duane@anasazi.UUCP (Duane Morse) (09/30/85)
The jacket reads: "Laura Shemzak. Irreverent, rebellious, beautiful. A woman with an impossible mission: to rescue her beloved brother, the most brilliant physicist of the Empire, from the awesome aliens, the Jaxdron. To succeed, Laura must gain control of the top-secret Mark XT "blip-ship". And to do that, she is forced into an uneasy alliance with the notorious space pirate, the bitter, cynical, Captain Tars Northern. And that's when Laura's adventure really begins..." Well, if I hadn't read some books by Bischoff already (DAY OF THE DRAGONSTAR and NIGHT OF THE DRAGONSTAR with Monteleone, both very very good, and STAR FALL all by himself), I wouldn't have purchased this one after reading the jacket description. Laura is an intelligence agent for the Earth-based Empire, though she isn't all that keen on Empire politics. Her brother is a research physicist. The society in which they both grew up frowns on personal relationships (husband and wife, brother and sister, etc.), so their knowledge of each other and their ties are unusual. The physics of the period is much advanced, and Laura's brother is on the forefront of research; at least the Jaxdron know this. Further, Laura has been engineered with a number of implants in order to fully interface with her blip-ship and, of course, to more easily carry out her intelligence operations. The book contains lots of futuristic "slang", which is not out of place, but it takes some getting used to. Captain Northern and his crew are somewhat hard to fathom, but I expect to learn more in the next book of the series. It's obvious that Northern and Laura will eventually admit their attraction to each other, but in this book they primarily joust. I enjoyed the book, but not as much as the previously-mentioned ones. The characters don't have much depth, but that criticism too should fade after another book appears. The story contains lots of interesting ideas, and I like the scenario. I still haven't figured out what Northern and his crew plan to do, and there's obviously lots more to come. I rate this book as 2.5 stars (good). -- Duane Morse ...!noao!terak!anasazi!duane (602) 870-3330