I wish the last chapter had more detail. The ending seem rushed. ( )

I'd never heard of Tubb, but I got 5 of his books in a boxlot of DAW pbs that I picked up, oh, a few years ago now. Apparently, he was reasonably well-known (more so in England) for this series, 'Dumarest' which numbers 32(!) books. 'Jondelle' is #10, but they're all stand-alone stories.
Based on reading this one, it's pulpy adventure space-fantasy, but really quite a lot better than I expected. (Esp. considering the embarassingly awful covers!) The hero, Earl Dumarest, is typical hero material - a hard, worldwise, intelligent man, battle-scarred yet attractive, reluctant to resort to violence but fully capable of killing... he ran away from his home planet, Earth, when just a boy, stowing away on a spaceship, and now has come to parts of the galaxy where Earth is no more than a faint legend. For reasons unspecified, he desperately wants to find his home... but in failing to do so, has quite a lot of adventures.
In Jondelle, the adventure is that he interferes in the kidnapping of a boy. He is taken in by the thankful child's mother, a doctor. But crazed forces seem bent on stealing the boy, and Dumarest, bound by his word of honor, goes on a quest to rescue the child and hunt down his kidnappers - a quest which leads him to a realm where yet another voluptuously beautiful doctor-woman awaits...
fun, quick read. ( )

For my money, the Dumarest Saga of E.C. Tubb ranks up there as one of the best science fiction series written in English.

Set in the far distant future, when mankind has spread across the galaxy, they feature the inimitable Earl Dumarest, a man with lightning fast reflexes who is forever trying to find the home world he fled as a child and has long since lost: Earth.

The galaxy he travels through is a hard, deadly place for a man with no affiliations and little money. Tubb pulls no punches in his depictions of the many harsh, hellish worlds and people whom Dumarest encounters, and invariably survives, if only just, during his quest.

Perhaps one of the best things about this series (which consists of some 32 books) is that each book is short, with no unnecessary padding; they're generally between 150 and 190 pages long. So they're a reasonably quick read, too.

I recommend reading all books in the series, preferably in the intended order. If you can, though, avoid the Arrow Books editions - the cover illustrations are, to put it simply, the pits. The artists clearly had never read the books, or if they did, didn't bother to note down a lot of details about the scenes they chose to portray in these illustrations, e.g. clothing, weaponry, etc. Shame on Arrow Books for using such second-class amateurs.

Did I mention? Unlike the seemingly interminable Wheel of Time series of Robert Jordan, or the never-ending Chronicles of Thomas Covenant by Stephen Donaldson - both of which I find way too verbose, i.e. a lot of words pass by without very much happening - the Dumarest Saga has an actual ending - in volume 32, The Return, Dumarest finds his way home! ( )