Second Stage Lensman - E.E 'Doc' Smith

This is the Forty-sixth in my one-book-at-a-time bookshelf.

The three book cycle that forms the core of the larger lensman series, continues in this work, dominated by Kimball Kinnison.

One of the traps that a writer can fall into is to create an internal arms race as the story escalates with larger and more catastrophic consequences and more powerful and evil villains and the plots can spiral out of control, losing credibility and leaving the writer no where to go and the reader jaded and disinterested. One of the defining features of the lensman series is that Smith manages an ever increasing escalation without ever losing control of the plot. Admirable.