In full transparency, these opinions are based on my reading of the first of the Deathworld stories, and more cursory glances at the second and third. That, in and of its self, should be some indicator as to what I think about them. At the center of them all is Jason dinAlt a struggling psyonic gambler, whose boredom and hubris land him on the planet Pyrrus, where the environment, the flora, and the fauna are in constant, hellish combat with the dwindling human settlement. This constant state of war has a produced a society that values stoic strength, hard-nose stubbornness, and combat ability above all else. Jason is alone in his skepticism and curiosity about the origin of this war and the mysterious "grubbers", a people who can somehow live outside in the wilds of the planet.
At first my reading experience was surprisingly pretty enjoyable. Deathworld is really smartly self conscious of what it is, cuts all of the fluff out and delivers by going over the top with its central premise, which while pulpy is fun in a youthful sort of way. Jason is also surprisingly incompetent for a leading male character at this time period. He struggles to survive on Pyruss, living by the grace of those around him. Yet he's also the only character able of any complex thought, the only one able to piece the puzzle together after hundreds of years. So, definitely mixed on the character front.
If I were being charitable, I would say that Deathworld does have some standout thematic work. War begetting war, the cycle of violence, humans as the aggressor, humans in the wrong. But, somehow, these themes feel inadvertent, since the rest of the book is written like a pulp adventure flick. It's really obvious that this was a serialized work that was only later collected together. The writing is sometimes surprisingly dark for the magazines, but not so much as to be a defining feature.
After struggling to finish the first Deathworld story, I decided to poke my nose into the sequels to see if the format was changed significantly enough to merit further exploration. Sadly, no. While the setting may change, these stories are really more of the same with lower quality prose work.
Decisively not as impressive as Harrison's main attraction Make Room! Make Room!, but might be worth it if you're interested in campy and self aware action drama with all of the trappings of 1960's SF. Had Harrison limited himself to the one foray with Jason and Pyrrus I might've felt more positively about the whole thing, but the sequels seemed more or less unnecessary to begin with.
BigEnk
