Raymond's Reviews #140

%T Drifter
%A William C. Dietz
%I Ace
%D September 1991
%O paperback, US$3.95
%P 200
%G ISBN 0-441-16813-2

Sigh, yet another utterly predictable space adventure featuring yet another Han Solo clone getting mixed up with a beautiful woman and a bunch of oppressed idealists. Not a plot twist goes untelegraphed in this fundamentally boring piece of yard goods. And we're promised a sequel, no less. Yawn.

%T The Wooden Sword
%A Lynn Abbey
%I Ace
%D September 1991
%O paperback, US$4.50
%P 247
%G ISBN 0-441-90866-7

Warning: this is a Q-ship! The cover and blurb don't warn you that this is a series book, but it ends in a cliffhanger and reads like a sequel to something else. The book probably ought to be boycotted on these grounds alone, even if it weren't just another quest-fantasy- romance that reads like an MZB or McCaffrey outtake. Avoid.

%T The Rowan
%A Anne McCaffrey
%I Ace
%D September 1991
%O paperback, US$4.95
%P 328
%G ISBN 0-441-73576-2

Another formulaic orphan-girl-makes-good space romance from McCaffrey, featuring psionics and a feline companion and a male lead so insufferably cute he should've been strangled in his crib. Sure to please her adolescent-female fans, even though it reads like she wrote it by pure hack reflex in her sleep. There's a new dent in my wall where it bounced.

NOTES AND NEWS:

Terry Weisskopf at Baen tells me this month's re-release of Poul Anderson's The High Crusade is due to be followed up soon with reissues of Three Hearts And Three Lions and Operation Chaos.

DAW's Peter Stampfel tells me that the second volume of the duology that began with Sean Russell's The Initiate Brother (RR#120) should hit the presses in late '92. Same goes for To Green Angel Tower, third and final volume of Tad Williams's Memory, Sorrow And Thorn (RR#41).