ISBN: 1-892065-05-3 Order from: Amazon.com
Intricately plotted, view-hopping and rather original cross-genre tale of the near future, this book has enough charm and humor to cope with its ambitious goals.
Reviewed by David on August 07, 1999
Genre: Fantasy (Near Future, Mystery, Police Procedural, Urban Fantasy, Occult, Private Investigator)
Synopsis: In the year 2024, Atlanta is both strange and utterly familiar. Split into several suspicious sub-cultures, the Baptists, the Wiccans and even the Homosexual communities have their own businesses, protocols, news networks and entertainment. In this tense atmosphere a series of grisly, ritualistic murders fan the distrust and threaten the peace, as armed militias are mobilizing to protect different neighborhoods. While a police lieutenant races to catch the killer before the city explodes into violence, a baptist teenage meets a pagan girl. The star-crossed pair end up on the run from outraged parents, MIBS (Men in Black), the criminal underground and exceedingly strange Indians wearing ceremonial clothes.
Full Review: I picked up this book because of the cover blurbs by two of my favorite authors: Hodgell and Hoffman.
As it happens, this is a book remarkable in its entertainment value considering everything against it: it has a great number of viewpoints, it combines a full-blown police procedural with an urban fantasy, it further stirs in farcical humor in with dark, grisly murder.
The book includes an exploration of the near-future gay culture, told with some passion but not graphically; teenage romance, improbable feats of hacking and some bashing of charismatic religious zealots. It is tough to describe the book as it contains so many disparate genre themes. It resembles Expiration Date, but The Gumshoe, et. al. is more entertaining.
Luckily, the book has enough charm and wit to carry the improbable load to its conclusion. The artistic and poetic imagery provide a nice touch, but the gumshoe and Indian Shaman sub-plots seem somewhat unnecessary and self-consciously humorous. While an excellent book, it falls short of perfection by concentrating too much in weaving together the strange strands of its plot in an authorial tour de force.
Overall: 6.5; Plot: 5.5; Characters: 6.5; Style: 7; World-building: 7; Originality: 7;
Copyright date 1999, Meisha Merlin Publishing (MM), April 1999, Trade paperback, 429 pages
ISBN: 1-892065-05-3 Order from: Amazon.com