Thursday, August 07, 2003
 
Book Review: Deathstar Voyage by Ian Wallace

While researching for my last book review, a non-fiction book, I discovered some Amazon retailers were selling (I mean, trying to sell) the fiction book I was reading in tandem with the nonfiction book I reviewed for outlandish sums of money. This fact piqued my interest in the fiction book; also, I discovered it was the beginning of a series. So I paid more attention to it and chewed my way through the first couple of chapters.

Of course, the research reminded me of the subtitle and genre, so I could grasp it's a mystery in space. A Galactic detective, the series character Claudine St. Cyr, is guarding a planetary monarch from assassins, when suddenly the ship's in danger of going nova and then the captain and subsequent acting captains start dropping of hearts that are inverted en media chest.

Once I got through those first few chapters, I started recognizing that rabbits were going to come out of hats, caps, sweaters, suit jackets, and many other items of apparel, and a whole pantheon of deus ex maquinas were at work here. Understanding this, I could more easily read the book. It wasn't as though I missed some information, it's that it just wasn't there before it was relevant. Subtle things, like psychokinesis would make a good a murder weapon.

But it's a quick read, and a junk read, and an interesting time capsule of the female protagonist written by a male author in 1969. Claudine St. Cyr is beautiful, intelligent, dutiful, and somehow every named male character in this book wants to marry her, and most of the major characters propose marriage to her in the 170 pages. But she remains chaste, although tempted to kiss on several occasions. A sixties male character in this situation, say an interstellar Mike Hammer, would have Kirked every carbon-based female (or nongendered) life form, would have shot one or more of them later, and would have set the ship to supernova himself to make a point.

So what's my point? I will read anything, I think.

- posted by Brian J. @ 11:51 PM
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