First hardback publication of Vance's three novels, now out of print, set in Alastor Cluster, a vast star-swarm ruled by the mysterious Connatic, who likes to walk abroad incognito and participate in the lives of his subjects. The splendid Trullion (1973) is the idyllic setting for a powerful family drama, notable for its invention of ``hussade,'' a rousing game resembling football played on trapezes above tanks of water. Marune (1975) meditates upon the warrior-scholar Rhunes and their peculiar sexual habits; a work of subtle and lingering charms, it is probably Vance's most underrated novel. The less successful Wyst (1978), Vance's only overtly political work, observes a creaky socialist utopia rife with food fetishes and petty thievery as it totters toward bankruptcy. An accurate measure of Vance's towering contribution to the genre.
Pub Date: Sept. 1, 1995
ISBN: 0-312-85966-X
Page Count: 480
Publisher: Tor
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 1995
The indomitable, quick-on-the-draw Lizbeth remains an irresistible heroine, and Harris proves she still has the magic touch.
In the second installment of Harris’ weird Western series set in an alternate former United States (after An Easy Death, 2018), gunslinger/bodyguard for hire Lizbeth “Gunnie” Rose must accompany a mysterious crate to its destination, but things go terribly wrong.
A long train ride east to the country of Dixie isn’t 19-year-old Lizbeth’s idea of a good time, but it is a job, and she needs it, especially since her last job left her with a long recovery and no crew. Her new troupe, the Lucky Crew, seems competent enough, and when Lizbeth spots some suspicious folks on the train, she’s pretty sure they’re about to be tested. A shootout precedes an explosion that engulfs the train. Someone must really want the Lucky Crew’s cargo. Lizbeth has been shot, her crew has been decimated, and the contents of the crate are gone, but she’s still got a job to do. When a blast from Lizbeth’s past—Eli Savarov, a grigori, or Russian wizard—shows up, Lizbeth discovers that he’s in search of whomever hired the Lucky Crew to deliver the crate. Lizbeth agrees to take a job as his bodyguard, and the two, posing as a married couple (it’s only proper) poke around the Louisiana town of Sally for clues that will lead them to the chest. They quickly realize the town is in racial turmoil: Slavery doesn’t technically exist, but it might as well considering the backward attitudes of the townsfolk and their shabby treatment of Sally’s black citizens. It all seems to lead to a powerful family that holds the town in its thrall, and, of course, the explosive contents of that troublesome crate. Lizbeth and Eli spend quite a bit of time on old-fashioned sleuthing (and, delightfully, between the sheets), but the action ratchets up exponentially in the surprising last half. Lizbeth is a no-nonsense, dryly funny narrator, and while this installment lacks a bit of the spark of the first book, it’s still a shoot’em-up, rollicking ride.
The indomitable, quick-on-the-draw Lizbeth remains an irresistible heroine, and Harris proves she still has the magic touch.Pub Date: Jan. 14, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-4814-9495-3
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Saga/Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Oct. 13, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2019
A United States space probe erratically falls from orbit and lands near a small Arizona town mysteriously wiping out all life in the vicinity except for two diametrically different survivors. Scientists have to determine "why a sixty-nine-year-old Sterno drinker with an ulcer is like a two-month-old baby". . . among other things. This details the secret mobilization of efforts and the extraordinary precautions taken as the U.S. tries to discover what ominous extraterrestrial entity is causing the plague... as it slowly mushrooms. Four biomedical scientists are encapsulated with the deadly probe far underground in an amazingly intricate decontamination chamber. Obviously based on a pipeline of information to actual equipment and installations (to be annotated with diagrams, etc.), this is horrifyingly immediate and filled with fascinating detail such as the fumigation chamber where they burn the outer epidermis off the skin. Brought right down to earth by what has appeared recently in the news, an exciting demonstration of the possible impossible.
Pub Date: May 26, 1969
ISBN: 006170315X
Page Count: 387
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: Sept. 21, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1969
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