His search for his birth mother complete, Flinx returns to his homeworld and adoptive parent, Mother Mastiff. He wants to visit with her, relax and learn whatever clues she may still remember that could lead him to his birth father. After the events of Orphan Star, Flinx has the wealth and wherewithal to make that search, but the information is frustratingly thin. His acquisition of the nonsense-spouting alien Abalamahalamatandra ("Ab") and of the enmity of the galactic assassin clan known as the Qwarm complicate things even while he pursues his slimmest lead yet. Which lead will take him into an arena that bodes catastrophe for three worlds, as well.
Matter is was the fourth Flinx book written although third in chronological order for the series at that time. It was also the 14th or 15th book Foster had written, including his extensive catalog of movie adaptations (The Dark Star, Star Wars, etc.) and his novelizing the Star Trek animated series episodes as well. It shows a much greater polish than the initial two books in the series but keeps Foster's dry and witty tone. Since the focus is on both Flinx's quest for his father and his hunt for a way to save three worlds menaced by a deadly stellar phenomena, there is less of the ecological exploration that Foster likes to do in creating the alien biomes of his novels. But the sense of conclusion, incomplete as it was, seemed to encourage Foster to help his first major series character to go out on top, and Matter remains one of his best books.
The Flinx series would get a 1983 prequel but start moving forward again in 1988. The nine subsequent adventures of Flinx and his mini-dragon flying snake Pip are quite a bit more scattered and unfocused. Although they would help Flinx learn as much of the truth about his origins as he could, provide a grand tour through the Humanx Commonwealth and are entertaining reads in themselves, they wind up feeling a lot like an extended and sometimes overstretched coda to The End of the Matter.
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Franks himself doesn't get any kindlier when he's the center of his own book. He lives by the code that people who say violence solves nothing simply haven't been violent enough. But now he's been framed for a deadly attack on MCB headquarters and shadowy government forces have reminded everyone involved that even though he hunts monsters, Franks is a monster himself, who needs taking down by any means necessary. Since Franks knows what's behind the frame-up and the conspiracy, that's going to be easier said than done.
Nemesis is the second book of the series to go outside our main viewpoint character, new and extremely talented MHI recruit Owen Pitt, and it's a good choice on Correia's part. The Monster Hunter books are fun and often funny mind candy, but the three books so far focusing on Pitt's story have been slices of the same pie and breaking them up is a series-saving move. Seeing Owen and company follow the same exact path they've already walked loses excitement quickly. Although the plot is still more or less the same -- small-scale brawl, conflict set-up, larger brawl, full-out battle -- using someone new gives a peek at a few different corners of the Monster Hunter universe. It also allows Correia to vary his fight scenes some, although they are what he does best and he sticks with his strengths whenever possible.
The series has also featured a slow build to a major monstrous crisis, and while Nemesis features the main MHI cast only as walk-ons, it builds into that as well. Correia has nowhere claimed that his Monster Hunter series is anything but a good-time smash and shoot romp, and he delivers exactly that in Nemesis, with enough extra flavor to keep a reader along for the next stop.
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Way opens with a resolution of sorts to the cliffhangers that closed Angel City, but the resolution itself leaves more questions for Harper and Taylor in their respective arenas. There's plenty yet to learn before the villains can be brought to battle, but events may not give them the time.
Like Angel City, Way lacks a first-person narrative from Marc Rochat, the Lausanne Cathedral bell-ringer whose point-of-view sections infused volume number one, The Watchers, with a real sense of magic. Steele also reduces some more of the cosmic elements of the earlier parts of the series to as much of a science-fiction premise as the urban fantasy he began with. Some of that is interesting, but it also helps bake the magic out of the story, and that dimension was one of The Watchers' most compelling aspects.
And where in the first two books Steele eschewed most of the "this is how things really happened and all traditional Christian teaching has been wrong" patter that makes so many religious-themed thrillers annoying, he drops a lecture doing exactly that into an otherwise mundane travel sequence. The final battle is a little confusing and requires a couple of page-flips backwards to re-set the scene now and then.
Steele's excellent style and vivid characters remain, though, although this climactic volume understandably leans more on Harper as its main protagonist and leaves Katherine Taylor in about the same place she started. "The Angelus Trilogy" winds up as a good set of reads, even if it doesn't really live up to some of the promise of the first volume.
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