Raymond's Reviews #131

%T The Albino Knife
%A Steve Perry
%I Ace
%D July 1991
%O paperback, US$4.95
%P 294
%G ISBN 0-441-01391-0

More in the Matador universe from the author of The 97th Step (RR#005) and the best third of The Harriers (RR#118). Unfortunately, Perry was clearly having an off day when he wrote this; the action scenes are listless, the characters lack most of what life they'd acquired in the previous books, and nothing further is done with the rather crisp and tasty mystical elements relating to the Brothers of the Shroud. Give it a miss.

%T Cat-a-lyst
%A Alan Dean Foster
%I Ace
%D July 1991
%O paperback, US$4.95
%P 325
%G ISBN 0-441-64661-1

This is a better book than Foster's previous outing Cyber Way (RR#51) but not by much. As usual, Foster gets real cute; cats as superior aliens, extraterrestrial invasion by refugee Incas wielding subliminal TV as their main weapon, and help for poor humanity from giant sentient carrots who talk like Victorians 'cause they used to hang out with Lewis Carroll. Unfortunately the result has such visible seams and the noise from turning plot-gears is so loud that it's hard to enjoy the jokes. Buy it used, maybe.

%T Only Begotten Daughter
%A James Morrow
%I Ace
%D July 1991
%O paperback, US$4.95
%P 312
%G ISBN 0-441-63041-1

Other people have different prejudices, but to me a theological novel that is blurbed "it deserves to be measured against the best in American literature" has two strikes against it from the start --- I'm led to expect a pompous, pretentious, sprawling, angst-ridden turkey like John Kessel's Good News From Outer Space (RR#71). This novel manages (albeit narrowly) to avoid that trap, perhaps because the author (unlike Kessel) seems to genuinely like his characters. All of them. Jacob Katz, the mild-mannered Jewish recluse and bookworm who lives in a lighthouse, makes his living donating to a sperm bank, and is more than shocked when he discovers he's the parthogenetic father of a divine daughter. Julie, the luckless and otherwise ordinary Girl Next Door who happens to be the daughter of God, able to walk on water and perform miracles but fairly sure for various reasons that she should not. Phoebe, her worldly-wise and polymorphously-perverse best friend. Even the Devil --- a dedicated professional extremely distressed by the decay of sin-inducing Christianity, determined to see Julie sacrificed on a new cross to guarantee the founding of a religion even more thoroughly wedded to fanaticism, blood and evil. Then, too, Morrow's theological speculations are quirky and original (if not always convincing). Unlike Stranger In A Strange Land, this novel has no particular moral subtext, no prescription for saving the world. Its central, subtle theme is that we are all in Julie's shoes, trapped divinities grappling with the Problem of Evil; it is a victory simply to have our own lives against all the odds. This may seem too pessimistic for some (it is for me) but it's an improvement on the usual modern "literary" message that even the attempt to own your own life is futile. The result isn't a great book, but it is a good one.