Up to Eric's Home Page | To Index | Mon Apr 25 22:45:52 EDT 1994 |
%T Flare Star
%A Paula E. Downing
%I DelRey
%D April 1992
%O paperback, US$3.99
%P 249
%G ISBN 0-345-37165-8
As this novel opens, the underground human colony on Wolf II is nearly
destroyed when Wolf 359, a dormant flare star, wakes up. Their only hope of
survival is the scheduled re-supply freighter due in within days; but on that
freighter, the Ceti Flag, tensions among the crew are turning command decisions
into the instruments of vendetta. Can the colony survive long enough for the
Ceti Flag to arrive? Will the Ceti's crew be able to pull together to evacuate
the colony, or will they self-destruct and take the imperiled colonists down
with them? This is a neatly executed little suspense/adventure novel with a
bit more sympathy for even its "villain" characters than usual; no
groundbreaker, but a pleasant read.
%T Captain Jack Zodiac
%A Michael Kandel
%I Bantam Spectra
%D April 1992
%O paperback, US$5.99
%P 260
%G ISBN 0-553-29367-2
Michael Kandel obviously wants to be Philip K. Dick when he grows
up, and this book is almost good enough to redeem that ambition. He
gives us the story of Clifford Koussevitsky, a well-meaning
everynebbish who will dare any peril to marry the woman he loves and
be reunited with his two estranged children. Off we go on a whirligig
ride through a world of demonic chicken salads, quantum-delocalized
mall-zombies, man-eating lawns, subways to (not from) Hell,
teleportation pills, and permanent floating nuclear war. As Cliff's
world zigzags deeper into surrealistic insanity, one could be forgiven
for thinking the novel is yet another attack of the kind of boring
`symbolic' avant-gardism that isn't supposed to make any
sense --- but Kandel, it turns out, is (like the original Surrealists)
cleverer than that. There's a deus behind the machina, and Cliff
eventually solves his problems in a resoundingly nontrivial way.
Halfway through this book I expected to pan it; now I give it a
cautious recommendation to anyone who enjoys the mad-genius-on-speed
style of prose construction. There's plenty of that here.
%T Lord of the Troll-Bats
%A Alexis Gilliland
%I DelRey
%D May 1992
%O paperback, US$3.99
%P 231
%G ISBN 0-345-37467
Third (and possibly not the last) of the duology _Wizenbeak_ and
_The_Shadow _Shaia_ (RR#66), this book
offers us a look at a society of wholly sentient troll-bats who keep
humans as chattels (reversing the situation in Wizenbeak's Guhland).
The King-Patriarch finds himself nose-deep in trouble once again when
the ex-Patriarch Gorabani drives Shaia's ghost out of Queen Marjia's
body and summons the Demon Lord of the Troll-Bats to destroy
Wizenbeak. Warfare, intrigue and skulduggery ensue as Wizenbeak,
Jankura, and Count Braley struggle to halt a most peculiar invasion.
Through all is woven a clever subplot involving Wizenbeak's efforts to
change Guhland in ways which (though he does not realize it) will
quickly doom the feudal system as he knows it. Ironic, funny, and dry
--- this is truly original fantasy.
Up to Eric's Home Page | To Index | Mon Apr 25 22:45:52 EDT 1994 |
Eric S. Raymond <esr@snark.thyrsus.com>