Customer Reviews

One Jump Ahead (Jon & Lobo)

5 star:		(12)
4 star:		(6)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

This book is the third debut by a new author in as many months, following Russian Amerika by Stoney Compton in April and Lucy's Blade by John Lambshead in May. I loved both of those books and I'm happy to say this one completes a Trifecta.

As mentioned in the blurb, it's the first of a series, and it has both the virtues and drawbacks of a "meet the characters" novel. The virtues are, of course, that you get to meet some very nice people *and* some not-so-nice people, and learn about their backgrounds and the world in which they play. The drawback is that you do have to spend a bit of time learning both the playing field and the players. In the end, it's worth it.

Jon, the human half of the team, is a seriously universe-weary ex-mercenary with a few extra things going for him that I'll leave for you to read about. He's smart, tough, confident and very much on the side of doing well by doing good. I ended up thinking of him as Simon Templar's attitudes inside an intelligent wolf.

Lobo, on the other hand, is the AI for what I thought of as a "mini-battleship." Like his human partner, he too wants to do well, but he resents the fact that, since it's kind of hard to hide the _Graf Spee_ in your pocket when you're trying to sneak around a town gathering intel, he's frequently left to sit on the sidelines. I ended up thinking of him as an Orca with a sense of humor and a supply of "Sarcasm - just one of many services I offer." T-shirts.

The environment in which we meet this duo is about what we would expect if we want stories with lots of action and conflict. It's the Wild West with plasma weapons, multi-way fights between governments, criminal elements, and multi-planet corporations that make Halliburton and the RIAA look like the very implementations of honor and generosity. Like James H. Schmitz' classic "Federation of the Hub," just staying alive in a mix like that requires a lot of careful footwork. On top of this is Jon's quest, which I'll leave you to enjoy discovering.

It's a fun book, and over the course of the story, I got to like both Jon and Lobo a lot. They're not quite friends of mine, but I'd at least trust them at my back in a dark alley.

This was well worth the time and money spent on it, and I'm very much looking forward to Slanted Jack (Jon & Lobo), the next adventure.

Thank you, Mark. Bring it on!

Imagine a galaxy where a mysterious set of gates exists and keeps growing; gates that allow humans to travel faster than light throughout the galaxy...and nobody knows how they work or who built them, and why the number of gates keeps growing...

Imagine a genetically altered retarded man from the planet Pinkelponter (!) who is now brilliant, a former mercenary, and who has a deep abiding relationship with a cloud of nanomachines who live in his body...

Imagine a world where all the machines are AI-enabled and talk to each other like old folks gossiping...

Imagine a tank with a heart and maybe a soul...

Now you have the world of Jon and Lobo in Mark L. Van Name's first novel, One Jump Ahead.

This book rocks.

I wish I could write as well as Mark does.

I am going to nominate this book for the Hugo next year.

If you liked what John Scalzi is trying to do in resuscitating intelligent action science fiction, you will love this book.

Go out and buy it. Selfishly, I want to see more Jon and Lobo stories, and in order to do that, I have to convince you to buy this book. So why are you still reading this review???

Walt Boyes
Associate Editor/Marketing Director
Jim Baen's Universe magazine

Don't be put off by descriptions of this book that pigeon hole it as military science fiction. Yes, it does have an intelligent tank and main character who was once a mercenary, but what it has that really matters is heart, plot, action, and characters you care about. I don't read military SF but I loved this book, as have the other women I know who have read it, so this isn't just a book for boys. If you love a good adventure story or are a fan of mysteries or thrillers you will really enjoy this book.

Van Name's novel begins with its strongest suit--an ironic situation for its mercenary hero (lying in the bottom of a pit trap in the jungle), and with some truly clever and funny pieces. The novel's protagonist has been "enhanced" in a number of ways, and one of them is that he can speak to appliances: washing machines, it turns out, have some pretty juicy gossip about their owners' sex lives. When I read the line about "the price we've paid for putting intelligence everywhere is a huge population of frequently disgruntled but fortunately behaviorally limited machines," followed by a brief list of which appliances are the most and least interesting to talk to, I thought that this book might have some sustained appeal.

Unfortunately, this kind of ironic humor fades over the course of the novel into a pretty standard military science fiction: details about weapons capabilities, a lot of tough-guy posturing, and combat sequences. Those aren't bad things in and of themselves, of course, but I have to disagree with other reviewers--this novel didn't do it for me.
(1) It's an extremely linear narrative (one thing leads to another, which leads to another, which leads...), and the two flashbacks are clumsily and forcibly inserted.
(2) Like a lot of military sci-fi, this novel presents a "killer with a conscience," which is one way of addressing the ethical issues raised by the genre, which after all, promises the reader thrills based on scenes of killing. Unfortunately, the book heavy handedly and repeatedly steers the reader into situations that seem to demand sympathy with the soldier's desire for violence and violent retribution--in short, it tries to have its ethical cake and eat it, too.
(3) Van Name resorts again and again to seemingly impossible challenges for his protagonist--challenges which are overcome again and again by the protagonist's nearly unlimited secret super-power. In the same irritating vein, the novel offers a series of scenarios that range from the extraordinarily implausible (the discovery of an enormous and hugely powerful machine ally lying for no reason in the town square) to challenges that turn out to be irrelevant (a dozen pages are spent on the bio-engineering of an extraordinary sea animal and an assault on a compound which turns out to be completely pointless--I'm reminded of the Q sequences in a Bond film, where a gadget is displayed at length only to never appear again in the rest of the movie).
(4) Finally, a series of painful contradictions mar the novel, none more grating than than pp. 161-62, where Lim first agrees to Moore's plan only on the condition that Moore be the front man, and that she is anonymous and no one knows she is involved--and then literally only half a page later, reminds him that she accepted only on the condition that everyone knows the she and her company "organized the whole affair" and that Moore only appears as "one more member of [her] team." I have a high tolerance for this sort of thing, but after four or five of these gaffes, I wondered what had happened to the editing.

There are a lot of good things going for this book. The griping coffee makers are hilarious, the technology is clever, and all the little details show a rich degree of imagination on the part of the author.

Unfortunately it never really comes together.

The first and biggest problem is that the plot is badly telegraphed. After reading the back cover and the first two chapters I figured out what the "Twist" was. I then spent the next 3/4 of the book banging my head against the table wondering when the Main Character was going to come to the conclusion that was so obvious to me.

Secondly, whenever the Main Character has a problem he either uses his super power or goes to a store and buys some technological (Or biological) widget that will allow him to solve the problem. With the exception of the obligatory captured by the enemy and rescued by friends scene it's all relatively repetitive. The only suspense is in what the new widget is going to be, to be fair they tend to be pretty clever.

Finally, there are no friends in this story. Everyone has a strictly professional relationship with each other. Now, this might be realistic in military situations it also gives the character interactions the interest of cardboard. The characters talk to each other, they rarely interact with each other.

The biggest example of this was the interaction between Jon and Lobo. When I picked up the book I was expecting something like the Vlad and Loiosh from Steven Brust's Jeherg series. Unfortunatly Jon and Lobo barely reach the associate stage of relationship. They never reach the stage of full fledged parters. Most of the book Lobo is treated exactly the same as the other story saving widgets. There is never any chemestry between the two, I get the feeling that if one were killed or destroyed the other would just shrug and go on their way. Again, it might be realistic for their character types, but it isn't interesting.

I don't write comments often, but One Jump Ahead has an engaging, twisting plot, and great characters. But most of all, the author creates a world with technology that has a depth and practicality that makes it believable. It doesn't have that artificial, made-up feel of many SF stories. Many authors simply lose readers in tech or use it to solve problems in their stories.

I hope Jon and Lobo have many more adventures!

Jon Moore is a mercenary by trade and unknown to everyone else he's also the only survivor of a nano experiment that has left him with abilities not shared by anyone else. While on vacation he is hired to rescue a kidnapped girl only to find that the job is far from as simple as he expected.

I enjoyed this novel. Its obviously the first in a series but as an introduction to the two main characters, Jon and Lobo it serves to give a rough background for them but still leaves a lot to be filled out in other books. Jon is a loner. He can work with other people but these books are obviously set up to follow Jon's adventures while he's attempting to keep a low profile in a profession which he doesn't really like but is nevertheless very good at. If you like military scifi then this should be on your reading list. Its probably not the very best in the genre but it is still a very entertaining and enjoyable read that's good enough to make me pick up the next book in the series.

First novel by a writer who should appeal to anyone who likes the military/spy sort of science fiction. It might be interesting to see what other sorts of things he could do, but this is enought to make it worth keeping an eye on him.

I'm not a big reader of military science fiction but the cover blurb drew me in on this one. Reading other reviews is seems as if maybe this type of story isn't so original but I like it anyway. Completely original stories are hard to come by anyway. For a first book of a projected series I think it did a good job of setting up the characters (Jon and Lobo). We get clues about Jon's past (he's from an apparently destroyed planet, he has a mysterious missing sister, he somehow has nanotech in him which the universe thinks is impossible, etc.) With all this raw material for future stories, I hope future stories revolve around explaining this past. I would also think that the AI Lobo has a past and that could be drawn on. I have only two complaints about the story.

1. I think it is poorly edited. I lost track of how many times Jon complains to himself about Lobo's sarcasm. We got it, Lobo is sarcastic, no need to beat us over the head with it. That's just one example of multiple repeated themes that only the slowest reader would need repeated more than two or three times. Another is Jon's constant remorse over killing. We get it, he's going to have bad dreams for the rest of his life.

2. There were some logical inconsistencies in the book. The biggest was around the central point of the book. Jon is enhanced with nanomachines. Something that his missing sister did to him. This is his big secret. Of course he has to use this power and I don't have a problem with that. But the reader isn't given enough info to understand limitations of the power. Sometimes it seems he can do anything, other times, when the nano seems like it would come in handy (PLOT POINT) like when he is captured, they're no use at all. He's desperate to keep this a secret but (another PLOT POINT) during the assault on Kelco HQ, it's necessary for his nanos to disrupt the sensors. How can he do that without revealing his power to his team?

Jon Moore is tired of war although nanotechnology enhancements make him the best known combatant in the galaxy even if at times like this he feels more like a combat machine than a human. Still he just wants to go home to live the rest of his life in peace and quiet on his planet. His only friend is Lobo, an artificially intelligent Predator-Class Assault Vehicle; a tank that works in any environs.

Jon Moore, soldier extraordinaire, arrives at the planet Macken for some needed R&R. However, the leaders of the two major corporations that dominate this orb and control the use of the jump gate see things differently as they feel Moore is a machine to be employed and discarded. They demand Moore handle a simple action for them; the abduction of an innocent to be used a pawn. What the bigwigs failed to account for is Moore learning the truth. So with Lobo directing him and with some anti galaxy-wide business allies, Moore begins an assault on the invincible armies of the corporate moguls to right the wrong he committed when they lied to get him to act before he realized that they double crossed him.

ONE JUMP AHEAD would be just another military science fiction in which a lone cowboy and his horse battle against avaricious corporations whose leaders are willing to kill to insure the bottom line is mega profitable. However, this rider and his steed turn Mark L. Van Name's first Jon and Lobo thriller into a great opening triumph. Fans will appreciate the bone weary hero who needs a breather, but his "owners" treat him as a disposable machine as well as his sentient tank side kick Lobo who is more than just an advisor; this PCAV directs Jon as they battle the evil empire. Sub-genre fans will appreciate this terrific military science fiction novel.

Harriet Klausner