Retief and the Rascals

 

By Keith Laumer

Welcome to planet Bloor. Where everyone is on the take and no one does an honest day's work and every fellow is out to cut the other fellow's throat. How is a self-respecting Terran diplomat supposed to cope and bring enlightenment and succor to the distressed natives? 

Maybe Magnan, accomplished, senior diplomat, is able to handle the shifting and unstable alliances that is normal everyday life on Bloor. But for Retief, his assistant, hands off isn't his style. He wades in, both fists flying, and restores order, brief though it may be, as chaos quickly resumes as soon as his back is turned. 

It is a hopeless mess, not only because of the unstable and quarrelsome locals, but even the diplomatic party from Terra is on the take and, of course, the greedy, treacherous Groaci are present too, looking to fill their pockets with whatever they can get their tentacles on. But Retief is no dummy and he knows how to deal with what is basically the lost cause of planet Bloor.

This has to be one of the most boring Retief stories I have ever read. New characters pop in and out of the story, about a hundred characters, most of whom make brief appearances and then are gone. There are four main jokes in the story, puns based on the locals' names; the facial expressions schtick, how everyone is on the take and how everyone, Terrans, locals, Groaci, and other assorted aliens are ready to start a brawl over the most trifling occurrences. The last half of the book is centered around the on-again, off-again battles at the spaceport, which was just mind-numbingly boring. I skipped so many pages, I couldn't be bothered to care about who was fighting who.  The title character, Retief, who is usually the hero, is quite unheroic in this story and spends more time beating on people than I can recall him ever doing in any of the other Retief stories I have read. 

At one point, I began to think Laumer was in the middle of some kind of mental breakdown when he wrote this. But when I got to the end, I started to think maybe it was all quite deliberate and that he was making a rather serious point. Even so, it didn't make it worth wading through all the fights and battle scenes.