This is a novel of bragging, pure and simple. The Outpost in question is a bar, a place where the larger than life characters that frequent Mike Resnick's books, meet up for a drink and to swap tales.

And that just what they do in this novel – tell tall-tales. But given the author's knack of creating characters of legendary proportion this is a lot better than it might sound.

This bar is temporarily home to a great cast of typical Resnick folk, all with names that could come straight from a futuristic version of America's West. We meet Catastrophe Baker, Three-Gun Max, Sinderella, Bet-a-World O'Grady, Gravedigger Gaines, the Cyborg de Milo, the Reverend Billy Karma and Hurricane Smith (amongst others). These are people that outside this bar might well find them on opposing sides, made up as they are of bounty hunters, vigilantes, gamblers, preachers and criminals. Inside the bar though they meet on neutral ground and all can interact friendly terms. And these are people who have experienced many unusual things and are also determined to help spread their own legend.

But in the background to this bout of story telling there is a war going on, and the fighting is getting closer. This leads us into the second part of the book, when the war outside gets too close, and the invading aliens start threatening the world where the Outpost is located, these heroes and warriors decide they should get involved and save the bar.

And so they leave the bar and head off towards their encounters with the alien forces. So the second part of this book tells of these encounters and how these heroes can affect the conflict.

Once the fighting is over the surviving characters return to the bar and resume their drinking, and of course their tale telling – regaling each other regarding their recent action battling against the alien invaders, all spun of course to make their legend greater.

This is pure Mike Resnick, wonderfully easy to read writing style, over the top characters and fast action. And typically for the author the action is more hinted at than described, there is no graphic depiction of gore, despite the occasional high death count. Also when the content gets a little adult orientated it is again merely suggested than portrayed, you will not find pages and pages of sex in Resnick books.

This is fast action, if you want to have a lot of science content in your science fiction then this is probably not your thing, but for thrills and sheer entertainment Resnick delivers time after time.

I find this author's style so comfortable to read. The only reason I actually picked up this book at the time I did was I was feeling ill, and concentrating on reading was not something I was wanting to do. This book was just what the doctor might have ordered, it took my mind of some of the worse symptoms and helped keep me smiling through the discomfort.