I Read Books: Children of the Lens

Children of the Lens is the sixth Lensman novel. We skip twenty something years from Second Stage Lensman. Clarissa and Kimball Kinnison have five children – one male, two sets of female twins – and their son Chris graduates as a lensman just in time for both galaxies to be overrun by madness, political strife crime and general wackiness.

The children are the end product of the Arisian breeding program, with minds and powers beyond comprehension etc. Each of them goes through stressful situations and final training, often in conjunction with one of the five second stage lensmen – Kim, Clarissa, Worzel, Tregonsee and Nadreck. It becomes more of an ensemble piece than the previous novels, with each character looking for clues to the enemy in their own way. Kim’s story is sort of a greatest hits – he fights, goes undercover, creates a super weapon. The others are a little more interesting as we see their differing methods in more detail.

Despite the best efforts of Smith he doesn’t have another notch to go with mindbending strangeness and scale. His previous novels have hit maximum and used up most of his best tricks and this final instalment seems to move through the ordained path to the final conclusion.

Having said that there’s a frame story making the last page a pretty good twist.

Read This: For a conclusion to the series if you’ve read and enjoyed the previous 5 books. Maybe if you haven’t enjoyed but feel the need to finish anyway?
Don’t Read This: If bombastic space opera is not your thing.
Just One More Thing: There is one more Smith Lensman novel, a spin-off and I will get to it.

My previous reviews in this series:
Triplanetary
First Lensman
Galactic Patrol
Grey Lensman
Second Stage Lensman