Blackcollar

I'm afraid it will be another few minutes--one of the city's computers broke down yesterday and the other two are under a heavy load.

Humanity had settled several planets when they first encountered these aliens. In the beginning they seemed ok, then war broke out and--after decades of space war--humanity lost and the aliens took over by brainwashing humanity's leadership. But there's a resistance! Some people on Earth are still trying to get back at the aliens. They are sending Caine--the protagonist!--to another planet to retrieve secret information about something that might possibly give them an edge against the aliens. Also there used to be a bunch of high-tech ninja warriors called Blackcollars who were the elites in the fight against the aliens and the protagonist is also supposed to figure out if there still are any left on that other planet.

The customs check was little more than a formality. Besides his clothing, Caine had brought only a pocket videorecorder, a few spare cassettes, and the pills he'd been given at the New Geneva 'port. Everything was quickly cleared, and minutes later Caine and Galway were riding in the back seat of a Security patrol car toward the city of Capstone. Ragusin, who seemed to be the strong silent type, was driving.

This was written in the early-ish 80s (1983) and that just shows too much. When a "pocket video recorder with cassettes" is the high-tech device... I am just having trouble seeing this as anything but dated and dusty.

Also, I totally get the 80s fascination with all things Japanese but decades later high-tech ninjas just aren't interesting enough to carry a whole world. Back then the whole setup with the aliens and their conditioning of the human leadership might have connected to some political issue of the day but I just don't see that.

The plot seems to take a few unexpected turns at the start just to swing back to straight-forward very quickly when it turns out the old Blackcollars anticipated Galway's every move and... they really only faked their senility.

For me the biggest put-off is the language. Jolting, unsubtle, too often telling... genre has evolved a few levels since then.

Galway gave a smile that was well on its way to becoming a simper, and that smile told Caine more than anything the prefect could have said. It was not the kind of smile given by a Security head to a suspected rebel, but rather the kind given by a rank-conscious politician to an official whose influence was likely greater than his own. Cain's cover was still intact.

This shows once again that if the worldbuilding isn't interesting and I don't connect with the characters, the plot doesn't matter. Also I don't think I have seen a named female character that said more than a single sentence. The language is just the final straw... I'll keep it at 2 stars because this book just bored me, it didn't actually make me mad for wasting my time.