Descent #3: Equinox

Meet me on the equinox. Meet me halfway. When the sun is perched at its highest peak in the middle of the day. Let’s understand that everything ends with Equinox, by Peter Telep.

Synopsis:

With the galaxy exploding all around him and humanity itself in jeopardy, Pyro-jockey Ben St. John knows who the real enemy is — his former employer, Samuel Dravis of the Post Terran Mining Corporation, the undisputed power behind the most awesome corporate entity in the solar system and beyond; the traitor who cost Ben his wife, his future, and reduced him to a galactic renegade with no allies except a handful of star-wanderers and misfits. Dravis wants the universe and its vast, inexhaustible wealth. And he’s unleashing a terrible new generation of weaponry and viruses, letting loose an unstoppable private army of drones, and mastering an indefensible system of mind control that will make his defeat all but impossible. In other words, taking Dravis down is the perfect job for Ben St. John, who wants his foe’s head and has absolutely nothing left to lose. From the lethal labyrinths of Mars’ Red Acropolis Research Facility to the unseen terrors of the Sirius System, Ben’s ready to plow through all of his enemy’s impregnable defenses — just to prove to Dravis that old Marines don’t fade away … they keep getting in your face.

Source: Goodreads

SPOILERS BELOW

Sigh. I guess it’s finally time to talk about the worst Descent game, Descent 3.

Descent II ended on a major cliffhanger: after destroying the Alien 2 Boss on Tycho Brahe, Material Defender activates his warp drive to return back to the Sol system and get paid, only for it to malfunction and send him somewhere unknown. As a kid, I was so excited: I imagined that his warp core had been infected by the alien virus and it had sent him to their home system, where he would finally confront the mysterious Programmers behind it all. Then Descent 3 came out, and… nope. Turns out the aliens have left the story, never to be followed up on. The warp core was actually sabotaged by Dravis, who has suddenly transformed from the standard corrupt corporate executive he was portrayed as in the first two games (three, counting Vertigo) into a Bond-level supervillain bent on galactic domination complete with a secret volcano lair. Suffice to say, the story did not live up to my expectations. Also, the gameplay sucked, for a whole bunch of reasons which I won’t be talking about here because this is still a book review blog, not a game review blog. Berryjon has a full play-through of the Descent series on YouTube in which he talks about how the first two games and Vertigo were good and Descent 3 was bad; you can watch it here if you’re interested. On to the book.

Unlike the earlier games in the series, Descent 3 has an actual narrative, and this novelization follows the broad outline, more or less – there are some changes, like the stupid volcano base being dropped in favor of the final confrontation taking place on Shiva Station. To the book’s credit, it checks in with what the aliens are doing instead of completely dropping their storyline, and Dravis’s megalomaniacal turn isn’t as out-of-nowhere because the previous two books were written with his status as final villain of the trilogy in mind. To the book’s discredit, however, it adds in a bunch of completely uncalled-for weird sex shit, like Dravis brainwashing his assistant into being his sex slave, abducting St. John’s ex-wife and brainwashing her as well, bribing a doctor into impregnating an unknowing woman with his child, and stuff like that. Continuing the alien plotline also comes with the downside that, since they weren’t actually in Descent 3, there’s no resolution to be had – in fact, it ends on a cliffhanger, with the infected drones performing a coup on the Programmers and taking charge of an alien fleet to launch another attack on the solar system. Except, being that this is the last book of the trilogy, that cliffhanger will never get a resolution. As shitty as Descent 3 was, at least it had a conclusive ending. The novelizations just stop.

Equinox is a bad novelization of a bad game, and a dismal end to a book series that started off decent.

Final Rating: 1/5

Star Wars: Scoundrels

They never saw us coming ‘til they hit the floor. They just kept begging for more, more. Let’s dress up for a hit and run with Scoundrels, by Timothy Zahn.

Synopsis:

To make his biggest score, Han’s ready to take even bigger risks.
But even he can’t do this job solo.

Han Solo should be basking in his moment of glory. After all, the cocky smuggler and captain of the Millennium Falcon just played a key role in the daring raid that destroyed the Death Star and landed the first serious blow to the Empire in its war against the Rebel Alliance. But after losing the reward his heroics earned him, Han’s got nothing to celebrate. Especially since he’s deep in debt to the ruthless crime lord Jabba the Hutt. There’s a bounty on Han’s head—and if he can’t cough up the credits, he’ll surely pay with his hide. The only thing that can save him is a king’s ransom. Or maybe a gangster’s fortune? That’s what a mysterious stranger is offering in exchange for Han’s less-than-legal help with a riskier-than-usual caper. The payoff will be more than enough for Han to settle up with Jabba—and ensure he never has to haggle with the Hutts again.

All he has to do is infiltrate the ultra-fortified stronghold of a Black Sun crime syndicate underboss and crack the galaxy’s most notoriously impregnable safe. It sounds like a job for miracle workers . . . or madmen. So Han assembles a gallery of rogues who are a little of both—including his indispensable sidekick Chewbecca and the cunning Lando Calrissian. If anyone can dodge, deceive, and defeat heavily armed thugs, killer droids, and Imperial agents alike—and pull off the heist of the century—it’s Solo’s scoundrels. But will their crime really pay, or will it cost them the ultimate price?

Source: Goodreads

SPOILERS BELOW

With his Thrawn Trilogy, Zahn established himself as one of the first and most respected authors of the Star Wars Expanded Universe, what’s now called the Legends continuity. Though he has continued writing books for the series set in the new Disney Canon, Scoundrels was his last full novel written for the Legends line, and indeed one of the last Legends novels to be published at all (followed only, I believe, by Crucible and the all-too-appropriately-named Mercy Kill).

Set between A New Hope and The Empire Strikes Back, the plot is an Ocean’s 11-style heist. A crime lord from the Black Sun organization has recently added millions of ill-gotten credits to his vault, and Han Solo is putting together a team of liars, cheats, thieves, and general ne’er-do-wells to liberate the cash. Complicating matters, however, is the fact that the vault also contains a treasure trove of blackmail material, which Imperial Intelligence is eager to acquire, and they’ve sent their own agent to try and hijack the operation to serve their own ends. Plus, when you’re dealing with a bunch of dirty low-down no-good scoundrels, there’s always the chance of treachery to keep everyone on their toes.

This was a very well-written novel. The plan was interesting and well thought-out, the characters were compellingly developed, there were plenty of exciting action scenes, and enough twists and complications developed in the plan to keep me engaged all the way through.

Scoundrels is a very good entry in the Star Wars universe.

Final Rating: 4/5

Descent #2: Stealing Thunder

Just a young gun with a quick fuse. I was uptight, wanna let loose. I was dreaming of bigger things and wanna leave my own life behind. Not a yes sir, not a follower. Fit the box, fit the mold, have a seat in the foyer, take a number. I was lightning before the thunder. Let’s become a lightning thief with Stealing Thunder, by Peter Telep.

Synopsis:

The Universe, as the Post Terran Mining Corporation knows it, is about to end. Reports show massive build-ups of mining drones infected with the alien transmode virus near all PTMC holdings outside the Sol system; estimates put total contamination at forty-eight hours. When intelligence reveals that an alien command post or ship is directing the mech invasion, Benjamin St. John is paired with a sexy, tough-as-titanium Collective Earth Defense pilot and ordered by PTMC Director Samuel Dravis to find and destroy the alien stronghold.

But first Ben and his partner must battle through an unprecedented attack by CED and PTMC mercenary forces and uncover the mystery behind it–all while contending with the blackmailing, double-crossing Director Dravis, who schemes to crush the mech invasion and his bitter enemy, the CED, in one fell swoop. But his plan has a flaw, for his instrument is again Ben St. John–ex-Marine Corps pilot and control freak hell bent on saving the universe, collecting his money, then kicking Dravis’s butt from Sol to Tycho Brahe.

Source: Goodreads

SPOILERS BELOW

Stealing Thunder is the second book in the trio of novelizations based on the computer game series Descent. The first book stuck pretty close to the premise of the games, following mercenary pilot Benjamin St. John on a mission to infiltrate a mine infected by the alien virus and destroy the primary reactor. However, it would get stale to just repeat that a bunch more times, so this sequel shakes things up with new plot developments. The alien Programmers are hacking into cybernetic implants installed into CED pilots’ brains as part of a secret military program, causing them to join the assault against humanity. With the solar system’s defenses compromised from within and a massive army of infected robots sweeping towards the inner solar system, it’s up to St. John to track the Programmers’ signal to its origin before its too late.

Unfortunately, moving away from the foundation of Descent story forces this book to find some other plotlines to fill in the space not being devoted to robot-fighting, and that’s where things kind of fall apart. The book chooses to go with political and conspiracy drama revolving around various people trying to expose the truth of the BPC implantation program, which is complicated and hard to follow and eventually just gets silly once it reaches the point of assassins being hired to assassinate other assassins. On top of which, every character not named Benjamin St. John tends to very quickly die, a pattern which once apparent resulted in me losing the motivation to get invested in any of their personal struggles or story arcs. Then there were the things which just rubbed me the wrong way, like the Japanese characters speaking broken English, gratuitous rape threats being directed at various female characters, St. John’s copilot pausing in the middle of battle to try and religiously proselytize at him… Put it all together, and the result is a book far inferior to the first one.

In any case, while much of the internal story may be original, the ending lines up with the final cutscene of Descent II… which means, much to my dread, the third book is probably going to be based on that miserable black sheep of the game series, Descent 3. Oh boy, this is going to be rough.

Final Rating: 2/5

RWBY #3: Roman Holiday

I was nowhere, I had no one, I felt nothing. Lost without a voice and on my own. Then a candle’s flame brought a brand new name. But now you’ve stolen everything and I’m all alone. Let’s celebrate Roman Holiday, by E. C. Myers.

Synopsis:

Just like every story, every friendship has a beginning…

Before she was a criminal wrapped up in the end of the world, Trivia Vanille was the daughter of disappointed parents who wanted nothing more than for her to be normal. Locked away and pushed into the shadows, Trivia had no one to keep her company. No one, that is, other than Neopolitan, her best and only friend.

But things change after a chance encounter with the young Roman Torchwick, a criminal on the run trying to make a name for himself before his mistakes have a chance to catch up to him. As an uncertain alliance slowly turns into a true partnership, Trivia finally begins to grasp the freedom that she had always longed for. And while her parents always insisted that Neo was nothing more than a figment of her overactive imagination, Trivia realizes that she might be a larger part of her than she ever could have guessed…

Source: Goodreads

SPOILERS BELOW

It’s time to return to the world of Remnant to look at the latest RWBY novel. This one is a prequel, telling the backstory of a pair of popular characters. Roman Torchwick was made to be a minor villain, a one-off baddie for the first episode; when his role was expanded due to his unexpected popularity with fans, Neopolitan was created as his sidekick with a design based on cosplay. Now, in this book, we finally learn how the dynamic duo first became partners in crime.

When we first meet them, Roman is already the asshole we all know and love to hate. Neo, by contrast, has not yet begun her descent into criminality: she is a troubled girl by the name of Trivia Vanille, with “Neo” being the name of an imaginary friend she manifests using her Semblance. When they meet, they become partners in crime, and Trivia begins the transformation that will see her become her darker self.

As a book where the main viewpoint characters are villain protagonists, Roman Holiday has to walk a careful line between showing off their wicked ways and keeping them sympathetic. The book does a fairly good job of this, leaning towards the sympathetic side by painting them in a somewhat lighter tone than the show: Roman’s anti-Faunus racism isn’t touched on, for instance, and his criminal plans lean more towards the over-the-top wacky schemes of RWBY Chibi than the apocalyptic violence that accompanied the Fall of Beacon. This can be easily justified in-universe by the fact that Roman and Neo have not yet met Cinder or Salem, and so have not yet fallen as far as they eventually will on the path to evil.

Roman Holiday is an excellent RWBY story providing a delightful look at the dynamic duo of Roman and Neo in their glory days, and I highly recommend it to fans of the series.

Final Rating: 5/5

Waterfire Saga #3: Dark Tide

Time and tide are flowing over me. I once was blind but now I see. The answer lies within your heart. Memories are only about the past. The present time will never last. The future lies within your heart. Let’s swim against Dark Tide, by Jennifer Donnelly.

Synopsis:

Once a lost and confused princess, Serafina is now a confident leader of the Black Fin Resistance (BFR). While she works on sabotaging her enemy and enlisting allies for battle, her friends face challenges of their own. Ling is in the hold of Rafe Mfeme’s giant trawler, on her way to a prison camp. Becca meets up with Astrid and learns why the Ondalinian mermaid is always so angry: she is hiding a shameful secret. Ava can’t return home, because death riders await her arrival. And it is getting more and more difficult for Mahdi, Serafina’s betrothed, to keep up the ruse that he is in love with Lucia Volerno. If Lucia’s parents become suspicious, his life–and all of Sera’s hopes–will be extinguished. Political intrigue, dangerous liaisons, and spine-tingling suspense swirl like a maelstrom in this penultimate book in the WaterFire saga

Source: Goodreads

SPOILERS BELOW

Time for the third book of the Waterfire Saga. The second book of the series focused on two of the six Chosen Ones as they sought out their respective magical talismans, leading me to believe that subsequent books would follow suit in highlighting each of the girls in turn. But no, this one features all of the primary protagonists, trying to balance a large number of different plots in order to give some page time to each of them. Some of these, I found very interesting: Astrid bonding with Neela and admitting her insecurity over her inability to use magic, Ling reuniting with her long-lost father after being captured by Orfeo. Others were more mediocre, like Serafina’s continuing princess-in-exile plotline. And a few were outright bad: the sudden shoehorned romance subplots for Astrid and Neela. Romance isn’t one of my favorite things to begin with, and Serafina’s endless pining over Mahdi is more than enough for me – I didn’t need the other girls’ plotlines to start wallowing in that melodrama as well. Plus, the book’s need to feature plotlines for every character results in those romances feeling extremely rushed and perfunctory: Astrid falls for Des and Neela for Marco within just a few pages of meeting them. I can’t bring myself to care.

Dark Tide is a mixture of interesting developments and tedious by-the-numbers young adult romance. Overall, I guess it averages out on the side of decent. One book remains in the series; coming up next, the grand finale.

Final Rating: 3/5

Bad Blood: Secrets and Lies in a Silicon Valley Startup

‘Cause baby, now we got bad blood. You know it used to be mad love. So take a look what you’ve done. ‘Cause baby, now we got bad blood. Let’s bleed out Bad Blood, by John Carreyrou.

Synopsis:

The full inside story of the breathtaking rise and shocking collapse of a multibillion-dollar startup, by the prize-winning journalist who first broke the story and pursued it to the end in the face of pressure and threats from the CEO and her lawyers.

In 2014, Theranos founder and CEO Elizabeth Holmes was widely seen as the female Steve Jobs: a brilliant Stanford dropout whose startup “unicorn” promised to revolutionize the medical industry with a machine that would make blood tests significantly faster and easier. Backed by investors such as Larry Ellison and Tim Draper, Theranos sold shares in a fundraising round that valued the company at $9 billion, putting Holmes’s worth at an estimated $4.7 billion. There was just one problem: The technology didn’t work.

For years, Holmes had been misleading investors, FDA officials, and her own employees. When Carreyrou, working at The Wall Street Journal, got a tip from a former Theranos employee and started asking questions, both Carreyrou and the Journal were threatened with lawsuits. Undaunted, the newspaper ran the first of dozens of Theranos articles in late 2015. By early 2017, the company’s value was zero and Holmes faced potential legal action from the government and her investors. Here is the riveting story of the biggest corporate fraud since Enron, a disturbing cautionary tale set amid the bold promises and gold-rush frenzy of Silicon Valley.

Source: Goodreads

SPOILERS BELOW

Recently, I saw articles in the news about the start of the trial of Elizabeth Holmes. I was aware that Theranos had been brought down by a huge scandal, but I wasn’t aware of the details; so, I thought now would be a good time to educate myself. While I primarily prefer reading fiction as opposed to non-fiction, I don’t want to become completely detached from reality, and there just so happened to be a book out covering this current event.

Bad Blood covers the meteoric rise and subsequent fall of Theranos, initially through the eyes of former employees who quit or were fired when they raised ethical concerns and then through the eyes of the author himself, the reporter who broke the story despite pressure from Theranos lawyers. As told in the book, the story of Theranos is one of overpromising and doubling down with coverups. The initial idea for a revolutionary new type of blood-testing device was a noble one, but no plan survives contact with reality. However, when it became clear that the planned device wasn’t working, Theranos refused to compromise or admit failure and instead demanded that reality be wrong. The longer the company insisted that the Edison was working when it wasn’t, the more lies and deceptions piled up, and the more harm was done – ultimately leading to the collapse of the company and the indictment of Holmes on criminal charges.

Of course, the downside of reading about a contemporary subject is that we don’t yet know how the story will end. The book’s concluding chapter has the author giving his personal opinion of Holmes’s culpability, but (as of this writing) the judge and jury have yet to have their say. Not until the trial’s conclusion will the tale of Theranos truly be at an end.

That aside, this book was simply excellent. It’s good old-fashioned muckraking of the kind we desperately need: a reporter exposing the wrongdoing of the rich and powerful. Exhaustively researched and entertaining to read, Bad Blood is an exceptional expose that gets my strong recommendation.

Final Rating: 5/5

Descent #1: Descent

I’m turning radioactive. My blood is radioactive. My heart is nuclear. Love is all that I fear. Ready to be let down. And now, I’m heading for a meltdown. Let’s head downwards with Descent, by Peter Telep.

Synopsis:

YOU’VE FOUND YOUR WAY IN. . .NOW DIE GETTING OUT
Lunar Outpost MN 0012 is in the grips of techno-cataclysm.

The most complex off-world mining operation in the solar system is in danger of total annihilation, Programmed flying drones have gone berserk, turning on their masters and spreading a hideous plague of devastation and death. An unseen alien force has corrupted the powerful machines as a terrifying first act of war. The moon will fall fist. And after that, the Earth.

The Post Terran Mining Corporation needs one man to lead a suicide mission into the labyrinthine depths of MN 0012, to take the battle to the white-hot core of the rebellion. That man is Benjamin St. John–a veteran Maine flyer with nothing left to lose, teamed with a beautiful company flak and his most hated enemy. A stranded computer scientist trapped in the bowels of the moon holds the key to human survival. Her rescue is essential, and St. John is the only man good enough–and crazy enough–for the job.

Source: Goodreads

SPOILERS BELOW

Ah, Descent. Now there’s a series of games I spent many hours playing as a child. A 3-D flying sim / first-person shooter, Descent has the player take the role of a mercenary spaceship pilot, known only by the callsigns of “Material Defender” and “Vertigo-One”. You’re hired by Samuel Dravis, head of Crisis Contingency Management at the megacorporation PTMC, which stands for… well, it’s said in a cutscene to stand for “Post-Terran Minerals Corporation”; but everything else related to it that I’ve seen (including the back of the box in which I got the original shareware version of the game) gives it as “Post-Terran Mining Corporation”. In any case, an alien virus has caused PTMC’s mining robots to go berserk, and it’s up to you to fly through the infected mines destroying robots, rescuing hostages, blowing up the main reactors, and escaping before they self-destruct.

Being such a big fan of the games (Well, of Descent, Descent II, and Descent: Vertigo… we don’t talk about Descent 3), I knew that I’d have to cover the trilogy of novels for my “know the novelization” series. I’ll admit, I was a bit curious how the books would go about making an actual story out of the game. Fun as they were to play, they weren’t exactly story-driven: the first only had two “cutscenes” (consisting of text against static background images, because such was the technology of the time) at the beginning and end of the game, and there was no real narrative component to the missions until Descent 3 (which, as previously mentioned, we don’t talk about).

The book addresses this issue in multiple ways. First, it gives Material Defender a name and a backstory, introducing us to Benjamin St. John and showing his journey from serving as a CED military plot to becoming a mercenary for the PTMC. Second, it gives Material Defender a partner and rival: Sierra Taurus, a fellow pilot sent to “assist” (read: betray) St. John on his mission. And finally, it devotes a subplot to the hostages, who in this version struggle to fight and escape on their own rather than just standing in a room waving their hands until the player arrives to pick them up.

Another interesting thing the book does is provide some sections from the POV of the robots. In the game, the infected robots were nothing more than mindless enemies for the player to blast. Here, we get some insight into what they’re actually doing, and the motivations of the Programmers who created the virus. (The aliens responsible for creating the virus never actually appeared in the games, except possibly in one secret level in Descent 3 – and I’ll say it again, we don’t talk about Descent 3).

This book was a bit weird in places (what was up with the sassy Guidebot?) but overall good.

Final Rating: 3/5

Aeons’ Gate #1: Tome of the Undergates

Fayth, dream. Yu Yevon, pray. Please grant prosperity without end. Let’s summon from Tome of the Undergates, by Sam Sykes.

Synopsis:

Lenk can barely keep control of his mismatched adventurer band at the best of times (Gariath the dragon man sees humans as little more than prey, Kataria the Shict despises most humans, and the humans in the band are little better). When they’re not insulting each other’s religions they’re arguing about pay and conditions. So when the ship they are travelling on is attacked by pirates things don’t go very well.

They go a whole lot worse when an invincible demon joins the fray. The demon steals the Tome of the Undergates – a manuscript that contains all you need to open the undergates. And whichever god you believe in you don’t want the undergates open. On the other side are countless more invincible demons, the manifestation of all the evil of the gods, and they want out.

Full of razor-sharp wit, characters who leap off the page (and into trouble) and plunging the reader into a vivid world of adventure this is a fantasy that kicks off a series that could dominate the second decade of the century.

Source: Goodreads

SPOILERS BELOW

Back when I first read the compilation Dangerous Women, a number of the stories were good enough that they got me interested in checking out the series that they were a part of – most notably, “Lies My Mother Told Me” introduced me to Wild Cards and “Some Desperado” to The First Law. “Name the Beast” was another story which, while not necessarily one of my favorites in the collection, did interest me enough that I wanted to check out the Aeons’ Gate trilogy. The first book, The Tome of the Undergates, provided a little difficult to get a hold of, thus delaying my look at the series… until now.

There are soldiers, who fight for king and country. There are mercenaries, who fight for pay and plunder. And then there are adventurers, who fight just because. Our protagonists are an extremely dysfunctional group of adventurers who spend as more time at each others’ throats than they do fighting enemies. There’s Lenk, the leader, who hears voices and is occasionally possessed by an otherworldly force; Kataria, a short-tempered member of the savage race of schicts; Gariath, a dragon-man who cares only for combat; Dreadaeleon, a very young wizard with a very high opinion of himself; Denaos, an untrustworthy rogue; and Asper, a priestess questioning the life decisions which led her to serving as a walking box of band-aids for a group of idiots who keep injuring one another. Tasked with escorting a holy man, they get more than they bargained for when demons show up to steal the titular tome, and they’re informed that the world is doomed unless they can get it back.

This book was a little awkward in the pacing department. It starts in medias res, amidst a huge battle scene against pirates which occupies the entire front third of the book – it’s an interesting spectacle, but also kind of exhausting, as the action just goes on and on unrelentingly for chapter after chapter with character introductions and worldbuilding having to be awkwardly shoehorned in amidst the unending violence. The back third of the book is then another extremely extended battle scene, this time a three-way fight between our heroes, the netherlings, and the demons. That one flowed better, since by then all the characters had been established and I knew who was who, but it was still very long. A book can’t just be a single unending climax; it needs lulls to contrast the peaks, rising action and falling action.

That said, the book did succeed in getting me very invested in the characters. Asper was the most immediately interesting, as the healer amongst killers: she had the most interesting conflict with the other members of the protagonists, being condescending towards their brutish ways yet envious of the fact that they are glorified for their combat prowess while her contributions as a medic are overlooked; plus internal conflict over whether she was actually achieving anything with her ministrations towards warriors who would simply throw themselves back into harm’s way as soon as she was done; and hints of a dark and mysterious secret backstory as well. My least favorite at the beginning was Gariath, with his single-minded focus on fighting to the exclusion of all else, but even he won me over by the book’s end with the surprisingly emotional scene of him encountering the ghost of his dead son.

All in all, Tome of the Undergates was a good read, and I’m interested in seeing where the series goes from here.

Final Rating: 3/5

Heechee Saga #5: The Gateway Trip

Stargate! It’s a crazy world, with a great big swirl that you step inside to another world! We talking Stargate! It’s a crazy trip! You can go quite far and you don’t need a car or even a ship! Let’s embark on The Gateway Trip, by Frederik Pohl.

Synopsis:

Here is a collection of short pieces about the many marvelous discoveries made by humankind using Heechee technology. Each piece includes illustrations by Kelly Freas.

Source: Goodreads

SPOILERS BELOW

The cover of the fifth book of the Heechee Saga proclaims it to contain “Tales and Vignettes of the Heechee”. This is, in my opinion, inaccurate – specifically, the plural “tales”. Vignettes it might have in plenty, but there is only one actual tale, that being “The Merchants of Venus”.

I was expecting The Gateway Trip to be a collection of short stories. What it actually turned out to be is more like a combination recap and setting guide. It summarizes many of the events of the preceding four books, relating primarily to the Heechee and the Gateway Corporation, and goes into detail about the general conditions of the current state of humanity. Our main viewpoint character for the story thus far has been Robinette Broadhead, an extremely rich man, and so not reflective of the majority of the population; “The Home Planet” paints a picture of teeming masses of workers toiling in miserable poverty that would not feel out of place in the Warhammer 40,000 universe. The book also recounts a number of notable Gateway missions, though in a very briefly summarized way using a distant and detached authorial voice, which is why I consider them to be vignettes rather than true tales. The full tale of “The Merchants of Venus” is to its credit a good one: it follows a tour guide on Venus who is hired by a rich visitor from Earth to go looking for valuable Heechee relics, and whose plan to scam his employer in order to keep the bulk of the wealth for himself hits a hitch when the man turns out to have a hidden agenda of his own.

The final thing worth mentioning is that the book is illustrated, with the pages adorned by a number of black-and-white drawings provided by Frank Kelly Freas. While this can really add something to a book if done properly, I found the illustrations here to be of inconsistent quality: some where appropriately stark and serious, but others looked ridiculously caricatured or downright cartoonish in such a way as to detract from rather than add to the reading experience.

So, what with all the recaps and setting detail in place of story, The Gateway Trip ended up being a lot lighter on new content than it appeared – and it already appeared to be a quite small book, compared to the ones which came before it. That said, I think the previous three books in the series stand as strong evidence that more is not always better; in terms of quality, the content here blows away everything but the first book. Perhaps it’s a testament to just how bad this series has gotten, and how low my expectations for it have fallen, but this book felt like a breath of fresh air after the past few entries. So, I’m going to give it a pass.

Just one book left in the Heechee Saga… and oh joy of joys, it looks like it’s going to focus on Wan, a strong contender for my least-favorite character in the series. Talk about low expectations. I think I’m going to have to fortify myself a bit before taking the plunge into that one.

Final Rating: 3/5