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Title: Book 1, but consider reading last
Review: First the preliminaries: this is THE classic space opera series, not full of cliches, but the wellspring of all space opera cliches. Horribly dated (or wonderfully so depending on your viewpoint) in its literary taste, social values, and science, it is a hoot nonetheless.As is sometimes the case in popular series, after the capstone book (Children of the Lens), the author went back to do a prequel to tie up some of the loose ends and answer some of the questions fans had, and that is this book. And, it is good read in its own right. However, the series arguably stands better in publication order (2,3,4,5,6,1) than in narrative order (1,2,3,4,5,6), because this book lets the cat out of the bag. The original fans followed along with the author's expanding vision of the series, from a straightforward but innovative space adventure to a teleological history of the universe.
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