Customer Reviews

Glorious Treason

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(3)

 

 

Comedy. Tragedy. For best results, mix carefully.
The Greeks knew it. Shakespeare perfected it.
Dexta didn't quite get the mix right.
Glorious Treason did.

Glorious Treason is a more balanced book than Dexta. Dexta was full of frenetic ideas, but there were so many stereotypes flying around it was difficult to see the forest for the trees. This is still erotic comedy, but Glorious Treason plays down the Dexta Menagerie, has no genocide and colonialism issues simmering, and above all, it's a human book, full of human conflicts - there are no pigeonholed alien races to distract you from human plotting. And the plotting is MARVELOUS. There is a lot more bureaucratic meddling and bungling and playing several different sides of an issue. In short, there're more shades of gray, particularly from the good guys. The bad guys are still a little overplayed, but Charles makes up for the rest of them. His connection to Gloria adds some style to the crap he's hurling! I look forward to seeing more of him as a villain in The Fifth Quadrant.

And because this is such a human story, there's real pathos when tragedy strikes. When things went wrong in Dexta, you felt "Oh, sure, this'll turn out fine!" But this time I really felt it, and that's the way it should be. I felt strongly that that element was missing from the first book, but it comes together here.

You also get some feel for the deeper messages here. You really had to ignore the genocide, colonialism, corporate greed, religious, moral and sexual issues in Dexta to have any chance of enjoying it. They bogged it down. But this time you can savour the environmental, corporate greed, and religious themes, because there are fewer messages, and they're more deftly played.

Which brings us to the Voice. I gave 2 stars just for the Voice, which really made this book for me - it's hilarious, deftly played, and the commentary on religion is spot on. There's a conversation at the end of the book between Gloria and a Spiritist Bishop that had me busting my sides, and I have the feeling Gloria will live to regret the famous words "I have an idea!"

I have one major issue with this book, for which I docked a star. In bureaucratic messes as in life there are no clean endings. What happens to the Five at the end of the book is too convenient. Sure, it wraps things up neatly, but sometimes things should be left dangling. If she set out to do it, maybe Gloria should have gotten away with one or two, but all Five? Cleanly? That was too cute by half.

Overall assessment - read this book FIRST - get some pathos for the characters and some comfort with the sexual innuendo - then go back and read Dexta. You'll stand a much better chance of enjoying both books.

I was shocked at the negative reviews for this book. Strangly, I enjoyed this sci-fi romp. Some reviewers question where the science is: but this whole novel revolves around a rare, generally manually processed, crystal, that is used in Tao space for very very fast space travel. How much more sci-fi can you get? Some reviewers didn't quite like the Dexta bureacracy-yet I think it's a marvelous Machiavellian creation and a nifty counterpoint to an Emperor who holds a lot of power. While it's true there is some sex and details on the skimpy clothing, I don't feel that it is extraneous. It simply clarifies the cultural norms and expectations in the 33rd century. I'm not saying this is some deep 2001 satire on the state of being and the reason for creation-it's not; and CJ Ryan is clearly not trying to go there. But it's definitly a good romp and I recommend it.

This might have been an interesting book had the author concentrated more on the plot and less on the peripheral items. the heroine is pretty, intelligent and has an interesting career and background. The author, however, appears to place more emphasis on her fashion and sexual exploits than on developing her as a real character.

Is it really necessary to describe every skimpy outfit that the heroine wore and every sexual encounter that she has in order to further the plot? It appears that the author feels compelled to throw some of this in every few pages in a poorly disguised attempt to hold the reader's interest.

I was also disappointed by the actual plot itself. Some of the items were so transparent that the reader could predict them pages before the heroine came to the obvious conclusion. Could anybody not see the significance of the ski lodge?

Other items were never adequately explained and left the reader guessing why the obvious was omitted. If she knew that the lodge was bugged why didn't she ask Abel if he could provide some evidence?

Hopefully, in future novels, the author will leave out most of the fashion and the sex and build her character into one with the depth to be more interesting.

Trying to figure out if I like the book or not. It is a reasonably paced adventure with frequent sex and loving descriptions of skimpy clothing every few pages.
Matter of fact, trying to figure out the author's reason for frequent sex and loving attention to detail on skimpy clothing appearing throughout this book kept me from following the plot.
.

Most of my reading is on the heavy side and I thought a science fiction paperback -- one of the pillars of my childhood -- would be a nice break. I thought it wouldn't matter if it was very good. I'd still get something out of it. Not in this case.

Other reviews complain about trite characters, tin dialogue and several bursts of sadism. This might convey the sense that if the author had just worked to add some more color and detail and toned down a few passages, this would be a passable way to spend an afternoon. It's not. Glorious Treason is more along the lines of Twain's assessment of one of James Fenimore Cooper's works that he figured "scored 114 offenses against literary art out of a possible 115."

It is not simply that Glorious Treason deploys science fiction cliches, so that, predictably, future humanity is held together by a vast empire with an equally vast bureaucracy. Rather, the author raids a whole host of genres, running off with their cliches to create an ugly mass of worn out ideas -- a dense neutron star of cliches. We get bullies who terrorize small towns in Westerns, the sexy, glamorous and super-rich woman and her down-to-earth, slightly dufus sidekick/foil from chick lit, the kidnaping and rescuing of a damsel in distress from action movies, the painful expository dialogue from 1930s pulp fiction in which characters tell each other things they both already know ("As you know, Doctor Finnegan, since you invented the rediscripinator, its purpose is to. . ."), the preachy lectures found in clumsier propaganda, etc. The only thing new is that the novel inverts the old pulp trap of having a racy cover that has nothing to do with the actual novel: I'm pretty confident that at no point in the novel that the main character wears anything as conservative as her attire on the cover the paperback.

And this is not new wine in old wineskins. The psychology of the characters, well, it isn't. I finished the book convinced that the author has never met a human being, let alone engaged in a sustained conversation with one. (Write about what you know.) Case and point, the dialogue on p. 173:

>"But it's what I want, and I'll do whatever I have to in order to get it. I told you, I'm cold-blooded and ruthless, and I have absolutely no sense of shame. Sex is my trump card, Petra, and I'll use it any way I have to. I mean, what's the point of being the most desirable woman in the Empire if I don't use that to get what I want?"

>"I guess you're right," Petra said.

>"And what about you, Petra? What do you want?"

>"I guess," Petra said after a moment's thought, "what I want is to go on being your best buddy and gal Friday. And when you're in charge of Dextra, I'll be right there outside your door, guarding the gate to the castle." Petra giggle, then added, "Because that would make _me_ the most powerful woman in the Empire!"

If there is a theory of human motivation in this novel, it's that all men are hopeless and helpless in the face of a twenty-four year old blonde who shows off her pubic hair and that women are all exhibitionists, even if they don't have the nerve to act the impulse.

Then we get to the things that are genuinely annoying. This book is set in a retro-1849 California gold rush, in which miners are after the spice melange, which can only be found on one planet and is necessary for faster-than-light travel. Excuse me. Gettin' confused. They're panning creeks for Fergusite crystal, which can only be found on one planet and is necessary for faster-than-light travel.

Not only is the future history of humanity tortured into strange shapes to recreate the California Gold Rush, all the characters think as twentieth-century Americans. Despite living 1,200 years into the future, they only refer to events that a modern American would know. And their sense of technology is so 1990s that their communications technology is already dated: at one point, a character in a meeting shows anxiety by shuffling papers. Really?

I could go on and talk about how this novel, say, glamorizes workplace sex, but this thoughtless junkpile doesn't deserve any more attention.

If Dexta's nutty innovation made it a flawed but fun novel, sequel Glorious Treason's leaden predictability makes it simply unbearable. Science fiction newbie C.J. Ryan isn't going to compete in the overly crowded world of galactic empire stories with such thin gruel.

Glorious Treason pits feckless Emperor Charles and smooth Dexta chief Norman Mingus against one another over the backwater planet Sylvania. On Sylvania, but nowhere else in the galaxy, there exists a natural deposit of the normally synthetic mineral Fergusonite. Fergusonite runs the Empire by enabling interstellar travel, and Charles wants a big piece of the "quadrillion crowns" that Sylvania represents. Mingus disagrees, claiming the natural stuff is too impure. Based on this improbable contrivance, heroine Gloria VanDeen -- the Empire's rather oversexed sweetheart and Charles' ex-wife -- is dispatched to Sylvania. Her job is to carry out the Emperor's wishes and, on Mingus's orders, sabotage them at the same time.

What follows reads like something Western writer Louis Lamour might have written in high school. Gloria's machinations are so transparent that poor Norman Mingus should be getting worried about saving his neck. The reader may begin to worry about whether the book will ever end.

One thing to be aware of, if you are a Gloria VanDeen fan. Ryan, by design or otherwise, drags Gloria though the mud a bit. She makes obviously unwise decisions. It is learned that she has a genetic sex drive that to some extent controls her behavior. This has a tendency to make her seem more pathetic than anything else. And, unrelated to sex, Gloria's actions at the end of the book -- the groundwork having been laid well before the end -- are sadistic and sickening.

Pass on this book and upcoming Fifth Quadrant.

Unless you are interested in a running commentary on the lead character's peek-a-boo clothes, this is not the book for a serious reader. If there is any science fiction in this book I failed to find it. I will be sure to NOT read any other books by C J Ryan. I can only assume the author is a frustrated stripper wantabe.

This is the first book I have read by this author. Actually, I didn't really finish reading it. The plot line was juvenile, characters stilted and stereotypical and I got tired of the story line, such as it was, constantly being interrupted by silly sex scenes, minute descriptions of - basically - non- clothing, the heroine wandering around the deep woods naked, etc. Her enhanced genetic make-up didn't seem to have any real value. Actually, if you really want to read a story about rough and tumble "gold rush" frontiers, try Jack London.

In the year 3217 Emperor Charles V wants to make the planet Sylvania Incorporated Imperial Territory so that the twelve big corporations can bid for rights to mine Fergusite, the gemstone that powers the fusion generators enabling spaceships to travel great distances in little time. Until it was discovered on Sylvania, it was manufactured so that quality was standardized. If the big corporations it, there is a good chance that ships will be destroyed, confidence in space travel will plummet and trade fall dramatically.

It could also mean the end of the empire which is why Norman Minus, Secretary of Extraterrestrial Afairs, sends Gloria, Director of the Office of Strategic Intervention to Sylvania. Her obvious mission is to see that the Emperor's wishes are carried out but her true purpose is to stop Fergusite from being mined. Gloria knows if she is caught, it would be treason but she believes, like Mingus, that the emperor's greed should not destroy an empire. When she arrives on planet, she becomes enemy to the founding fathers of the planet and the corporations' representatives. As Gloria sees it there is only two ways to carry out her mission. The first using legal methods and if those fail, use chicanery, misdirection and criminal acts (as defined by the emperor).

Gloria has a genetically enhanced sex drive which she uses in her mission without any regrets, thinking of it as just another tool in her arsenal of tricks. She admits she's hard, calculating and will do what ever it takes to be Mingus's successor when he retires but her actions show her as a caring beautiful woman and that surface at inconvenient times. There is a lot of action and political intrigue in this erotic outer space crime thriller. C.J. Ryan creates a world with words so vividly that readers can actually imagine being there.

Harriet Klausner