint as the Jokoti's guards, the Kzin rebelled, making their former masters their first slaves.

Now, hundreds of years later, the Kzin are preparing their conquest of a newly discovered species. The monkeys of Sol and Centauri were, horrifying thought, omnivores and apparently peaceful, and depressingly slow - easy meat for the carnivorous meat-eating hunters from Kzin. But despite ARM's best efforts Mankind hadn't quite forgotten how to fight.

Too late for the Wunderlanders of Centauri, though - despite a desparate defence they lost their system to the invading rat-cats and this book takes us through the Invasion, Occupation and Post-Occupation ramifications of this brutal first encounter between the two most violent species in Known Space. A final story is set far in the future where Mankind and Kzin are learning to live together.

This book does not cover all the stories dealing with the Occupation - Pournelle and Stirling's 'The Children's Hour' is referenced here and there is a story of Colebatch's, 'Windows of the Soul' set on Post Occupation Tiamat out in Centauri's asteroid belt which is available as a standalone story from Baen's Free Library.

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