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%T The Steps of the Sun
%A Walter Tevis
%I Collier Nucleus
%D May 1990
%O paperback, US$4.50
%P 251
%G 0-02-029865-X
Everybody's entitled to an off day sometimes, and by me this is the
Collier Nucleus series's first failure of taste. Tevis manages to
combine some of the worst cliches of space opera (the millionaire
inventor who builds his own spaceship to go off and Save The World)
with the most tiresome attributes of the mainstream "novel of
character" (the protagonist's boringly predictable neuroses are the
real subject of the text). This is literatus disease (see RR#36) on the hoof, not saved by Tevis's
undoubted skill at prose construction and the few brief moments in
which the world convinces.
%T Space Hawks
%A Sean Dalton
%I Berkeley/Ace
%D May 1989
%O paperback, US$3.50
%P 188
%G 0-441-77732-5
Bletch. This is the first book in a formulaic space-opera series of
the most mindless sort, one that promises to be fully as wretched as
DAW's "Cap Kennedy" books. I found it utterly unreadable, and suggest
that it belongs at the bottom of the same toxic waste dump as Vardeman's
Demon Crown books (see RR#44).
%T The Ransom of Black Stealth One
%A Dean Ing
%I TOR Books
%D April 1990
%O paperback, US$5.95
%P 471
%G 0-812-50857-2
Dean Ing has written some decent SF in the past. Sadly, in this
venture into techno-thrillerdom the gadgets are the only things that
work. This book is an old man's fantasy of regained youth (courtesy of
an idealized Bright Young Thing the protagonist kidnaps who spends the
rest of the novel throwing herself at him). It comes with a disturbing
subtext of amorality and callousness and entirely too many `good guys'
who betray and kill on orders or for a mean revenge...and too many bad
guys right out of Central Casting for old-fashioned Russian heavies.
The only good parts are the aerial chase scenes. If you must read
those, wait till you can find this one used.
%T Spellbound
%A Ru Emerson
%I Ace Books
%D May 1990
%O paperback, US$5.95
%P 471
%G 0-441-77792-9
Sigh. Yet another wretched formula fantasy-romance for the teen
market, replete with the usual glossy-carboard characters,
melodramatic plot, and overwrought prose (there's even, can you
believe it, an evil stepmother!). There's not a shred of originality
or idea content anywhere to be found in this mess, nor much of
anything else for that matter, but the way it's packaged and aimed
just about guarantee that it'll move off the shelves anyhow. Oh, well,
let's hope the sales from it will subsidize something more
interesting.
Up to Eric's Home Page | To Index | Fri Apr 27 19:57:17 EDT 1990 |
Eric S. Raymond <esr@snark.thyrsus.com>