Ben Bova wrote the Orion series to explore one big idea: what is our relationship to god or to the gods? Does humanity create the gods or do the gods create humanity? What if the relationship is circular and more messy than you think? Orion was created by the Creators, to fight their battles in their past. He's stronger than regular humans and has abilities that regular humanity does not. He's more than a man but less than a god. But with each mission that he's sent on, he becomes a little stronger, a little more capable, and a little closer to the Creators.In this novel, Orion is sent back to ancient Earth. Set, an alien who inspired the stories of the Egyptian god, is trying to wipe out all of humanity. Set wants to populate the earth with his own reptilian race and Orion is all that's standing between him and the elimination of the human race. The story ranges back and forth through time, allowing us to see both the dawn of humanity as well as the Cretaceous period.Ben Bova used this story to illustrate cosmology (Set's home planet is a red dwarf star, sitting where Jupiter sits in our solar system), paleontology (what was the Cretaceous period really like?), and biology / sociology (how would a race of intelligent lizards evolve and what would their society look like?). He succeeded, as the science was interesting without being dry and pedantic.I had reservations about the action side of this story, however. I know that Orion's growth and development was a big point of both this story and the overall series. I know that Orion needs to develop godlike powers, to achieve Bova's goals. I felt like Bova's goals were too important and the needs of the story were not important.Orion's powers developed at very convenient points in the story. Whenever he hit a roadblock or faced defeat, he would suddenly realize that he was capable of something new, something that would have have an immediate impact and benefit. It was too convenient and detracted from the realism of the story.I'll probably still read some of the other books in this series, to see the science that Bova puts into them. But I hope the other stories aren't as flawed as this one.
