Now Mike Resnick is one of my favourite authors, and he is one of the authors I turn to when I need to recharge the reading batteries. He has one the simplest to read styles of current sf authors. His stories don't rely on the reader having detailed scientific knowledge, and although his plots are set against galaxy-wide vistas with the actions spreading across many worlds they do not feel complicated.

He populates these tales with larger than life characters and a mood more reminiscent of Boys-Own Adventure style Wild West tales than of hard sf. And this book being various reminiscences of the people involved with the initial opening up of a new planet, that Wild West Frontier feeling is most definitely in evidence here.

But there's more to this book then just a Wild West tale with laser guns. The other main part of this is a tale of exploitation and plundering of resources, and in that it has the colonisation of Africa as its influence.

The action here centres on Peponi, a jungle planet, or rather a planet that used to be a jungle planet. Matthew Breen is a journalist who decides to uncover the history of mankind's history and effect on Peponi. In this quest he seeks out big-game hunters and frontier farmers, and these are the usual batch of extravagant characters you will find in most Resnick books.

And much to Breen's benefit, these characters are also extremely gifted self-promoters who are only too willing to regale him with the tales he needs to compile his book.

But we don't just get to meet the human beings of this story. As usual Resnick populates this world with a sentient species, one which is exploited and oppressed in the way the African population were at the hands of European colonials in the 1800's. So Breen also encounters Buko Pepon, the first leader of the whole of the native race, and the being responsible for ending the human rule.

Now this is not Resnick's finest hour in my opinion (despite the comments I've heard about it elsewhere) but it is solid, very enjoyable sf.