Jack's Reviews > Genesis

I started my Robotech love affair when I was roughly 10 or so, when it used to be a syndicated cartoon on a local channel in California. Having been weaned on the ultra "feel good" cartoons of the day (GI Joe, He-Man, and even Voltron), Robotech was definitely a sobering experience for my young mind. Characters actually fell in, and out, of love, personalities evolved over the course of the show, mistakes were made by smart people...and some people actually died! From that moment on, the standard after-school fare just didn't hold the same appeal. And I can probably admit to having a huge crush on Lisa Hayes...but that's besides the point...

So a few years later, as I am starting to really read books regularly and of my own volition, out come the Robotech novelizations based on the cartoon series. No, they weren't Hemingway, Kerouac, Heinlein or Asimov. But they were simple stories set on a grand stage, and told with obvious affection for the source material. The writing is better than you'd find in "kids" books of that time, and the story crossed generations and touched on themes that most parents, wrongly, did not think their children were ready to handle. There was literally nothing else like it in print at the time.

I can honestly say that I wore out several of my paperbacks from reading them over and over and taking them with me on family trips. The story and characters were the things I kept returning to. So does my nostalgia affect my rating of the book, and the remaining books in the series? Yep, sure does. They are an integral part of my youth, and will always be held in high regard. But, Robotech is also just a plain old fun space opera of epic proportions as well. Definitely check it out for a good chunk of 80's and 90's sci-fi love.