The Disappeared by Kristine Kathryn Rusch
http://bookrevues.blogspot.com/Read an author I have never read and write a review. For a voracious reader, that is a bit easier said than done. I found a book by Kristine Kathryn Rusch on my shelf and wondered who she was and how I got it. I have no recollection of either.
The book is “The Disappeared” a retrieval artist novel. Apparently Rusch is a well known, award winning author that I just haven’t read before. The book is a detective story set in a future where we have interstellar relationships with a wide variety of aliens who have radically different views on the law and the legal process. In the effort to maintain positive trade agreements, our planetary government agrees to respect and honor each Alien’s legal system regardless of how it compares to our own system of law. The morality aspect of different cultures is heightened by the fact that many of the Aliens have a sense of morality radically different than our own. There is an obvious comparison with NAFTA and our governments support of immoral regimes for the sake of their oil. The implications on an interstellar level may be positive but there is a severe toll on the personal level for those responsible for enforcing some of the more onerous laws.
The story specifically addresses two cops, deep in the trenches, fighting the good fight that have to enforce edicts they find personally abhorrent. There are several vignettes involving different people and aliens that illustrate the author’s point. Overall it was a good story. I found the introduction of the characters and the method used a bit lacking in depth. Short segments introduced the characters that were later fleshed out. I felt that a little more meat in the introduction would have made the characters more identifiable later. I wouldn’t read the book again and I won’t be going out looking for more from this author. It was a decent story but with so many great books out there, I can’t say I want to settle for just ok.
Body of work of
Kristine Kathryn Rusch Web Site: Doesn’t appear to have one.
Review: I broke my own rule in order to submit a review for
http://deweymonster.com/ where they have monthly Book Worms Carnival featuring different themes. The theme for September was to review a book of an author I never read before.
Stirling has proposed a post meteoroid holocaust world with the holocaust set in the late 1800’s. The world has recovered to the point of early 1900’s and the novel deals with the political ramifications of the dramtically changed world. Characters are well done, story is exciting, I had trouble putting it down. My biggest critisim is that there is no sequel. This book screams for a sequal, what’s the point of getting you into a very interesting environment, enticing you with good characterizations and then leaving you hang. Stirling’s characters exhibit the characteristics that I think exemplify scifi and fantasy, courage, loyalty, nobility, concern for mankind, all things that are often hard to find in current fiction as well as in the real world. Read this!
