So Much Going On--Maybe Too Much! Children of the Lens Review!

Well, we've finally reached the end of this very fun series, and finally we get to see how the Lens works across generations. Children of the Lens is now the story of Kimball Kinnison, Clarissa, and his five kids, all of whom have seemingly inherited Lens powers, and to a greater degree than anyone seems to realize.

Kim's oldest, Christopher, has just completed his training as a Gray Lensman.

The four younger children are two pairs of twins, all girls: Kathryn, Karen, Camilla, and Constance.

The five are usually referred to as Kit, Kat, Kay, Cam, and Con. Talk about a penchant for alliteration!

The structure of this book is another huge adventure, fighting against the forces of Eddore, this time much more out in the open. Each of Kim's daughters identifies closely with one of the four Second Stage Lensmen from the previous book: Kat with Kim, both having strong, forceful drive and being very straightforward characters; Kay with Nadreck, both yieldless, exhibiting extremely powerful defensive tendencies; Cam with Tregonsee, both having amazing powers of perception and calculation; and Con with Worsel, both using powers of hallucination and illusion against their enemies, and having sharp killer instincts and powerful abilities to attack.

At the start of this book, the Galactic Patrol is observing whole planetary societies collapsing one after another--this phenomenon drives the main story, as the Lensmen try to figure out what's happening and prevent the collapse from spreading. We find a variety of other new dangers, such as an insanity-inducing "Hell Hole in Space." We get more disguises and switcharoos from Kim, more scheming from Eddore, and a lot more space swashbuckling action!

There are some fun new ideas in this book, like the appearance of Black Lensmen and more playing around with non-Euclidean space ideas. We see more hyper-spatial tube trickery, and learn the final, most powerful form of Lensman powers: The Unit! We even get a nice little twist at the end that I won't spoil.

We get a bit less of Smith's slang in this book, as well as a few self-referential and self-deprecating pokes at sci-fi and space opera.

On the downside, the tone is very hurried--there is a lot going on but the attention to detail suffers (and, to be honest, detail has never been Smith's strongest point, so it's even worse than usual!). We now have multiple perspectives for our PoV, and although it's interesting to see things from alternative views, Smith doesn't take the time to dive deeply into any of them.

There are lots of "repeats" and "returns" in this book too... it gets a little overwhelming at times, especially with the frantic pace.

All in all, it's a decent conclusion to the Lensman series, but it also suffers a bit from what you might call "end of season syndrome." If you've gotten this far, you won't want to miss the conclusion, but I think I prefer Gray Lensman over this book, and probably Second Stage Lensmen, too.

Still, it was a fun read and I finally got to see something resembling my original perception of the series, based only on my knowledge that it was made into a Japanese anime. I won't spoil that, either, but you can get a hint from my earlier reviews!