Item - Rebel Spy

Rebel Spy is a solid entry in BaIS. It's notable for how you have a co-worker to track down the other half of a key to an ancient city on the planet Delbor. Long ago the Glorids hid knowledge there, giving one key to each rival civilization: the Choons and Ro-Zins. Your friend is Callisto, from The Star Crystal. You each wear a disguise to infiltrate a capital city and get the keys, to foil the rebel Interplanetary Spy Valeeta, an anthropomorphic spider, and her droid henchman Qubex. I had fun imagining how Callisto's adventure went. And hoping Qubex had a last name with Z in it.

However, it took me a while to shake off something not relevant to the plot: Callisto, from The Star Crystal, is drawn entirely differently, with a new artist. And I did not like the change. His eccentric squarish tough guy looks were just the right sort of weird, but in Rebel Spy he's sometimes round and blobby, as if he's trying to be a human, but that isn't really him, especially since in some cases it half looks like he's wearing lipstick. Now I don't need my characters macho. But it was such a huge difference!

And on the macho thing, what struck me on re-reading was how well your character was androgynized, not just in Rebel Spy but the whole series so the book would be welcoming for female readers too. In previous installments, you wore a space helmet or whatever which covered your eyes, mouth or both. In Star Crystal, your mask leaned a bit masculine. Here it's done effectively without hiding anything. I've knocked the details on Callisto, but the rest of the artwork is quite good. The picture of Callisto swinging on a vine (only seen in a mulligan path if you make the wrong choice) is priceless. He's not exactly skinny. So overall it's a good tradeoff.

The intrigue is neat, though the puzzles are a bit on the simple side for BaIS (simple pattern recognition, map reading, shape imposition,) with a lot of forgiveness. I did laugh at how Callisto bellyached if you missed the first one. It's simple enough, you kind of deserve the dressing down, to be honest.

However, RS is the first real "save the universe or else" entry in the series, which gets away from the whole conceit of finding something surgical to do and keeping a section of the universe clean. (Other spies take care of other sectors, you'd assume.) Of course, your failure could snowball into galactic calamity, with only one planet blowing up, but the danger to the universe is more immediate and explicit here. My young self wondered, in reflective moments, "If we need a lot of spies for missions with the universe at stake, isn't one going to screw up eventually?"

That said it's a well-paced race against time where you shrink and grow your spaceship, a cool bead chain-looking thing. Qubex is an effective annoying enforcer, and you even run up against Valeeta's convincingly scary pet ogar. Gaining the trust of the Choons is believable, too, and you also make friends with some triangular-headed things called Poddians. How you and Callisto help each other during the final stretch is interesting, too. It's sort of like you aiding the biodroid, but the teamwork is less violent.

One side bit about RS: I enjoyed imagining how Callisto got his half of the key from the Ro-Zins, and I was sure it'd be addressed in a later book. I was willing to wait for #31 if need be. But of course the series never got that high. I still enjoy speculating after I'm done reading. Not having the usual super tidy ending was a good change of pace.

More reviews by andrewschultz

As an example of the slowly-improving inter-series continuity, this book follows on directly from the last one, with you now being a Level 2 spy, and having a ship-mate you met in the previous book. This does mean that if you read this book first, major plot points from the previous book are ruined, as your companion here was one of the murder suspects in the previous book! In any event, the puzzles in this book are moderately interesting, although the villain has an uninteresting personality (while reminding me of Shelob the giant spider in her appearance).

One of the lesser entries in the series.

More reviews by Aussiesmurf

The basic content of this book is unexceptional, but there are a couple of things worth noting. First of all, this picks up right where the last book left off; the reader is now a level two spy working with Callisto. This book also marks the point where the basic appearance of the series changed somewhat with a new logo and slightly different cover layout.

More reviews by Demian