By Edward "Mickey 7" Ashton. I think the number in the title is a mistake, because it invites inevitable comparison with Mickey 7. And there are too many similarities. One of those similarities is a decent story, so that's good. But another is the rather bland (or as I said for M7, "pedestrian") writing style, which is bad. We again have a down-on-his-luck hero with a feisty female companion, with a very similar line in self-deprecating humour to M7.In fact having started this book I put it down to get through The Left Hand of God, and somewhat reluctantly came back to it. If the book has a moral it is that trying to be a good person is good; this however is also bland, and unsubtly done.
Coming now to the spoilers, I think the whole predator / prey species stuff is strange; anything capable of developing a civilisation is going to understand that brute physical combat strength is a poor way to settle disputes. In fact this could be an interesting question because I am interested in models of civilisation; but I think the model he presents is too unrealistic to be interesting. We do get the occasional: "you claim to be creatures of honour" - that std.trope - "and yet you keep doing these things that look distinctly sneaky; are you sure you're so different to us?" but he doesn't really explore this, instead he lets the aliens get off with "it may look sneaky to you but it wasn't really".
No comments:
Post a Comment