Another of Dickson's tongue-in-cheek medieval fantasies (The Dragon and the Djinn, 1996, etc.). Former college professor Jim Eckert now lives in an alternate 14th-century England where he's Sir James of Malencontri, a magickian's apprentice, and also, part- time, a rather dimwitted dragon named Gorbash. This time out, Jim is presented with a fine set of problems: Mysterious holes appear in castle and forest; his adopted son, infant Robert, is kidnapped; Jim joins an expedition to Cumbria on behalf of the king; once again he has trouble drawing on his account at the magickal bank; and finds that his master, the AAA+ magickian Carolinus, is inconveniently absent. Still, Jim will be assisted by humans, Rrrnlf the sea devil, Aarg the wolf, and Hob the hobgoblin, to stop the malefactors from usurping the kingdom. Agreeable and satisfying.
Pub Date: Aug. 18, 1997
ISBN: 0-312-86157-5
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Tor
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 1997
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A yarn that takes place somewhere—though it’s unclear precisely where—in the universe Barnes created for his splendid Kaleidoscope Century (1995). Some years after Meme Wars—memes are evolving computer programs that can infect human brains and control minds—retired manhunter Currie Curtis Curran lives comfortably with his wife Mary in the Colorado Rockies. Like nearly everyone on Earth, his controlling meme is Resuna, a benevolent program that helps moderate anger, violence, and pain. All the copies of Resuna link up to form the godlike intelligence One True. The latter now informs Currie that he’s needed for one last mission: An old adversary—lacking Resuna, and therefore uncontrolled and dangerous—has reappeared after a ten-year absence. An absurdly inept hunter, Currie’s easily subdued by his quarry, Dave Singleton. Struck on the head, Currie wakes to discover that his Resuna no longer functions! Neither can he link to One True. Through endless chats, captive and captor discover similar histories and attitudes, and become friends. Dave’s adoptive parents invented a meme called Freecyber, which repelled hostile memes. But once One True won the Meme Wars, Dave fled into suspended animation. Finally, Currie realizes that Dave has infected him with Freecyber. Furious, he attacks Dave, but under stress Resuna reawakens and fuses with Freecyber. The result behaves and thinks like a person. Disappointingly obvious, and going nowhere.
Pub Date: Feb. 1, 2000
ISBN: 0-312-89077-X
Page Count: 240
Publisher: Tor
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 1999
A collection of 21 stories and one novella—Welsh's second book, but his first published stateside—that will inevitably be compared to last year's Booker winner, James Kelman. The Scottish dialect, the urban lowlife characters, and the vulgar slang all make a similar claim to authenticity. Welsh's punters prowl the streets of Edinburgh, not Kelman's Glasgow, a distinction likely to be lost on most American readers. In any case, not all of his mean and grungy stories rely on a thick Scottish brogue, though a number of casual pieces are one-joke gimmicks. In the sci-fi-ish ``Vat '96,'' a head is kept alive in a jar while ``his'' wife entertains men in his presence; for ``Where the Debris Meets the Sea,'' four Hollywood glamour girls sit poolside and comment on the bodies of working-class men. Such simple reversal is at the center of the title story, in which a newborn and a teenaged acid head exchange bodies in a freak lightning storm. Welsh's best stories, including the novella, ``A Smart Cunt,'' are mostly days-in-the-lives of aimless, drug-addled fellows who live for sex, football, and violence (often in combination). In ``Eurotrash,'' the narrator goes to Amsterdam to kick his habit, and has an affair with a ``repulsive and ugly'' woman who turns out to be a transsexual. ``Granny's Old Junk'' packs a clever punch when it's revealed that the little old lady who's about to be ripped off by her junky grandson is a longtime user herself. Such brutal ironies come easily to Welsh, as does a nihilism that seems designed for effect. In ``The Last Resort on the Adriatic,'' a ten-year grieving widower joins his wife in a shipside suicide; and the video-obsessed drudge in ``Snuff,'' having seen every film in his guide, records his own suicide on videotape. Welsh often settles for shock value, sleazy sex, and heroin chic, but he's actually a better writer than many who've been here before, especially Burroughs and his epigones.
Pub Date: April 1, 1995
ISBN: 0-393-31280-1
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Norton
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 1995
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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