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Amazon.com Review

First, humanity establishes ties with intelligent, extraterrestrial bugs. Some 20 years later, humanity makes first contact with intelligent, extraterrestrial babes. Or so goes the chronology in Alan Dean Foster's Humanx Commonwealth, as detailed in the second book of the Founding of the Commonwealth prequel trilogy. Following up on Phylogenesis, Dirge fleshes out the foundation for the universe that's home to the ever-popular Pip and Flinx, among other Foster favorites. And while it's not exactly Heinlein, Dirge provides essential background for fans of all the Humanx books in typical action-packed Foster style.

The space babes in question call themselves the Pitar, and after somewhat stunted relations with the insectoid Thranx (first contacted in Nor Crystal Tears), humanity falls all over itself fawning over this "drop-dead, overpoweringly, stunningly gorgeous"--if strangely reticent--new race. But everything isn't what it seems, of course, or there wouldn't be much of a story here. Not to give anything away, but even the most unobservant reader will soon realize that something's suspicious about these alluring aliens--especially when 600,000 colonists on the otherwise boring outpost of Treetrunk are swiftly, brutally, and mysteriously exterminated. --Paul Hughes

From Publishers Weekly

Derivative and predictable, this second novel in Foster's Founding of the Commonwealth series reinforces the lesson that looks can be deceiving. When Alwyn Mallory explores the new world of Argus V, he inadvertently becomes part of the first contact team to meet the alien Pitar. Unlike the unpleasantly buglike alien thranx, the Pitar are "drop-dead, overpoweringly, stunningly, gorgeous." Relations with the friendly but disliked thranx slow to a crawl as humanity overwhelmingly embraces the Pitar. Their telegenic appearances are so compelling that the media scarcely notices when the thranx are attacked by terrorists in a protected diplomatic enclave on Earth. Possibly the only good thing to come out of the slaughter is the founding of a joint religion by two clerics, one human and one thranx. As years pass, and the Pitar continue to refuse access to their homeworld, the media spin explains that they are "shy" and refuses to believe they could have anything to hide. Meanwhile, humanity is happily expanding through the galaxy and colonizing Argus V--until disaster strikes and all 600,000 colonists are hideously slaughtered by an unknown force. When Mallory is discovered, crazed and near death, hiding on one of the Argus's moons, he is the only hope humankind has for ascertaining just who the villainous, slaughtering aliens really are. Although Foster implies that interesting things are going to happen with human-thranx religious philosophies, that doesn't happen in this novel. Instead we get a vision of humanity as a race unable to see beyond the reflection of surface beauty and incapable of restraining itself from its basest instincts when that enhanced mirror is shattered. (June)

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