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From: duane@anasazi.UUCP (Duane Morse)
Newsgroups: net.sf-lovers
Subject: STAR HOUNDS book 1: THE INFINITE BATTLE by David Bischoff
Message-ID: <301@anasazi.UUCP>
Date: Mon, 30-Sep-85 11:18:42 EDT
Article-I.D.: anasazi.301
Posted: Mon Sep 30 11:18:42 1985
Date-Received: Fri, 4-Oct-85 06:26:12 EDT
Distribution: net
Organization: Anasazi, Phoenix Az.
Lines: 48

The jacket reads:

  "Laura Shemzak. Irreverent, rebellious, beautiful. A woman with an
  impossible mission: to rescue her beloved brother, the most brilliant
  physicist of the Empire, from the awesome aliens, the Jaxdron.

  To succeed, Laura must gain control of the top-secret Mark XT
  "blip-ship". And to do that, she is forced into an uneasy alliance
  with the notorious space pirate, the bitter, cynical, Captain
  Tars Northern.

  And that's when Laura's adventure really begins..."

Well, if I hadn't read some books by Bischoff already (DAY OF THE
DRAGONSTAR and NIGHT OF THE DRAGONSTAR with Monteleone, both
very very good, and STAR FALL all by himself), I wouldn't have purchased
this one after reading the jacket description.

Laura is an intelligence agent for the Earth-based Empire, though she
isn't all that keen on Empire politics. Her brother is a research
physicist. The society in which they both grew up frowns on personal
relationships (husband and wife, brother and sister, etc.), so their
knowledge of each other and their ties are unusual. The physics of
the period is much advanced, and Laura's brother is on the forefront
of research; at least the Jaxdron know this. Further, Laura has
been engineered with a number of implants in order to fully interface
with her blip-ship and, of course, to more easily carry out her
intelligence operations.

The book contains lots of futuristic "slang", which is not out of
place, but it takes some getting used to. Captain Northern and his
crew are somewhat hard to fathom, but I expect to learn more in the
next book of the series. It's obvious that Northern and Laura will
eventually admit their attraction to each other, but in this book
they primarily joust.

I enjoyed the book, but not as much as the previously-mentioned
ones. The characters don't have much depth, but that criticism too should
fade after another book appears. The story contains lots of
interesting ideas, and I like the scenario. I still haven't
figured out what Northern and his crew plan to do, and there's
obviously lots more to come.

I rate this book as 2.5 stars (good).
-- 

Duane Morse	...!noao!terak!anasazi!duane
(602) 870-3330


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