Customer Reviews

Moreau Omnibus (Daw Book Collectors)

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

 

 

This is truly an imaginative series: 50+ years from now, genetic engineering has produced a multitude of 'moreaus' - human animal hybrids created for use as soldiers and assassins. But the nations which originally created them (mainly India, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Russia, and the Latin American countries) have either lost control of their creations or have ceased to exist as coherent nations, allowing the moreaus to disperse all over the globe, most notably to the USA, where the stories in this trilogy take place.

I won't go into too much descriptive detail about the plots of the three novels exept to say that they are a true homage to the 'hard-boiled' detective novel. Very 'noir'ish, very suspenseful, very good characterization (which does not attempt to overly 'humanize' the non-human moreaus, but makes them a truly new life-form).

One gripe though: The omnibus edition contains perhaps the most editing and typographical errors I have ever seen in a book in my entire life. They're just horrible - flipping open to a random page, I can spot at least 4 misspelled words or phrases, punctuation errors, or 'word repeats'. The mistakes are so bad and so jarring that they can actually take you out of the story, ruining the atmosphere. But if you can ignore it, :) these books are highly recommended.

I am a fan of nonhuman fantasy. Swann's world is vivid and diffrent. The charaters are not human and have to cope with that in ways that are acceptable to them. He does not crunch his charaters down into strange shaped humans, and I love that. The fiction does not touch fantasy, but stays a solid science fiction story placed in the neat future.

The story itself is detaield and vivid. He has acceptable science, and he does not dive into areas that he can not explain. The past is explained clearly throughout the stories. The second book/story 'Emperors of the Twilight' is a bit fast paced and wild at the start, but it ties in neatly later, allowing forgiveness for the first few chapters.

Each of these stories is tightly linked. Swann does not fear hurting his charaters or making things painful for them. I fully plan to buy the fourth book to complete this series.

My only pet peeve is the dates, but as that it can be seen to be an alternate world, it is only a small irritant.

No doubt that the three books of this series kept yo on the edge of the seat. Time just flew by Forests of the Night and Emperors of Twilight. Nohar the protagonist of the Forests of the Night was someone you can feel for. Unfortunately the editing was really bad (I am talking about misspelling of words that altered the meaning of the sentence at key points). the editing was awful for all three stories.
Other things that could have been better:
1- The real movers and shakers behind all of the troubles on earth and all of the horrible wars, could have been very different. I felt it was an easy way out. There is plenty of fodder for other types of evil doers that can be legitimately ripped from today's headlines.
2- The author bothered to create a detailed time line that was way too ambitious which created credibility gaps. He should have moved the timeline out a few hundred years

nonetheless the read was engaging

This is an excellent sci-fi series, all in one volume. Someone with a 3-D animation movie studio should turn this into a film, or a series of films, and make a huge pile of money. Action, intrigue, and tigers in trenchcoats. You can't lose.

I recommend the 'Hostile Takeover' series by the same author, set in the future of the same universe as this series.

Great world setting it feels like it is just around the bend. A Tiger/human PI in a complex world, SFI and PI ( hard case at that) you get three stong books in one which makes for a great read and the story line has a nice pay off.

This book not only follows in the follows in footsteps of other sci-fi greats such as H.G. Wells and Jules Verne, but also an exceptional mystery aspect as well as rediculously good caracterazitions.

However, the book is highly "losable" so try to get two or three copies.