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Okay, I have some problems with the basic premises here. Technology for scanning your personality, your soul, and imprinting it on a disposable clay-like… ‘golem’ who is effectively a mental duplicate of you, is so cheap that sending it out to do a classic 9-to-5 job for you will earn noticeably more than the cost of the ‘ditto’. This is complicated by the fact that these dittoes are good for about a day, so doing the above job means a new ditto every day.

All this has profound social implications, which are already in the novel’s past: apparently most of the population is effectively out of work; out-competed by people who can do a few things well enough to be the ‘specialist’ in various mundane tasks and send as many dittoes out as needed to get it all done. There’s still localism, as you can’t do any of this by remote, and in some places they hire a bunch of different people, and in some all the same person. This is discussed some, but not really seen, as the characters involved are all in the realm of the Gainfully Employed.

So, the world building is really what happens to society after this happens, and short of the fact that these golems would have to be impossibly cheap, works well. Meanwhile, the actual plot follows the adventures of Albert Morris, a private eye, over about a four-day period. All the story is told through his viewpoint, or his various dittos’, and uses the device that he habitually records notes of everything as he goes, and everything is pulled from there, or from his own memories. If something happens that those can’t be recovered, then that viewpoint isn’t there.

A hidden question that the book slowly goes into the quality of these duplicates. The bodies range from very cheap and basic, to expensive, with all five senses, better brains, and even being specialized in concentration and the like. But… what if there’s some parts of your personality that just don’t make it over, or only do so sometimes? Albert actually produces very good dittoes, which helps with his work, and so this wrinkle doesn’t show up at first, but becomes gradually more important later.

As a mystery… well, I’m not as much of an expert, but I’d call it good, as things hang together well, and all the twists make sense. The action gets fairly confused during the second half, and especially so at the climax, where there’s a lot going on at once, presented through three different viewpoints (…and things take a turn for the strange). I had stopped paying as much attention to Brin after a couple books didn’t impress me a lot, but this one’s action has me back to wanting to catch up with his writing.

Warlord’s World is decidedly pulp. The Interstellar Patrol is a service in the Federation of Humanity with excellent ships and technology, and a fair amount of latitude in powers (one wonders just what the organization of the Federation is, but this is obviously out on the outskirts or frontiers).

The first section of the book starts the action immediately when Vaughan Roberts senses an appeal for help from a beautiful woman (who of course turns out to be a princess), and rescues here through quick reflexes and bluff. He swears her in as a candidate member of the Patrol—which of course entitles her to the protection of the Patrol. And then the novel does not go anywhere you might expect from that, and while an important act for the plot in a couple of places, it doesn’t really come up again until the denouement.

The middle section is interesting in it’s own right, as Roberts goes on an ‘inside job’, where his consciousness is transferred into the princess’ brother, and they’re combined competences allow the defeat of a wide variety of dastardly plots. It’s actually well done, but not what you expect after the first few chapters. The ending section leaves that behind, with both protagonists getting screen time, and finally setting things to rights.

One of Anvil’s strengths is he does very well with action and derring-do, and this novel has lots of that. It’s a light, fun, uncomplicated book in the best pulp tradition, and keeps a fast pace throughout, with a couple pauses to transition from one overall section to another. The ending section gets a bit overdone, with more complications and curves thrown at it that it needed, but it still doesn’t bog down.

Starstrike wants to be a simple book. Aliens show up on Earth, and because we’re so much more experienced with war than anyone else, recruit a team of the best soldiers we have to offer to change the balance of power in the galaxy.

But this isn’t pulp, and it isn’t action movie fodder. Though it does try for technothriller in a few places.

Published in 1990, and set a few years after that, there’s some interesting twists on where things have gone, though the Soviet Union is still there, if heavily eroded in this timeline. At any rate, there’s actually a good amount of attention drawn to the reactions of the US and USSR to an alien showing he can shut down all nuclear forces and communications. Attention is paid to the logical consequences.

And… while logical, and actually needed for the novel, it does drag out a bit. Eventually the action gets pried off of Earth, and the main backbone of the novel is the flight out, training, really getting to know a few main characters, and the tension of figuring out how far anyone can trust this alien’s motives, and what can be done about it. The ‘action’ is later, and in many ways not the focus (which is a benefit, just don’t think that’s what you’re getting going in).

It definitely suffers from ‘I’m going not show important pieces of information so you can be surprised later’ a couple of times. It’s a good book overall, with good work on various aliens and technology, but parts feel forced, and the ending kind of rushed.