Can't even begin to tell you how good and important this series of books were for me. All I can say is READ THIS SERIES!

This novel came very close to not getting the forth star. It's a good idea and has "some" good action. Unfortunately it bogs down badly for about a third of the book. I'd say it comes in on the "lower edge" of the four star rating (again we can't give 3.5 so I have to compromise. Just life.)I put this on my Science Fiction shelf, yet I know some will probably take certain umbrage at that. Maybe I should establish a "pulp science fiction" shelf???? Oh well, it's popular science fiction for you wh...

I love this book; it is one of my all time favorites. I have read it numerous times.Emile was a soldier for the confederacy until he realized that this massive intergalactic governmental system was brutal and corrupt to the core. But what can one man do against such a massive system? He starts a movement on the planet Greaves to fight for freedom and inspire revolution in the rest of the galaxy.Btw, this ends in such a way that you will want to have the other 2 of the series on hand when you fin...

He's good at everything. Kadhadji is part of the military called the Confed. But after taking part in the slaughter of innocent civilians, Kadhadji decides the Confed needs to be destroyed. He has a vision during the slaughter and deserts the military and wanders around in a euphoric daze of "knowing what is right"..or something like that. Soon, he meets a wise man from a religious order who teaches Kadhadji: Somito marshall arts. He also teaches Kadhadji how to mix drinks, soporifics and chem s...

This one started out OK but got really bogged down in the flashbacks. Overall it was a bit too cheesy for me.

4.5 to 5.0 stars. One of those rare "quick read" books that knows exactly what it is and doesn't try to be anything different. An excellent, enjoyable read with a great main character and a plot that moves along and is never boring.

There is soo much I could say about this book, however I will pare it down. Steve Perry is one of my favorite sci-fi authors (next to Asimov, Heinlein, and Cole and Bunch) due to his pacing, descriptive action scenes and use of Zen Buddhism ideas in his novels. The Man Who Never Missed is the first of (in my opinion) his best series, 'The Matador Trilogy'. It is the story of a man who sees that his life path is wrong, and sets off to find his true calling (which is to bring down a corrupt govern...

This is exactly the kind of book I secretly wish I had written as my first novel. It's that type of future scifi about a very clever man who gets one over on the government/immoral wealthy class. Sort of like Harry Harrison's Stainless Steel Rat or almost any heist movie, you see every step of an intricate plan implemented. It's also a very cool in that the main character has a spiritual epiphany and learns at the feet of a wise zen master/martial artist, which I think we all wish we had done in...

The original premise of this book was awesome (the opening chapters hooked me big time). And the world was amazingly well-thought out and elaborate. But the female characters were 2 dimensional, boring, and incompletely filled out. The author routinely reverted to cliche and chauvinism as plot points (a race of albino sex addicts? Really?), ruining what would otherwise have been a pretty cool ride. I'm tempted to read the rest of Perry's books, which promise to fill out some of the lame-duck fem...

The Man Who Never Missed is a 4 Star bowl of hot, buttered popcorn at the Saturday afternoon matinee. Just perfect. This Scifi adventure, written in the mid-80’s, still holds up well. It is a cross between Kung Fu the TV show and the Sten novels. In this case, “Kwai Chang Caine” is now Emile Khadaji, a soldier who deserts in the middle of a bloody massacre. Khadaji is on a mission to fight the Confed(eration) and show people they can take on the ruling elites. The Confed is not so much evil...

Prior to this book, I'd read eight or so other Steve Perry novels, all of which were tied in to popular franchises by people like George Lucas (INDIANA JONES, STAR WARS), Ridley Scott (ALIEN), Tom Clancy (NET FORCE), and Leonard Nimoy (PRIMORTALS). A few of these novels were bad; most were decent. None of them were what I'd call a page-turner.THE MAN WHO NEVER MISSED introduced me to a whole new side of Steve Perry. Turns out, he's much better at coming up with his own material than he is at uti...

Great book, great start to an excellent series.

The Matador Series is one of my favorite sci-fi series. Very action oriented, but also with very good character development and a well thought out plot. The concept of "one man can make a difference" and "when you know who you are, you know what to do" really struck a chord with me when I read this series in college. Good series.

Feeble story of a rebel utterly devoid of suspense or dramatic tension. 1½ star review. My full-length review of this title is here.Please note that my site SFReviews.net, in operation since July 2001, is where I post my SFF reviews, and I only use Goodreads to help direct interested fellow readers who are more likely to spend time here than following the site itself. Thank you. (If I review a non-SFF title, I will do so here.)

VERY VERY strong openings and closings. However the meat of the book, is flashbacks and then flashbacks within flashbacks. It ended up being too many layers. It ALMOST got me disoriented. I was getting frustrating and yet at the end it had a nice solid zip. There are parts of the book that make for a great prequel. Like meeting some of my favorite characters from Matadora. Parts of it were clearly supposed to be red herrings like Pen being in this book. If I had read The Man Who Never Missed fir...

I read “The Man Who Never Missed” by Steve Perry. Now this is one of those books I normally wouldn’t read, but a friend lent it to me. Then it sat on my shelf for like three years. I might get this back to him now. I read it because I was looking for some short fiction and there it was, guilting me.Basically, it is the epitome of an 80s action movie. In space. In a book form. The main character is a loner with a conscious. He is an ex-soldier who hates war, so he becomes a rebel. He takes out so...

Entertaining and engaging pulp sci-fi. The characters were what I've come to expect from this genre, all to the extreme; no moderation, but while this style has been well used, it is far from worn out in my opinion, as the extremes give us a different version of reality than we are used to interacting with, and are used well here, to magnify characteristics and add pizzazz to the story. The story itself was enjoyable, interesting and thought provoking; a terrorist as protagonist, not wholly orig...

Enjoyable, entertaining, and in some instances a romance novel. Steve Perry's 1986 breakthrough novel The Man Who Never Missed is a fantastic space opera for anyone. I remember reading this summer of 2005 and thinking about how Perry was such a good writer. The Man Who Never Missed opens with Emile Khadaji attacking a group of Confederation soldiers. This opening is actually where the book ends. We then transition and see some of his past, the most prominent section being the Battle of Maro. A b...

This is the first book in the Matador series by Steve Perry. The story begins when Emile Khadaji deserts from the Confederation military after a particularly bloody battle. He eventually joins up with a bar-tending martial artist monk named Pen, who teaches Khadaji the martial art of Sumito, which is used by his order, before setting him on his own path. After several years seeking an education, Khadaji decides that he hates war. He then decides to become a rebel. Khadaji becomes the founder of

An easy four stars. Good, solid science fiction. Perry weaves an exciting, plausible tale. As usual he explains the advent of faster-than-light travel with a wave of his hand, but exknowledges the mystery of it.For a book published 25 years ago, The Man Who Never Missed holds up well on how-could-the-author-miss-that? Perry anticipates continued acceleration of computer minaturization (Moore's "Law")and how it might be used by a revolutionary, but not so much how it might be used against him. He...