The adventures of Richard Seaton, Martin Crane (again, not the guy from Frasier), Dorothy Seaton, Margaret Crane, and a handful of alien friends continue!
In this book, DuQuesne takes a very back-seat role. He goes on a quest to find something to take out Seaton once and for all, and has not a whole lot to do in this book.
Our four heroes are planning to leave Earth to stay safe from the expected attack by DuQuesne, and just as they're about to leave, old friends Dunark and Sitar from Osnome arrive on Earth, and thus begins a great adventure that ends up discovering some new alien races, some friendly and some very unfriendly.
Seaton and crew solve some big problems and fight some crazy battles! And, of course, in standard Doc Smith form, there's a bunch of new tech development to be had.
It's a fun book in the typical Doc Smith mold, with tons of dialogue and slang, big but simple battles with massive energy beams and fields, and rather lackluster tech upgrades.
A large chunk of the second half of the book is largely a giant montage of devising new tech with some fun moments. If you like that sort of thing, you won't mind it, but if you find that sort of thing infuriating, you may want to watch out.
We get some fun new tech, like the educator from the last book with new functions, matter-to-energy conversion of uranium, higher-order projectors and detectors leading to faster-than-light communications, a new "zone of force" with "pencils" everywhere, a cool look at automation, and finally a name for metal "X:" Rovolon!
We get some fun references to real science, too, like nitrogen iodide, platinum sponge (yes, it's a real thing), Millikan cosmic rays, neutronium, and calculations using the motion and speed and acceleration of Earth to answer a real question.
Another little bit that made me happy was when one of the characters talked about the "utter economic waste of continual war."
It's very typical Doc Smith, only moreso! Give it a read here if you want: https://archive.org/details/isbn_0425065960
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