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26 of 28 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Well-done military-political SF -- 4.5 stars, December 23, 2000
This review is from: Mother of Demons (Mass Market Paperback)
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A human starship has crash-landed on Ishtar, a planet inhabited by
the gukuy, bronze-age land squid. First contact is violent, and the
humans (who are the titular demons) soon find themselves forced to
take sides in a tribal war....
This sort of thing has been done, umm, once or twice before, but
seldom as well as here. Flint's aliens are well thought-out and
biologically plausible. The tiny human colony's predicament is nicely
portrayed: one of the human leaders is a historian, and she is
painfully aware of how good intentions can lead to monstrous evil.
There are some first-novel rough spots -- Flint's exposition is lumpy
and sometimes preachy -- but he's an outstanding storyteller, which
more than makes up for the (minor) problems. Recommended.
Mother of Demons was Flint's first novel, and attracted little notice
on publication -- I'm sure sales weren't helped by Baen mislabelling
the book as a fantasy. His new solo novel 1632, which plops a
contemporary American town into Europe's Thirty Years' War, has
been getting good notices,which might help bring Mother of Demons
the larger audience it deserves.
Happy reading--
Pete Tillman
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23 of 26 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Good story telling - better than the cover blurb, June 28, 2000
This review is from: Mother of Demons (Mass Market Paperback)
I enjoy a good SF story... and there are only a few good _story tellers_ around these days. I've been reading Flint and Drake's Belisarus books with some enjoyment. I picked those up because of Drake's name. Flint's name didn't mean much to me, and when I saw the book in the store, it didn't impress me a lot. While at LibertyCon (an SF con in Chattanooga), I saw it on the freebie table as a promotion item. I picked it up, read it, and was hooked. It is entertaining space opera, told from both alien and human perspectives. It's not great literature - but it's a good read. I bought Flint's new book 1632 as a result and found that one very enjoyable as well. So I have added Eric Flint to my list of "buy on publication" authors. If you enjoy old-fashioned space opera and military SF, you'll enjoy Flint.
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5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
An alien lover's treat, October 16, 2005
This review is from: Mother of Demons (Mass Market Paperback)
If you like science fiction with well thought out, original, imaginations of aliens who are truly alien, in physiology and social habits, this book is for you.
The inhabitants of Ishtar are large mollusc like beings with a militaristic Bronze age level culture, both like and unlike similar societies from this period of Earth's history. The differences result from their alien characteristics - the majority of individuals, including the warrier class, are neuter females. Breeding females are usually honoured and powerful, but males are physically small and considered mentally inferior.
A small group of humans has crash landed on this planet and are struggling to survive in an enviroment poorly suited for human life. The natives consider them dangerous demons - for one thing, they can move much faster than anything else on this planet of slug-creatures! The humans are also reputed to hold secrets of the future which is really their knowledge of how societies evolved on Earth - and which miltary tactics won empires.
This book is rich with imaginative details. For example, the Ishtarians vocalize with hoots and whistles emitted through siphons. Human speech sounds like "horrible sounds of gasping and spitting". Which it is, if you think about it!
Narration shifts between a number of intriguing charactors - my favourite is Nokkuren, an outcast warrier ostracized by her society for what to human sensibilities would be a normal sexual relationship.
Some of the critisms noted by other reviewers have validity - Indira's angst, for example, does seem rather overblown. I must admit I enjoyed the non-human charactors the most. Overall, the book works well and will definitely make you think about history in a new way.
This is my personal favourite of Eric Flint's many excellent science fiction novels. If you like this book, you will also enjoy another intriguing race of aliens, the Jao, in "Course of Empire", (Flint's collaboration with K.D. Wentworth)
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