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%T The Eyes of the Beholder
%A A. C. Crispin
%I Pocket Books
%D September 1990
%O paperback, US$5.95
%P 243
%G 0-671-70010-3
Ms. Crispin seems to have a thing about handicaps and adjustment
thereto. In Silent Dances (RR#79) a deaf person spents pages ruminating
over whether to have her hearing restored with a new operation; in
this novel, blind but electronically "sighted" Commander La Forge
spends the opening pages contemplating the same question. Sadly, in
Eyes the opening scenes are followed by a melodramatic,
cliche-heavy tangle of subplots apparently intended as a "juvenile"
but insulting to the intelligence of an SF fan of any age. I mean,
really -- between the cute little orphan girl, the Mysterious Alien
Force Within The Sargasso Of Dead Ships, Data's fumbling attempts to
write a novel and sundry thumpingly obvious reactions by characters
that were cardboard to begin with, I was hard put to get halfway
through this dreadful turkey. Dances had its problems but
wasn't this bad; more evidence, I guess, for the theory that trekfic
brings out the worst in authors and editors.
%T Grass
%A Sheri S. Tepper
%I Bantam/Spectra
%D September 1990
%O paperback, US$5.95
%P 449
%G 0-553-28565-3
Sheri S. Tepper has a regrettable tendency to waste a major imaginative
talent on axe-grinding and shaky premises. When she manages to avoid this she
is very good indeed, as Grass demonstrates. The book revolves
around a multi-layered biological puzzle, as Lady Marjorie Westriding of Earth
works to understand the relationship between the Grassian aristocracy and the
creatures they ride in their weird and often lethal parody of Old Earth's fox
hunts. The results are dark and fascinating. Recommended.
%T Fire on the Border
%A Kevin O'Donnell, Jr.
%I ROC
%D September 1990
%O paperback, US$4.95
%P 368
%G 0-451-45030-2
The author of The Journeys of McGill Feighan and
Oracle brings us a hardware-heavy space opera. The vast and alien
Wayholder Empire, committed to endless war against the devouring
nano-replicators of the even more alien Korrin, begins to use human frontier
worlds as training grounds for its troops. It hands Terra an ultimatum --
permit the slaughter of so many planetary populations a year or face total
annihilation. The Terran Association submits, neutralizing its vast navies --
but the colony worlds do not. It falls to two men -- Kajiwara Hoshiro and his
clone-son Daitaku, the last samurai -- to lead the battle against human
defeatism and alien might. The characters are strictly cardboard but the
hardware and tactical ideas quite original and interesting; if you like hard
SF with carefully thought out space-battle scenes as much as I do, you'll
enjoy this book for that reason alone.
RECEIVED BUT NOT REVIEWED (aka the regular fantasy-series discard pile):
Game's End (Kevin J. Anderson), Isle of View (Piers Anthony), Usurper: The Second Book of the Kingdoms (Angus Wells). Is any more explanation than the titles really necessary...?
Up to Eric's Home Page | To Index | Thu Sep 13 13:44:12 EDT 1990 |
Eric S. Raymond <esr@snark.thyrsus.com>